Christian living

Should Christians Love Themselves?

February 26, 2015March 3, 2015Lisa Spencer5 Comments

woman hugging herself Let’s face it. We live in a narcissistic, selfie-absorbed culture. It’s all about me – my thoughts, my dreams, my fulfillment, etc. However, Christians operate under a different paradigm. We are not our own; we’ve been brought with a price. I confess that whenever I see someone who claims Christianity also adopt an “I love me” attitude, I question if they really understand what Christianity is all about.

But then I consider Jesus greatest command, to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt 22:37-39)

Hmmm, love your neighbor as yourself.

In the book The Kingdom of God, a compilation of essays on various aspects of the kingdom of God, Dr. Anthony Bradley, associate professor of Christian ethics and theology at Kings College, offers a good perspective in his essay “The Kindgom Today.” He states,

To ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ demands that we love ourselves well. To love oneself well is to do what is necessary to sustain one’s life and to fulfill one’s responsibility to preserve one’s human dignity, holiness, chastity, property, and reputation and to bring glory to God the Creator.

While this may seem like a narcissistic self-love kind of thing, Bradley puts this love in perspective. Well ordered love flows from God and should be the parameter by which Christians consider what it means to truly love. It is only through the lens of how God has loved us that we can love well, as John states, “we love him because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). This affects the application of God’s kingdom work now in which we humans serve as the instrument. Continue reading →

The Freedom Delusion

January 10, 2015Lisa Spencer2 Comments

Douma Ten Commandments cover I’ve been reading through this excellent book that was recommended to me by a friend in a conversation in which I described my change of heart about the Ten Commandments. Yes, I confess, for many years I did not believe that the Ten Commandment applied to Christians since Jesus fulfilled the law. I shudder at that thought now since the Decalogue, aka the Ten Commandments, represents God’s ethical requirements for his people. Surely God does not have a different standard in the OT than in the NT, but brought to their fullness in Christ. Jesus demonstrated that this was summed up in the greatest command: to love the Lord with your heart, soul and mind and love neighbor as yourself. More of that, and my conversion to see this light, in a separate post.

In The Ten Commandments: Manual for Christian Life, Jochem Douma, former professor of Christian ethics in the Netherlands, provides a very thoughtful commentary on how each commandment applies to Christian life.

I was really struck by this section on the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods beside Me.” (Exod. 20:3). Douma discusses the issue of idolarty and the freedom that Christ provides from it. But he takes it a step further to show the futility of idols.

“That leads us to this final observation. As you listen to the first commandment, you hear in it the liberation of which the prologue to the Ten Commandments bears witness. Yahweh demands the whole person, but in this total commitment of his person to the one true God, lies his greatest freedom. The one who serves Yahweh will live under His blessing, but the one who serves idols will languish in bondage.

Let us look first at ‘primitive’ idolatry. For the Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Canaanite, danger lurked on every side. A tree, an animal, a rock, a river, the sea, a thunderstorm, lightning, a hostile neighbor, and more–dangerous divine powers nested everywhere and in everything. Catastrophes could ocur at any moment. A wall of fear surrounded a person. Specific actions, prescribed incantations, and particular rituals were needed to neutralize the host of dangers. Magic, exorcism, and sacrifices were therefore the way to pacify the angry gods. Continue reading →

The Great Commission, Great Commandment, and our Humanity

January 6, 2015January 10, 2015Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

After hearing a sermon on the Great Commission this past Sunday, it reminded me of these quotes from two books I’m reading and reinforced that being a witness does not require us to be super Christians, with big capes like we have it all together. You ever feel like you don’t measure up to be an effective witness for Christ, loving God and neighbor as you should? Well neither did the first disciples. And they were with Jesus!

