From the Cradle to the Cross to the Crown?

As you may be able to guess about me, I enjoy listening to preachers. I always take notes, and I’m always trying to learn new things about the career I find myself in. One time, I heard a preacher mention the trip that Christ took from the Cradle to the Cross to the Crown. It made me think about the way I see Christ.

Is that all His life was about? Did he only come to earth to go from the Cradle to the Cross to the Crown?

I don’t think so.

If we reduce the life of Christ to those simple three steps, we’re committing robbery.

Don’t get me wrong, I am fully willing to affirm the importance and the theological significance of those three parts of Christ’s life and death. But it seems to me that if we remove the section that happened between Cradle and Cross, we will have completely missed the point.

I refuse to believe that Christ came simply to die. Yes, I believe his death was part of the purpose for his coming. But he came with more than one purpose. He also came to teach us how to live. In fact, I think he spent a good deal of time talking about the way we should live.

As a Nazarene, the life of Christ holds an incredible amount of importance to me. Because, it is in His life where he shows the example of holiness.

Without the life of Christ, the time between the Cradle and the Cross, we would not have the example of a life lived well. We wouldn’t have the example of holiness.

When you’re thinking of Christ, don’t limit your thoughts of him to “Baby Jesus” (As Ricky Bobby so wonderfully showed us), and don’t focus your vision of Jesus as a man dying on the Cross. Instead, focus on a life well lived. Focus on the perfect example of holiness.

And while you focus on Christ’s life, ask God to make you more and more like Christ every day.

The Importance of Eschatological Correctness

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I enjoy doing a bit of thinking. I like to wrestle with difficult concepts. For me, the argument (even with myself) isn’t about being right. It’s about the argument. I enjoy thinking about difficult things and arguing with them. I ask myself questions like, “What if it isn’t really that way?” or “What if we have it all wrong?”

I have been wrestling with eschatology. Eschatology is concerned with the end. One of my professors in college really enjoyed eschatology. For him, everything theological came back around to eschatology.

I’m not quite on his level of enjoying the study of eschatology. However, I do enjoy talking and thinking about eschatology. Also, it’s a fun word to say. Say it. I’ll wait a moment. Eschatology.

I heard a pastor recently preaching about the end times, and what it was going to be like. He spoke with absolute certainty about the end of days. He knew exactly what was going to happen in the end of days.

To me, this seemed a bit arrogant and possibly somewhat short-sighted. I always got the impression that even Jesus (who was fully God), did not have it all put together yet. How could this pastor possibly have it all figured out if God didn’t really seem to know exactly what was going to happen?

It’s somewhat heretical to suggest that God doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s the impression I always got from Scripture.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t talk about the end times. Quite the contrary! I do think, however, that we should avoid speaking of the end times with absolute certainty. The simple fact is, we do not know what is going to happen, and we surely do not know when it is going to happen (88 reasons for ’88, right?).

I remember reading the Left Behind books a number of years ago. I really enjoyed them, but I’m very cautious not to count them as Scripture. They are a fantastical interpretation of what two men believe to be true, regarding the end times. If it happens that way, good for them. If not, should we be sad?

I say all this to implore anyone reading this to be careful. Be careful when talking about the end times. We do not know what is going to happen. What we know is that in the end God wins.

God wins.

And in the end, that’s all we really need to know. Don’t waste all your time looking heavenward for the rapture. There are people on earth who will not get to be a part of that glorious day. Spend your time in the fields, evangelizing, discipling.

If the rapture happens while you’re in the fields, God still wins.

If the rapture happens after you die, God still wins.

If the rapture never happens, God still wins.

Regardless of the outcome, God always wins.

Live like it.

A Doctrine of Hope

HOPE

We’ve been saturated with this word. Barack Obama’s entire campaign was built on the premise of hope. He was bringing the hope that politics could be different. Young people flocked to the idea of hope.

We’re drawn to hope.

Why?

Last night at church, Stan Toler spoke about the negativity of the culture we find ourselves in. I think this is why we flock to the idea of hope. We want to know that it doesn’t have to be so negative all the time!

So, I’ve been thinking, where does hope fit in with my theology? There’s a book on my shelf called An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Even within the church, we are yearning for some hope. Parts of the emergent movement are fueled by the hope that church doesn’t have to look the way we’ve seen it for so long.

