The size of the waves take your breath away. There’s still time to back out. After all, no-one is going to make you do it. You’ve come intending to ride one of those waves – you want it but the desire is mixed with fear and uncertainty. You know that this isn’t a game. You don’t flirt with life and death.

Are you committed or do you pull out? It’s your call.

Like the surfer in the video below may have felt as he stood on the beach, these thoughts and emotions are entirely appropriate if you are considering saying ‘yes’ to God’s invitation to you in the Gospel of Jesus. It is a big deal. The issues are of life and death. In becoming a Christian we surrender everything and follow Him. 

Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

It’s your call. Will you take the plunge?

Some Reflections on Viral You Tube Video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus”

I really like this video (you can watch it in the previous post below this one). By the time you read this the video will have clocked over the 15 million views mark.

Jefferson Bethke created the video which challenges our thinking and provokes us to ask questions such as:

•   Is there a difference between being religious and being a follower of Jesus?
•   To what extent does becoming a Christian mean becoming religious?
•   Can simply living a religious life qualify as authentic Christianity?

 

The Nature of Authentic Christianity

Jefferson implies that the essence of what it means to know and follow Jesus is distinct from what many would call religion or religious life. He infers that it’s possible to be very religious and even very committed to what looks like Christianity, and yet miss the whole point. Jefferson’s thinking is driven by a singular ultimate belief: Christianity is all about Jesus and (in one sense) only about Jesus. If you leave out Jesus, you end up with religion. It might look like Christianity, but isn’t. While we may go to church regularly, try hard to live good, moral lives or participate in rituals and ceremonies such as baptisms or christenings or weddings, none of these things in and of themselves make us a Christian. It is how we have responded to God’s Son, Jesus Christ that is the decisive factor.

 

Defining the Word Religion

Part of the problem in discussing these things is the multifaceted meaning and usage of the word ‘religion’. Sometimes it’s used to describe and compare various worldviews or faiths; it may mean behavior or adherence to a moral code; it can mean participation in religious rites or rituals or the word may be used simply to describe faith or belief.

 

Religion in the Bible

When we look at the Bible we don’t see religion as either all bad or all good. We see examples of both good and bad religion.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress……” (James 1:27)

In the book of James, the Bible says that the act of loving and looking after widows and orphans is actually true, authentic religion – good religion.

On the other hand, it was the religious leaders who were most upset by Jesus. His harshest criticism was reserved for them and with them he had his greatest conflict. In the end it was the religious leaders who arranged the murder of Jesus.

 

The Human Heart and the Gospel of Jesus

Ultimately, it isn’t religion that is the real problem – it’s the human heart. As someone once said “At the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” Religion cannot effect real change at the heart level. The Gospel of Jesus is the change agent that God has provided for this. The change is so literally a ‘heart surgery’ that it is described in terms of a whole new identity…

The Bible says:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

One of the clearest examples of this in the Bible is the story of a guy called Paul. He was what you’d call a religious fanatic. He had a passionate hatred for Christians and the Gospel of Jesus, seeing them as a threat to his religion that needed to be annihilated. His opposition toward the Gospel turned violent as he started hunting down Christians, attempting to have them jailed and/or murdered. Then he had a personal encounter with Jesus and was a changed man. It was Paul who wrote the Bible verse above. It was Paul who wrote much of the New Testament and it was Paul who wrote of his former religious zeal:

“…whatever was to my profit (his religiousness) I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith”. (Philippians 3)

Most people I know don’t understand the heart of Christianity. They think it’s about behavior modification – stopping swearing or getting drunk; or about religious culture – being conservative in dress style or music taste; meeting in sandstone buildings with uncomfortable seats and doing weird things like singing hymns.

The truth is that it’s all about Jesus:

“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous (that’s Jesus) for the unrighteous (that’s us), to bring you to God”. (1 Peter 3:18)

RELIGION V’s JESUS

This video articulates quite well some things that I feel very strongly about.

Many of the objections that I’ve heard raised against the Christian faith are really objections to religious moralism or issues of church culture or nominal Christianity – not the Gospel of Jesus. A critical part of understanding the Gospel from within our culture is to clarify the nature of the true Gospel and show how it is both different and better than religion and it’s culture.

It’s the tenth day of a brand new year.

Life in our world can be an incredible mix of profound experiences. A quick look at the very interesting statistics website Worldometers gives us a real-time, global perspective on the year so far.