“Matthew concludes his gospel with the Great Commission. To his worshipping, yet doubting, disciples, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples” (vv. 18-19). The one who has all authority has chosen not to use it himself. The one who has all power has chosen to give it away. The one who has just conquered sin, death, and the grave has turned over the next stage of the kingdom to this group of fearful and doubting followers, who have demonstrated over and over again that they are more concerned about themselves than about Jesus, about their agendas than about the kingdom, about their reputations than about ‘the least of these,’ and about greatness than about servanthood. Yet it is to these men that Jesus gives the responsibility to make disciples. The gospel is entrusted to them. The mission of the church is given to them. The fate of the poor, the needy, and the oppressed is delegated to those followers who, even in the presence of the resurrected Jesus, continue to doubt. And that continues to be God’s plan. It is through the church that the kingdom grows and spreads over the earth.” – Glenn Kreider, God With Us: Exploring God’s Personal Interactions with His People throughout the Bible. Continue reading →

The Church and Special Interests

December 28, 2014Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

talkingCircle Here is a question I’ve been pondering recently – how much should the church focus on special interests? And by special interests, I mean forming groups, Bible studies, etc to address questions, concerns and general life principles around specific life situations. This could ministry focused on singles, marrieds, men, women, teen, etc.

Now I don’t want to dismiss the reality of specific issues centered on specific groups. But my question is more related to how much the church should engage in addressing these concerns, both from the pulpit and from church life in general, especially in the shape of formal ministry programs. I don’t have any definitive answers but I am drawn to certain conclusions from what I’ve witnessed anecdotally but more importantly, in reflection of what church ought to be. So consider this post more of a thought exercise.

The other day I had the opportunity to catch up with a good friend who had been invited to speak at a singles forum to address issues of singleness. Based on the description of previous years events, it was really more of a “how can I be a good Christian single” kind of format. I thought he had some good ideas about creating more of an interactive exercise but yet something nagged at me. How much is the single oriented towards church addressing the concerns of how to live as a single person? What are the expectations for sermons, bible studies for resolving these issues?

I am also reminded of this article I came across several weeks ago, Why are Working Women Starting to Unplug from their Churches. The article expresses how the older, professional single does not easily fit into the categories that are carved out for specific groups – young singles and married couples.

These women look around and see all of the buckets of people that are being served, such as “the young marrieds,” “the singles,” “the youth,” “the married with children,” “empty-nesters,” “divorced,” “retired,” etc., and do not find a label that fully encompasses all they are. She is a woman AND a business leader. Her daily challenges are unique. Yet, there is no unique group that addresses all of the life parts with which she is faced.

Continue reading →

Christmas, Jesus and the ‘Other’

December 25, 2014Lisa Spencer3 Comments

Kreider_God with us cover My seminary professor, thesis advisor and friend has written a compelling book, recently released in time for this Advent season. In God With Us: Exploring God’s Personal Interactions with His People throughout the Bible, Dr. Kreider traces the biblical story of God’s intentional interaction with this creation through his self-revelation that demonstrates his care, concern and particularly outreach to those who seem the most unlikely to be recipients of his blessings. I plan on doing a full review of the book both on this sites and others I contribute to. But for the time being I thought it appropriate to highlight how this theme comes through in chapter 6, “The Everlasting Incarnation of the Eternal Son” that recounts the story of Jesus’ birth and is quite the timely read for the Advent season.

Dr. Kreider points out throughout the book, and in chapter 6 especially, how God reached out to those who seemed to be beyond the acceptable crowd. He notes in the genealogy;

The ordinariness of his [Jesus’] family tree is made clear, particularly in Matthew’s genealogy. Rather than ignoring the disreputable characters in Jesus’ heritage, Matthew names them…When Matthew names characters, those familiar with their stories remember the shameful details. Perhaps more importantly, we remember that in all of these stories, God shows his grace and mercy to people who are outside the community of faith. These sinners who receive divine grace make it into the community of faith. These women are part of Jesus’ family. The child comes from a long line of unlovely people. When he comes to earth, when he becomes human, he identifies with these outcasts in order to save those who are like them (see Heb. 2) (115-6)

He recounts the story of Jesus’ birth, familiar to so many but provides a fuller dimension than your typical Christmas pageant version and goes beyond the unsavory circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy. The announcement to the shepherds is really compelling considering who they were;

These shepherds were not the well-groomed, clean, mannerly men and women who appear in church Christmas pageants today. First century shepherds were dirty; they spent their time outside, in all kinds of weather, taking care of sheep. They were ceremonially unclean; caring for animals, they dealt with injuries, illnesses, and other matters related to animal husbandry…Like the magi–although at the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum–the shepherds were outsiders in Israel. The gospel is good news for outsiders and the disenfranchised, and on the day of Jesus’ birth this good news is announced to a representative group of this kind of people. (123)