Category Archives: Christianity

The Body of Christ

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John Lennon’s quote that “we are more popular than Jesus” sparked controversy and protest once it reached the United States.  That statement, part of a much larger discourse, was taken terribly out of context.  Here’s what Lennon really said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Lennon was commenting on the decline of Christianity in England (and all of Europe for that matter) and over there no one even got upset.  In it’s context, what Lennon was saying was true. Continue reading →

More Popular than Jesus

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Update: this is a very good introduction.  Read the whole thing here.

Yesterday, Oct. 9, would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.  Huge crowds gathered across the street from his former New York apartment, at the appropriately named Strawberry Fields Park.  He’s still fondly remembered, both here and in the UK, some 30 years after his death.  Google honored his birthday with their first animated doodle.

Back in 1966, protests and violence erupted in the United States after Datebook quoted Lennon on the cover of their magazine saying that the Beatles had become “more popular than Jesus.”  Concerts were cancelled, KKK members rallied, the Fab Four once thought they were the target of gunfire.  Well… here’s what Lennon had really said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

We still remember Lennon 30 years later; and despite what you see on the covers of Time, U.S. News & World Report and so on every Easter, Christians still remember Jesus some 2,000 years later.  Lennon had studied many religions extensively.  There are much more vocal enemies of Christian faith today than anything he said back then.  Perhaps he was just ahead of his time.

“His disciples were thick and ordinary.”  Yes they were; and yes we are.  And we the body of Christ.  That my friends is the Gospel.

Who Is Jesus?

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Who is Jesus?  Sounds simple.  And you could answer simply.  But no matter how you respond to the question, we all know that in reality it just isn’t that simple.  Everyone has a default image that comes to mind when we hear the name Jesus.  The question becomes “Which Jesus are we talking about?”  That my friend is the right question.

UPDATE: I’ve removed the link to the Who’s Jesus website because that blog has been deleted by it’s author.

Who is Jesus is also the title of a blog I’ve just been reading.  The author identifies himself/herself only as C.  You don’t learn a lot about C by reading the blog, but I already know a lot by the clues that are given. Continue reading →

Theological Trivia: Did Animals Talk in the Garden of Eden?

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I used to post occasionally on some of the wacky search terms that led people to my blog, and also what I call trivia question theology.  Questions like “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?” or “Can God make a rock so big he can’t move it?”  Okay, maybe those aren’t real questions, but here is a question that a reader entered into a search engine that was sent to my blog looking for answers.

Could animals talk before the fall?

That’s a legitimate question.  Because Genesis describes the serpent as the most subtle of all the animals in the garden.  That’s why Satan came to Eve in that form.  Eve doesn’t seem surprised when the serpent begins speaking to her.  There is a joke that goes like this: Two muffins where sitting next to each other in an oven.  When one said “Whew, it sure is getting hot in here” the other said “Whoa!  A talking muffin!”  If animals did not talk to humans before the fall, it stands to reason that Eve would have reacted differently at the sight of a talking snake rather than carry on a casual conversation with it.  When Moses witnessed the burning bush in the wilderness he turned aside to see why the bush was not consumed.  It was a curious thing that got his attention.

I try to be real careful about not making the Bible say something it doesn’t say.  The Bible does not say the animals could talk.  But we do have Eve carrying on a conversation with it instead of either finding Adam and telling him he has to see this, or simply freaking out.  We also know that the resulting curse changed things.  The relationships between men and women changed, man’s relationship with God changed.  Perhaps the animals did talk casually to people before the fall; God did.

We Need to Remind Each Other

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Last week I said that it’s good to remember, but we need to be reminded (full story here).  In summary, Joshua had the Hebrews take 12 stones from the Jordan River to set up as a memorial.  We take the Lord’s Supper because he said “Do this in remembrance of me.”  It’s good for our faith to remember what God has already done for us.  But we often need reminded.  Our nature – just like the Old Testament Hebrews and Jesus’s own disciples – is to forget.