So, I ask again, where does hope fit in with my theology? I haven’t read that book yet, but it’s on my list for the future. There’s an old hymn that tells us where our hope comes from. Remember these words?

My hope is built on nothing less…
Than Jesus blood and righteousness.

Some of us cling to the hope that it will all be better in heaven, because of what Christ did for us here on earth. But, maybe that’s not what it means? My hope is that the world would get better because of what Jesus did for us here. My hope is that the followers of Christ would be radically transforming the world. My hope is that we would be showing the world that there is hope, even in times of despair.

Are you showing the world that there is hope, or are you leaving that up to President Obama?

There is hope.

We still serve a living God.

God's Presence

This morning in prayer meeting, an interesting concept came to me. We were talking about Psalm 27. In that Psalm, the psalmist tells God that the only thing he wants is to dwell in the Temple. If you know your Old Testament theology at all, you know that the Temple was where the presence of God resided.

So, in essence, the psalmist is saying that the only thing he wants from God is to be in God’s presence.

What if this was my prayer today?

Could I be content with just asking God to be with me?

As I continued think about that thought, I moved myself from Old Testament theology into New Testament theology. As a result of Christ’s death, the veil in the Temple was torn. As a result of that, the presence of God is everywhere now. This had the profound effect that anyone can approach the throne of God.

So, what if my prayer was still to simply dwell in God’s presence?

What does that look like?

As the conversation at prayer meeting continued, the idea presented itself that we are not simply in the presence of God. We are the presence of God!

We are the presence of God to the world.

We are the walking, living, breathing presence of God.

How does that change the way we think today? What about the way we act?

Holiness

I recently had to write my manifesto on holiness. Since I am a Nazarene, it seems that holiness should be a major part of my life, and since I call this The Revolutionary Nazarene, I decided to post it here. It's somewhat long (2 and a half pages single spaced), but I'm interested in putting it out there to see what others think. So, without further ado:

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Holiness is possibly one of the most misunderstood words used in Christian circles. Holiness is used to define many things from a personal lifestyle to an entire movement of church growth. People take classes to define and discuss the term holiness. Pastors preach sermons on holiness. Men and women write books about holiness. So, why the confusion?

People are confused about holiness because it has been taught many different ways. For every person who claims to be a holiness thinker, there is a different theology and definition of what holiness actually is. That is why a member of a Nazarene Church may have heard five or six different ideas and thoughts on holiness. It gets confusing. Is there a way to determine who is correct? Is it possible that holiness does not have on static meaning?

Any good student of Wesley (or any of the Reformers) will begin her theology of holiness (or any theology for that matter) with Scripture. Scripture is given the primary place of importance because it is God’s Word, thus making it the primary source for all arguments, especially theological arguments.

But, with what Scripture should a good holiness theology begin? A good place to start is in the Torah. God tells his people to, “be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44, quoted by Peter in 1 Peter 1:16). Jesus also admonishes his followers to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). There is no doubt that there is a Biblical calling to each individual to be holy, or to be “like God.”

So, what does it mean to be holy or like God? What defines God? Throughout history, many adjectives are used to describe God, but one stands out above the rest in a Biblical sense. The apostle John sums it up very well when he says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

This would lead to the logical conclusion that holiness is in some way equal to love. The Old and New Testaments speak in one accord on this topic as well. When asked what the greatest of all the commandments is, Jesus replies with a saying that was known as the Shema. He says that the greatest commandment is to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Jesus is quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, specifically Deut. 6:4-9.

The Shema, therefore, becomes the cornerstone of holiness. What is holiness? Holiness is love placed in the right place. Holiness is loving God with every part of a person’s being. John Wesley, regarded as one of the greatest holiness thinkers placed this verse into a place of importance also. In his famous work A Plain Account of Perfection, he quoted this verse more than any other, 17 times in his short document explaining, defining and teaching holiness (Olson 45).

There can be no argument that one of Christ’s chief concerns was in the way His Followers loved God (and in a natural progression, that love would overflow into the way those followers treated the people around them, see Matthew 22:39).