Since New Year’s Eve (ie: in the past 10 days) 

* 3.2 million people have been born, while 1.4 million have died.

* We’ve consumed 320 billion litres of water, but 840 million people have no safe drinking water.

* There have been 1.01 million abortions, while 26,000 people who were alive before NYE are no longer. They committed suicide.

Further:

* While there are 914 million undernourished people in the world, $407 million (USD) will be spent today (24 hr period) on treating obesity related diseases in the USA alone.

* Today: 26,000 people will die of hunger, while $152 million (USD) will be spent on video games!

All statistics from www.worldometers.info

The God of the Bible could not (and did not) stand by passively in the face of this bewildering complexity of extremes. He entered into it and did something about it. His name is Jesus. His mission was to die a death that purchased life. He became the one statistic that changes everything. In his resurrection, he defeated the one statistic that claims everyone – death itself. He invites us to live forever in a new creation, free of the ceaseless ticking over of the statistically inevitable effects of a flawed, fallen world.

NEW YEAR’S DAY – TIME LAPSE VIDEO

Happy New Year!

Yesterday I visited the Sydney gallery of photographic legend Ken Duncan.

Aside from the expected collection of stunning prints adorning the gallery walls was an unexpected glimpse into the personal beliefs that underpin Duncan’s creative passions. He’d chosen a verse from the Bible (Romans chapter 1, verse 20) for prominent display among his images. It reads:

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. “

The previous day (New Year’s Day), I’d been out with my own camera hoping to capture some “time-lapse” video footage of the beautiful Sydney Harbour in the gorgeous light of late afternoon. My experience that day resonated very much with both Duncan’s and with the declaration of Romans 1:20 in the Bible.

On this blog during 2012 I’m hoping to cover some controversial topical issues, some of which are often raised as objections to the existence or the goodness of God. One of those subjects is suffering and evil. While these are important topics that deserve careful attention, the experiences that I had shooting the video below were the (sometimes forgotten) other side of that coin – the beauty and grandeur of the creation, testifying to the reality and goodness of God in providing a world to be enjoyed to the full. I had a great afternoon’s shooting.

I’m looking forward to blogging my way into 2012.

Blaise

ME AND MY BLOG – A VIDEO UPDATE

Having been in an uber creative state recently, I put together a video to go on the ”ME AND MY BLOG” page of this site.

You can watch the video below.

I enjoyed the process of making it. I went on a bushwalk in search of a good location to shoot cloud formations. I mounted the camera on a tripod (which is essential) and shot around 20 mins of Hi-Def footage (which maxed out my 8GB memory card!)

Back at home, I sped up the ‘time-lapse’ scenes at around 32X real speed and was rewarded with the the effect I’d been hoping for. I decided to go Black & White with some monochrome sections thrown in. It was a fun exersize.

I learn’t two things:

1. Expose for the sky/clouds – not the land

2. Take something heavy to weight down the tripod if you are shooting at high magnification (long focal length of the lens). When you speed up the footage afterward, the wind that you didn’t realise was buffeting the tripod suddenly becomes very obvious!

If you are into photography or video, you should give time-lapse a go. It makes a fun project.

Ultimately, it’s our belief about the end of life that shapes how we journey through the present.
We see this principle operating in everyday life when we plan for all sorts of things  – next year’s overseas holiday; saving towards a house; planning for retirement. We like to know where we are going, to have a plan and to organise our lives into smaller goals that build towards the greater ones. Apart from being wise and practical, our plans and goals also give us hope and a sense of expectation. We can endure hardship in the short-term when we know there’s an end in sight and a better future on the horizon.

The Gospel is about God sending Jesus to secure for us a unparralleled future hope.

In the Gospel, God offers eternal peace and security to all who would recieve Jesus as thier King and Saviour. It’s a hope that is based not on our performance or good works but rather on Jesus’ perfect performance and his work of dying on the cross in order to reconcile us to God. The Gospel is both an invitation and a promise – that anyone who would take up God’s offer of forgiveness can be assured of the promise of eternal life. It’s a promise about the future that is so secure that it powerfully impacts the present. It changes everything.