We also need to remind each other. In the ESV, the word exhort is used 15 times in the New Testament.  10 of those refer to a person that was exhorting and 5 are instructions for us to exhort each other.  Heb 3:13 says “exhort one another every day…”  We need to build each other up, and offer encouragement.  Nichole Nordeman says we all need an ata’ boy or ata’ girl once in a while.  When things are going badly, it may be hard to read the scriptures and remind ourselves of God’s promises.  If we’re a little down, we may not feel like praying.  As a community, Christians ought to be lifting one another up.  There’s enough junk in the world – stress at work, traffic on the road, bad on the news, bills in the mailbox, moral decay on television – to bring us down.  We certainly don’t need to be cannibalistic and devour our own kind.

So, don’t just IM an lol to your friends this week.  Remind them God loves them as well.  Some of us still have telephones, you know the kind that plugs into a phone jack?  And of course smiles are contagious, and still free.

🙂

That didn’t hurt a bit.

There Is No Christian Nation

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I read an e-mail just moments ago that started with these words: “A Christian Nation cannot put up a Christmas scene of the baby Jesus in  a public place, but the Muslims can stop normal traffic every Friday afternoon by worshiping in the streets.”   After a couple more paragraphs, several images are shown of Muslims bowing to pray on Madison Ave. in New York.  I’m trying hard to ignore certain things so that I can focus on having a coherent point and not go off on some tangent rant.  Such as pointing out there is no such thing as “normal traffic” in New York City.  The Muslims haven’t stopped traffic from moving; New Yorkers did that back in the 70’s.

Where is this so-called Christian Nation? Because we don’t live in one. Continue reading →

See You at the Pole

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I remember going to See you at the Pole in middle school, but according to Wikipedia the first meeting took place in Burleson, TX in 1990.  At any rate, See You at the Pole has since become a nationwide event, and takes place on the fourth Wednesday of each September.  That will be next Wednesday morning, September the 22nd.  The theme this year is REVEAL.  More at SYATP.com.

It’s Good to Remember

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September 11, 2001.  Chances are you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you first heard the news.  We spent the next several hours – perhaps days – listening to the radio and watching the news reels again and again.  It’s been nine years, and with debate raging over a Ground Zero mosque and Terry Jones’s Burn a Koran Day the issues are still very much alive.  Discussion continues over exactly what to do at the site of where the Twin Towers once stood, because everyone cannot agree on exactly how to honor those that died.  One thing is as clear as ever: we will always remember that day.

In Joshua Chapter 4 the Hebrews finally get to cross the Jordan River and enter the promised land.  The LORD has Jeremiah command a leader from each tribe to take one stone, and place it in the midst of the river where the priests stood bearing the Ark of the Covenant.  When future generations ask what those stones mean, they are to be told the story of when God held the river and His people crossed on dry land.  It will be a memorial for ever. Continue reading →

More Than Enough

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More Than Enough happens to be a song by Chris Tomlin.  It’s about how God’s supply is more than enough for our needs.  I’ve borrowed the title, but tonight I was thinking about something other than his song.  Take a look at these verses from Exodus 36:

2 And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work. 3 And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary. They still kept bringing him freewill offerings every morning, 4 so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task on the sanctuary came, each from the task that he was doing, 5 and said to Moses, “The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do.” 6 So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp, “Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary.” So the people were restrained from bringing, 7 for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work, and more.

In order to build the tabernacle according to God’s instructions, the Hebrews were asked to donate the materials.  Carpenters, goldsmiths and seamstresses were asked to do the skilled labor.  In this passage, stuff just poured in until Moses had to command them to STOP giving.  Wow.  Can you imagine that happening today?  What if the ushers had to push people away from the offering plates because they were full?  What if the soup kitchen had more food than they had hungry people to feed?  What if the local coat closet was busting at the seams, and they ask people to stop giving them winter coats, gloves and scarves?  The Hebrews had an abundance of materials because they had basically plundered Egypt as they were leaving.  They didn’t steal anything; the Egyptians not only let them leave, they begged them to take whatever they wanted and get out.  They were commanded to leave quickly.  God provided them with an abundance of loot before asking them to make a donation.

Whatever God asks us to do, he has already provided us with more than enough to do it with.  Whether its material, or finances, or talent and ability, God provides for us all we need and more, then asks us to trust him with it.  Whatever God has called us to, he equips us to be able to do.  Even if we can’t see it yet.  God knows what he can do; sometimes he just wants to prove it to us.