A follower of Wesley would, naturally, move from Scripture to what Christians in history have to say about holiness. What does Tradition speak to, regarding holiness? Some scholars compose entire works connecting the holiness doctrine to the tradition of the church, including the early church fathers from as early as the first and second centuries. In his work Exploring Christian Holiness, Paul Bassett says, “We must remain true to the past” (16). Traditionally, holiness has been imperative to the growing Christian. As early as 150 AD, holiness was described as the “norm” by Shepherd of Hermas (Bassett 30).

The Shepherd regarded sinless living as the norm for all baptized Christians. Sinless living often raises questions, especially in light of Scriptures such as 1 John 1:8. Is it possible for a Christian to live, in this life, without sin? A Wesleyan-Arminian thinker would say yes, it is possible. Is it the norm? It seems that tradition (and even Scripture to some degree, see Paul’s inner struggle in Romans) disagrees with sinlessness being the norm.

If holiness is the norm for Christians, and holiness is living up to God’s standards, but living without sin is not the norm for all Christians, then is holiness truly the norm for all Christians? It does not seem to be the norm.

But it could be.

Holiness speaks to the hope that Christ can radically transform each and every Christian completely. It may not be the norm for each Christian to live without sin, in fact many peoples’ experience would point to true holiness as the exception rather than the norm, but it is possible. If holiness is possible, then there is hope in this life to live without sin.

Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, in 1973, spoke to the experience of many Nazarenes in her book A Theology of Love. Mark Quanstrom, in his book A Century of Holiness Theology, dedicates an entire chapter to what Wynkoop called “The Credibility Gap.” Essentially, the credibility gap referenced the fact that holiness was not the norm for Christians (Quanstrom 137-169).

If a majority of Christians experience called into question the normalcy of holiness, then the rationality of a doctrine of holiness would also be called into question. Why should holiness be preached if it is an impossible standard? Should the standard be lowered? Should the doctrine be dropped completely? Experience was showing that holiness was not working as intended. The doctrine was flawed.

Unfortunately, many Nazarene pastors still preach a confusing doctrine of holiness, even 35 years after Wynkoop’s book. This causes people to be confused about holiness. Quite often, those confused people completely disregard the call to be holy.

2008 finds the Church in a difficult position. Should the doctrine of holiness still be taught as it has for a century (within the Church of the Nazarene), or should it be updated?

The Scriptures make it clear that since God is love, holiness is love. Holiness is, at its core about the way Christians relate to God.

Holiness and sin are primarily about relationships and about love. Holiness is best viewed as a right relationship with God. It is true that all Christians are entered into a personal relationship with God, but holiness is about more than that. There is a difference between simply a personal relationship with God and a “right” relationship with God. The call of Christians is to love God with their entire heart, their entire strength, their entire mind and their entire soul. It is when a person loves God with everything in them that they enter into holiness.

This is because holiness is the absence of sin, and sin is also defined by relation and love. Sin is loving other things (primarily self) more than God. The first commandment of the Ten Commandments is to have nothing above God. Nothing. Anytime a person puts something above God (whether it is another person, an image of another person, the country a person lives, money, etc), he or she is sinning.

So, love God. Love God with everything and in everything. Only when this happens can sin disappear and holiness becomes a reality. When a person loves God, holiness takes over.

Curse God and Die!

I've heard a couple of pastors talk about Job's wife and her exclamation to her husband to "Curse God and Die!" The entire story of Job has always been fascinating to me, it makes me wonder how someone can stay true to God even in the face of adversity. I remember thinking that I was in a place of adversity once when I was in high school.

As I look back on the situation, it was probably scarier than I even thought it was at the time. I remember my mom meeting me at home before she was supposed to and she told me that the growth in my neck was abnormal, and not only was it abnormal, it was a tumor.

Now, to anyone who has lived long enough to get to know a dozen people, the word tumor has probably entered into the discussion at one point or another, and if the word tumor hasn't then the word cancer has.

To this day, nothing hurts me more than finding out that someone has cancer. It literally makes me cry when I find out about someone having cancer.

I remember her telling me that I had a tumor, she cried for hours after telling me this.

As her and I look back at the entire situation she continues to remind me that she would never have made it through that ordeal if I hadn't clung so hard to my faith. Where she was weak, God gave me the power to be strong.

