I don’t want to clog any of what will be said with my words.

PLEASE READ THIS. (and the comment on the link by Jesse, who was also there)

If you have ever wondered about the work of The Marin Foundation, our Living in the Tension gatherings or what we’re all about – the above link will answer them all (maybe not to your satisfaction, but surely to mine).

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

This weekend I am speaking at a Salvation Army conference on my theological and missiological understanding of Scripture in regards to bridge building. Here is a small intro to what I will talk about. And thanks to this United Kingdom series I coincidentally was asked the exact question:

Are there particular biblical principles of mission and evangelism which shape your work?

I delve deeply into what I call the Theology of Bridge Builders: The Big 5, in my book, Love is an Orientation.[1] Instead of just repeating what I wrote in my book, I will focus here on a few other biblical principles I rely heavily on.

The Kingdom of God is inherited through belief (John 3:5-8)

I feel that so often, especially when talking about the GLBT community, theological conservatives focus so intently on behaviour modification that they completely forget about what it means to live and thrive in a baseline belief in God through Jesus Christ. I mentioned this in response to an earlier question, but what does it mean for us to be a true come-as-you-are-culture that works on God’s timetable, not on ours? I am not saying that any and all behaviours are biblically acceptable but what I am saying is that looking generally at Christendom, the proper progression of faith is not starting in the right place.

Faithful commitment over time is success (Proverbs 16:3)

What if a GLBT person never agrees with a conservative interpretation of Scripture? What if they accept Jesus Christ and then pronounce they are a gay Christian? What if they say they hear God clearly tell them that living in a same-sex, committed and monogamous relationship is a blessed, God-ordained way of life? Have you not done your job? Did you fail? Are you not fulfilling even the most baseline of Christian standards? The answer is that a faithful commitment to God is already a success. The more accurate translation of Proverbs 16:3 is, ‘commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will be established’. Success in God’s eyes is completely different from our modern understanding of the term. The fallout from this incorrect alignment leads to a creation of false expectations for ourselves in comparison to God’s biblical promises.

There are two main Kingdom differences between establishing and succeeding. First, establishing is rooting your motives and actions in God’s unknown process while succeeding is beating the competition with tangible outcomes that the mainstream (whether secular or religious) deems worthy. Second, establishing is the spiritual understanding that there is personal contentment in faithful commitment. This is not an excuse to be lazy but it is the Kingdom parallel to the flesh’s second version of succeeding which is having contentment in knowing the outcome. Christians today set themselves up for this disconnect because most of us only use a model of success versus Failure, a model created with the rise of an ‘advanced’ Western mindset of philosophy, evolution and business. All of those have since led us further from Christ’s metric of success.

All sins are equal (James 2:10)

I believe the Bible is the Word of God, breathed by the Holy Spirit through human authorship. With that as my framework, Romans 3:23 communicates that all people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In addition to each of our imperfections as humans striving to be formed closer to God’s image, we must also remember James 2:10: from a Kingdom perspective, if you commit one sin it is as if you have committed them all. So then, biblically speaking, what separates my sin from anyone else, whether purposeful or not? Nothing.

A humble servant is an effective leader (1 Corinthians 9:22)

‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some’. This was lived out by Paul and modeled first by Jesus (Matt. 7:1-6 among many other references). It’s such a simple concept and yet so difficult to live out. Proverbs 16:7 says that if your ways are pleasing to the Lord even your enemies will live at peace with you. This verse is not saying that you just live at peace with your enemies. It is saying that they will reciprocally live at peace with you. Is your life and your love permeating so much that even your enemies recognize and revere the God behind it? This is the type of humbleness that relentlessly pursues, serves and loves despite social, cultural, political or religious norms, doing so until they can’t see you anymore because they can only see Christ in you and, because they are at peace with that, they are also at peace with you. All possible means that I might save some …

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

Have you ever wondered how one formulates a belief? I’ve been thinking about this recently and I think I’ve finally formulated my belief on how one formulates a belief. 

