The Convenience Trap

I’ve been writing about integrity. Within the flawed system in which we operate, how do we keep integrity?

 

I get invited to different conferences to speak. In fact, that’s how I make a living.  For me, conference speaking is a business to sustain my livelihood and to feed my family.  It’s a fruitful endeavor that I enjoy almost as much as my classroom teaching and writing.  In this business of freelance speaking, I depend on networks.  As I do more and more speaking, the networks become more and more complex.  I get to find out more and more the dark side of ministerial business (as if I don’t already from growing up in a pastor’s family).  Probably the biggest lesson is that everything is political to a degree.  How do you keep your integrity in such a political situation?

 

I use the phrase “the convenience trap” to describe our temptation.  Let’s be honest, a lot of people befriend us not because they really want to be real life friends – they have plenty of those –  but because of the benefit they may gain.  Lest anyone thinks that I’m complaining, I’m not.  I also benefit from this system of “friendship.” It’s called networking.  I’m under no illusion that it’s anything other than networking.  How do I keep my integrity in check?  It’s hard.

 

I think the one lesson I learn is to avoid the convenience trap.  These days, my reflection is often to ask myself whether this networking is merely for convenience.  This is an important question to ask.  IF convenience is the criterion along with personal profit, then integrity is at risk.  A lot of people wonder why Christian celebrities fall.  My answer is because they too have fallen into the system and have become part of its machinery.  They too have fallen into the convenience trap.

 

These days, I’m no longer impressed with how large a conference I get to speak for or even necessarily the speaking fee (which is another book-length topic in itself).  Number is probably the least important thing on my mind right now.  I’m much more careful about the people who invite me because I don’t want to lose my integrity in earning a quick dollar.  Sure, my family needs to eat and I like to have some nice things in life, but you can’t buy integrity.  That should really be our bottom-line. When financial bottom-line takes over, our spiritual bottom-line will blur.  Money and power can numb the conscience, not just in church ministry or the business of church but in life itself.

 

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When the Game Stands Short

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integrity crisis

I love sports movies.  One of the recent ones I enjoyed was “When the Game Stands Tall.”  It’s a story about De La Salle High School football team, the winningest football team of any level.  The movie doesn’t only show when they won. It also shows what happened when that winning streak of 151 game came to a halt.  The team that broke that winning streak was Bellevue High, a school my son may have to wrestle in upcoming seasons.  Bellevue is also quite a powerhouse.  Even today, Bellevue is still a sports powerhouse with a football ranking in the top ten nationally.  I followed this movie because it includes teams I’ve known about first in my former home of the Bay Area (De La Salle) and my present home of the greater Seattle area (Bellevue).  The movie gives a very good moral about what happens when the chips are down.  The appeal of the movie isn’t when the team was winning.  The appeal is when they have to bounce back from losing.  After all, who likes to lose?

 

I think as Americans, we love to win, even sometimes at all costs.  Christians are no exception.  Recently, we first have the scandal of the boy who after all didn’t go to heaven.  Before that, we have Mark Driscoll’s fall through a number of mishaps (e.g. plagiarism, abuse of authority etc.).  Lest you think that I’m harping on conservatives only, I am not.  The latest storm actually came out of the progressives, implicating some big-name leaders.  There’s one thing in common with all these events: money is involved.

 

When stuff like this breaks, two reactions typically happen.  One, someone will denounce the wrongdoing.  Two, someone will defend the wrongdoer calling him a “good  guy” etc.  The troubling thing about the recent events is that there’s far less condemnation of the progressives both among its own ranks and from the opposition.  I’m not sure why. I’m sure somewhere along the line, personal interest is involved.  After all, this is a game of reciprocation, profits and gains.

 

One thing is for sure.  Recent scandals show that Christianity in America isn’t only in decline.  It’s rotten to the core from every side.  I’m not saying individual Christians are rotten, but the system, whether conservative or progressive, is rotten.  It’s a system that is immune from public scrutiny. It is a system that negates accountability. It’s a system that acts more like the Illuminati than the organic Body of Christ. Unlike sports where the rules (besides making money) matters, this system rises above its own rule (i.e. biblical principles on integrity and righteousness).  It urinates on the rules.  The problem is not merely money.  The problem is not merely sin.  Both money and sin have been around since humans existed.  The problem right now is the marketing machine that is part of the system.

 

In the internet age, we have a greater temptation to market ourselves not as we are, but as the way people want us to be.  If enough of this marketing goes around, we will have rampant hypocrisy.  This hypocrisy goes unchecked because of Christian tendency to worship celebs, even the most dysfunctional celebs who may abuse their family members at home or others in the public place, take illegal drugs, drink excessively or commit martial infidelity.   We want to see the marketing image instead of who we really are, a bunch of messed up folks who need healthy Christian relationships.  This machine generates success or the appearance of it.  We love it.

 

At the moment, the silence about the latest scandal only confirms one thing. We love success more than God.  God forbid if anyone or anything interferes with our appearance of success.  With failure, we can stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars and we’ll then look less successful being poor.  Poverty is not sexy, though speaking about poverty is.  What we have here is integrity in crisis.  Integrity is the first thing on the alter in a sacrifice to success.  The machine generates success.  We mustn’t let the machine wind down into its rusty sinful reality.