Jesus said “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” (John, Chapter 5, verse 24)

Many of us, at least in the Western world, are privileged to have lives that are full of rewarding experiences. Although on one level this is a great blessing, I wonder if on another level, it’s inherently dangerous. The danger is that we actually find such fulfillment and focus in our daily work, projects, hobbies or relationships that we don’t feel a need to ask the bigger questions of life. Questions like: Why am I here? Was I created or am I just a random DNA accident? If I’m created, can I actually know my creator?

You would think that being the intelligent, rational, enlightened modernists that we are (tongue in cheek), we’d never fall into the trap of being content to live in a state of such spiritual ignorance as we seem to passively accept! Upon analysis it seems evident that although we claim that we’d like to know if God exists, we really don’t translate that into actively searching Him out. It seems that we are prepared to settle for being clueless in the arena of these ”ultimate” things so long as we can fill the void with other things, medicating ourselves with the pursuit of our immediate felt needs. This means we really aren’t as objective as we’d like to think. The human heart seems not so much to desire truth as it does comfort.

In my own life, it was only through crumbling into the despair of depression that my eyes were opened to see my lack of ultimate context and purpose. It’s a strange paradox that sometimes we need to know brokenness before we can see our need for more than we have within ourselves. When things go well and life is easy we can be so busy and fulfilled that we never stop to consider why we exist.

The bible says that hope, meaning and purpose are found in Jesus Christ. This is the all important foundation on which to build a great life. Firstly, we need to be reconnected to our Creator in a real and personal way through his Son Jesus. Secondly, we are given purpose, responsibility and challenge within the context of hope.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do – The Bible (Ephesians Ch 2, Verse 10)

Sometimes the details of our busy lives seem overwhelmingly large. It’s easy to lose perspective. I love the feeling of ‘self forgetfulness’ that comes when we are caught up in something much bigger than ourselves. We get tastes of this when we admire the spectacular view of a canyon or valley from a cliff top. We are shrunk back down to size by the glory that surrounds us.
The video below is just such a reminder. Considering our place within the context of the universe is extremely humbling. It also points to the God behind the complexity and wonder of the creation. Most astonishing of all is the Bible’s claim that the God who made the universe invites us to know Him personally through Jesus Christ.

We All Worship, 24/7

The Bible portrays us as being designed to worship. It assumes that we are hard-wired that way. We worship the objects of our affections. We do this practically, in everyday life when we make choices that show our priorities. We choose to spend our limited time and resources on such-and-such, rather than on something else. Far more than simply going inside a church building for an hour on a Sunday, worship is the actions and choices we make which flow from the prizing of that which is most important to us. We worship that from which we derive purpose, meaning and joy. It could be a person, place or thing about which we are passionate; about which we dream, plan and think. It could be anything - including a career, a hobby, a relationship, a holiday destination, a plan or a goal. Worship is the response we make to those things which we hold in such esteem as to be worthy of our money, our time, priorities and our energies.

The Problem: When Good Things Become God Things

The Bible speaks of humanity as having a fundamental worship problem. It’s not that some people worship and some don’t. Everyone worships. The problem is that we tend to worship the wrong things. The Bible speaks of our propensity to worship created things rather than the Creator. The question is not whether or not we are a worshipper but rather who or what is on the throne over our lives?

Many of these things we live for are good things. It is right and proper to enjoy them. The problem comes when they are wrongly positioned in our lives. When good things are lived for as ultimate things, we are destined to short-circuit our lives. Religion cannot help us. We may – for a time – be able to deny our desires for wrong priorities, but the resulting void left behind is not God’s intention. That’s the problem with religion – it can empty, but it can’t fill. What is needed are new affections, strong enough to expel the old and shaped to fit and fill perfectly, the God inspired cravings of the human heart. The Gospel of Jesus is that place – the treasure that outweighs all else and will never perish, spoil or fade.

We can learn and change

Often, we experience the sad reality of discovering that the objects of our affections can’t deliver what we hoped and planned they would. The great thing about this is that it can be a season of learning and changing.

The sadder reality is when our wrong worship continues and, at least on a functional level, appears to work. Ultimately, the danger is that we settle for the attainment of our shallow desires without challenge or consideration, until it is too late and we meet the One who made all things, the One who alone is worthy of our worship.

In coming to know Jesus we become intentional about our worship. Whereas we previously lived without consciously directing or focussing our lives outside of our own desires, suddenly, with a new heart and new desires, we want to glorify Him. We want to live for Him.

This is worship as our Designer intended.