I feel that belief formulation is so important because it’s a key component to cracking, constructing and deconstructing the broader cultural psyche and therefore, cultural trends within. This could play a huge part in the next decade to ending culture wars and bringing on more tangibly productive works on earth as for the Kingdom. As everyone starts to cognitively and experientially work within a similar framework that provides space to exhibit free will in a new medium of engagement, I think what was once negatively imputed systems of thought and actions can quickly turn to peaceful and healthy positives ones.

I’d seriously love to hear your thoughts about what I think, and what you think on how one formulates a belief:

1. Wholistically having knowledge of, and being fully informed about a topic (I am defining ‘knowledge’ as: A solid intellectual understanding from both ends of the spectrum).

2. Humbly living within your intellectual and experiential exploration of the topic, providing space for those who socially, scientifically and theologically disagree to enter into your context.

3. Prayerfully coming to a conclusion through (in this order): the Word, church tradition, current cultural contexts and your experiences with each of those.

And from a Secular formation of a belief (as I am not naive enough to believe the broader secular world would entertain placing upon themselves a Christian worldview):

1. Wholistically having knowledge of, and being fully informed about a topic (I am defining ‘knowledge’ as: A solid intellectual understanding from both ends of the spectrum).

2. Humbly living within your intellectual and experiential exploration of the topic, providing space for those who socially, scientifically and theologically disagree to enter into your context.

3. Coming to a conclusion through the wholistic knowledge (intellectually and experientially from both sides) of current cultural contexts (religious and secular) within your personal experiences of those who agree and disagree with you.

From here, I feel that the medium of engagement can’t help but shift. Thoughts?

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

Yesterday was Black Friday and I got up at 3:20am so I could go shopping and get everyone I loved something really special. I want to briefly give you my Philosophy of Money and Spending:

I give more to the Lord than I can “afford” and then I spend the rest blessing those really special people in my life that have already given so much.

You can’t take a dime with you into eternity, and what good is there in trying to hoard as much money to yourself as you can because “you want to live comfortably in retirement” or “just in case”. Retirement means your work is done – and a faithful Christian walk never ends until our last breathe is breathed. It’s an orientation; a lifestyle; a paradigm of understanding that is totally countercultural to what mainstream (as there are two types of mainstream – secular and religious) tells us. And when lived to the fullest, you’re not able to retire from it because it’s too ingrained, too normal to you, too much a way of life.

Our Kingdom Priorities are messed up because they are so inward focused. Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”; and then to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Where your heart and priorities are, that is also where your money goes. So mine goes to God first, and then to my loved ones next with very little left over – not because I spend so much but rather because what little I do make is given or spent on my top priorities. Is it any coincidence that right after Jesus tells everyone the two greatest commandments, He illustrates it with this.

Rich to me might not mean rich to you, but you better believe I’m fully rich in how I live my life. Scary? Extremely. But the strange part is that I’ve never been more content in my entire life.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

For the next four days I am in Atlanta speaking to a couple thousand of my closest youth worker friends at Youth Specialties. I’m kicking this trip off today by speaking for a total of 4 hours (Research for a  Productive Generation (because I’m really tired of research just being used as ammunition) and Answering the Tough Questions on Sexual Identity), 2 book signings and a couple meetings. So here is a quick thought for the day:

Here is Part 1 

Levi-Strauss, the father of Structural Anthropology, twice, referenced the following quote regarding the human mind’s quest for order:

“Since, after all, the human mind is only part of the universe, the need to find order probably exists because there is some order in the universe and the universe is not chaos” (p. xi and p. 13).

I found this quote thought provoking because although Levi-Strauss is coming from a secularist point of view, his quest is to explain humanity’s innate yearning to find meaning and purpose/order within a chaotic world—the reason why religion is such a prominent construct, and has been throughout history. I get a kick out of realizing that the ultimate answer to this structural anthropologists question is the Answer found in Christ Jesus. Humanity can rationalize or research anything to the point they feel as though it is understood (or not, as Levi-Strauss admits: “Every myth is driven by the obsessive need to solve a paradox that cannot be solved.”), but the unchanging depth of our Lord is still profound centuries later. There is order to the universe—and something had to create it.