 

Back to When the Game Stands Tall.  I love the movie not because it’s a mega hit. I love it because it deals with failure. In failure, we learn about honesty and integrity.  We learn about pain and grow.  The machine we create forbids that.  Unlike a football game, we don’t have score boards to give us black and white answers for our successes and failures.  It’s easier to hide when there’re no scoreboards.  Yet, we aren’t keeping score. We’re dealing with real lives and issues that are far more significant than a football game.  Yet, we do so with much less seriousness and integrity.  If there’s a movie to be made about this moment of American Christianity, it may be called “When the Game Stands Short.” We don’t know the score. Neither do we care.

Neo-Reformed Celebration of Terrorism: ISIS drives Yazidis to Christ?

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God's sovereignty, Isis killing of Yazidis, John Piper, Missional Network, Yazidi conversion

I did a double take when I saw headline: ISIS drives displaced refugees to Christ. I saw this on John Piper’s Facebook which contains a load of Christian cliche responses ranging from discussion about God’s sovereignty to God’s mysterious ways.  Here’re the sample responses I’ve read that have the most “likes.”

– Praise the Lord! To hear of how the Lord is using even this terrorist organization to drive out the Yazidis from their hard to reach homes so that many of them might hear the gospel of Christ and believe – that is good news indeed!

 

– Praise God for His beautiful paradox in growing life out of death!

 

– My hope is that ISIS will spark a huge spiritual revival in America and around the world. One thing I know for sure: Jesus is building His Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

 

– God is good!

 

– The failures of ISIS? Appears to be the Creators gain.

 

– Everything that happens is in the end all for the glory of the Lord…

 

– “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Gen 50:20

 

– When Stalin displaced Koreans into parts of Central Asia, he thought he was being clever, but you see God is over all. Those Koreans became some of the most on fire evangelists in all of Central Asia. Glory be to God.

 

Let’s now turn to the article itself. The article talks about all the work being done to help the Yazidis who were being driven by ISIS to flee into the border of Turkey.  The Christian aid workers set up tents for church and camp for residence for these unfortunate souls.  The result is the conversion of many Yazidis.  It’s a good story of Christian action, but then you have this headline.  It’s hard not to read more theology into headline simply because it’s so amazingly theological.  The logic applies to any disaster, whether it’s natural or manmade disaster. It goes something like this, “Since X disaster happened, this many came to Christ. Therefore, we praise God for using disasters to bring people to Christ.”  Essentially, we’re praising God for lost lives so that we can generate global conversion numbers.  If we turn that logic around on these mostly Western church organization and say, “Thank God 911 happened because it drove so many people to church,” I wonder how they would feel.  Of course, THIS is different.  It’s American. However, if it’s the Yazidis or the South Asians who lost lives in the Tsunami, it’s OK to use that logic.  Apparently, even God’s sovereignty favors the West.  Surely, we must be joking.

When some people do mission these days, it’s more about numbers than compassion.  These are real victims here, people!  Have a heart!  What’s the problem?  Our doctrine of God’s sovereignty has completely vanquished our compassion.  Those of us who teach and preach in our churches need to take serious responsibility to educate our people about the real expression of Christianity through compassion.  People shouldn’t know us by our warped religious logic in the guise of doctrine.  People should know us by our love and compassion.

Words Matter! The Danger of Music that Rocks

It was Remembrance Day or Veteran’s Day a while back. Bruce Springsteen, the famous rock giant, gave a concert to honor the occasion.  One particular song the Boss sang was  a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”  The writer of this song was a war veteran who was a bit critical of the US military policy and the unnecessary deaths it had caused.  Well, singing that in front of the military crowd certainly didn’t help matter and some were offended by the song.  I was struck by one particular comment someone wrote, “If you think ‘Fortunate Son’ was in appropriate for tonight’s concert, you’ve clearly never never paid attention to the lyrics.”  I suppose the comment is directed at the lyrics of many of Springsteen’s songs because many of his songs are critical of many US policies from military to labor market.  It also strikes me odd that many who decide to show up to Springsteen’s concert would be shocked at what took place.  If we listen carefully the lyrics, we will surely understand where Springsteen stands on political issues. This leads me to further amusement that on such a “patriotic” occasion, who thought of inviting Springsteen to sing?  Perhaps this is meant to be a ingenious stroke of irony or satire. Who knows?

 

I suspect that most of Springsteen’s fans don’t really pay attention to the lyrics.  His music is usually catchy and upbeat.  I know because my wife is a big fan.  How is this related to our church ministry.  Have you ever noticed that we do the same in church?  Much of church music is there not because of its meaningful lyrics but because of its catchy beat or tune.  I bet most people don’t think of music as something that has meaning, at least not consciously.  When was the last time you hear a bunch of people coming out of your average worship saying, “Wow, the theology of the song is so great.”  No, usually, people would say that the song sounds cool.  The average worshippers could care less about the words in our worship.  There lies the danger.  Music is dangerous.

 

Music can hide a lot of ideas that people may not normally accept but somehow attaching them to music makes everything okay.  This is relevant because as we may notice, the Psalms came to us in words.  I’m sure the music has changed but the words remain the same.  Words matter.  For our worship leaders, just because your congregation doesn’t care about words, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful about words.  Our wonderful music can be the channel for communication of truth or a shelter for our false ideas about God.  Words matter.  For the average worshipper, I would encourage a more careful examination of what you’re singing in church instead of merely moving to the beat because words matter, not only for Springsteen’s audience, but also for those who sing praises to God and about God.