As a famous evangelist says, “When people today look at a house, they innately know someone built it. They don’t just think it was created without planning and structure; like it just somehow became a house. They would never live in such a place.”

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I recently read Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Levi-Strauss—the ‘father’ of Structural Anthropology—which is defined as: The quest for the invariant; or for the invariant elements among superficial differences (p. 8). In essence, this means that structural anthropology is searching for the changeless or constant qualities, functions, configurations or systems that bring order or understanding to an ever changing and chaotic world.

From a Christian worldview we would say that quest is simple—it starts and ends with God. However the fascinating part to structural anthropology is that it’s a secular field with spiritual undertows. Thus the invariant, though faith is recognized as a key stabilizer, can be ultimately constructed scientifically as well. Levi-Strauss brings up some fascinating philosophical and social points, and I would love to have further discussions about them because I feel they can greatly assist our own wholistic understanding of people and structures within culture.

Case: Philosophically Levi-Strauss believes in mythemes: that innate to humanity is the need for people to split everything in twos such that this dualistic grid is the most effective way for people to integrate cognitive data into personal action. He explains this with “each dualism produces a tension that seems to be resolved by a third party, mediating term, but that new terms turns out to be only ½ of a newly created dualism” (p. vii).

Ultimately, and here is the big point, “We are split creatures literally by nature, and we organize data like a simple digital machine. Our common sense is binary, the simplest and most efficient way to process experience seems to be by dividing it in half, and then to divide the halves in half, reformulating every question so that there are only two possible answers to it, yes or no” (p. viii-xi).

Wow! He just put a philosophical construct to exactly what I believe (and what Jesus taught) about yes/no questions (see the first part of the video below).

A few key points, as the implications to general humanity are greater than we ever thought:

1. Humanity works in cognitive rationalizations that naturally divide and subdivide any given topic into a base-level yes/no construct.

2. Yes/no allows us to then wrap our minds around intertwined constructs that we don’t fully understand or are not able to fully grasp. In other words, this cognitive process takes our mind from the confusion or fear of the ‘unknown’ to the comfort of the ‘known’ – or at least to the comfort in a feeling of ‘ability to handle’.

3. The problem with this innate action is that every situation in life (social, cultural, spiritual, personal, communal) then automatically becomes an ‘us vs. them’ scenario of ‘right vs. wrong’ or ‘good vs. bad’ or ‘success vs. failure’ and on and on. The dualism is what drives us crazy, and yet this paradigm (secular and Christian) is the fundamentally accepted means of reasoning because it brings recognizable insulators and boundaries to our ability to live and make choices. But a house divided against itself cannot stand—the reason humanity continues to plummet into self-selected and socially constructed secular categories, communities and religious denominations that have clearly defined delineations between the next.  

Now we are being shown the depth of God’s upside down Kingdom.

1. In the Old Testament, the baseline of the Hebrew faith (and of Jews today) is the Shema (Deut 6:4-9):

 ⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

2. Read this carefully: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The core of the Old Testament is God reminding humanity that He is One, unified, in direct opposition to inherent human cognition that can’t help but to divide and subdivide life, faith and experiences.

3. God then reminds us to impress this upon our children with constant reminders so that they will grow up not imputing subdivision, but rather Oneness is the Father.

4. Jesus then reminds us of this when asked what are the two greatest commandments, and also practices for us how not to answer yes/no to yes/no questions (see p. 178-185 in Love is an Orientation) in order to draw closer to God’s desired Oneness for humanity, in direct opposition of not only our fallen nature but also to our imputed understanding of engagement. What is so unique about this is that it doesn’t matter if it’s a Christian or not—the imputed baseline means of human reasoning are the same for everyone.

Conclusion: Living our life and faith in culture means that we must intentionally fight against the inborn human nature that pulls us towards the comforted subdivision of cognition rather than God’s ideal of Oneness—which often leads to living in faithful tension. As counterculture as this might be for humanity (especially Christians), looking at structural anthropology through God’s lens makes a whole lot of sense in regards to innate human nature and the philosophical understanding that comes because of it.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org