But it wasn't easy. All along I knew that this was unfair. Why should a senior in high school have to have a tumor and possibly have to have cancer!? It wasn't fair.

There were so many times where I was tempted to curse God for placing this burden on me. It's so easy sometimes to try and cop-out, isn't it?

I really thought I had faced adversity. As I look back at my life I begin to realize that God continues to bless me. I've never really had to face God knowing that something I loved so much might be slipping away from me.

This week at church a guy who has been continuing to ask for prayer for his wife was the focus of our morning prayer. We annointed him for his wife and prayed over him, and we prayed hard.

You see, she's faced with the very real possibility of death. While my prayers are very much with her, I sobbed for him. I literally sobbed for him. His first wife had died of breast cancer and now he was faced with the possibility of losing his current wife.

As I prayed, I said "It's not fair."

And it isn't. It's not fair. But I watched him as we prayed for him, through my own tears I could see him crying and one thing completely struck me. He was at a place where he could have cursed God. He could've said that it wasn't fair and he didn't want to deal with God anymore because of the pain God was bringing to him.

But I watched him as he cried and clutched his Bible at the altar and I realized that he is living for something greater than himself. While he is broken hearted about his wife, he knows that God is still good.

He is a testimony to us all.

God is good. I know, it's a cliche, but God is good. Praise God for the gifts that he brings to us, even if we only get to experience them for a short while. And, when the time comes that the gift is taken from us, praise God for allowing us to have it in the first place.

Job answers his wife, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?"

I agree with Job. I accept whatever God brings my way, and I pray that I'm strong enough to accept it when God takes something away from me. Please keep the Mast family in your prayers.

The Quadrennial Storm

Tomorrow is the big day. After nearly two years of campaigning, the people of the USA will elect the next President. I've been supporting Barack Obama for quite a few months now, but I've tempered my support. I was reluctant to fall into the same trap that I fell into four years ago with President Bush. I made the mistake then of assuming that only one candidate spoke for God's issues.

I was wrong.

To be honest, in 2004 I questioned whether or not someone could be a Democrat and a Christian. I was under the impression that the two terms were mutually exclusive.

Again, I was wrong.

I was assured that I was right by my peers at MVNU. We sat in our College Republican meetings sure of the fact that we were doing God's work. How could it be wrong? After all, George Bush was a man of God and stood for everything that God stood for. I thought that he had been ordained of God to remain as the President for four more years. And so, I campaigned for Bush with all my heart. I made phone calls to people in Knox County rallying them around the Conservative cause. I listened to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and was assured that being a Republican was what God had in mind.

I was wrong.

A man who was well known at MVNU was known throughout campus for being a Democrat, we'll call him Joe the Christian. I was positive that Joe the Christian was wrong, and I questioned, aloud, how he could call himself a Christian and be a supporter of a political party that wanted to kill unborn babies. I look back on myself in shame.

A trip to New York City in 2005 opened my eyes to Joe the Christian. I got up close and personal with a Democrat (or at least someone I had always been told was a Democrat) and it changed my life.

I learned about the struggle of the homeless man on the streets of Brooklyn. I learned about the passionate response of the Christians to those people.

I will never forget that experience. My experience with Joe the Christian completely changed my life. I remember walking down the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan with him as he explained some of the policies that had infiltrated the city through the mayor's office. He explained to us what the Republican leadership had done in their support of homeless people. They had essentially made it illegal to be homeless. I credit this as my political awakening.

In the years that followed I ceased to consider myself a Republican. Later, I ceased to consider myself a Conservative. My problem has now become that I have become the very thing I hated so much four years ago, a supporter of a non-Republican candidate.

However, I resolved not to make the same mistakes again. I believe now that I was wrong about George Bush. I don't think he represents Jesus as closely as I thought he did. I don't regret my decision to support him, but there are some things I regret about my support. I lost sight of the fact that God calls us to be different. We are not supposed to be like the world in terms of politics.

This country is completely divided right now.

The Church in America is completely divided right now.

There has been name-calling, and outrageous accusations against Christians who support either candidate. It isn't fair, and it has to stop.

I wish that this would all be over tomorrow. I wish it were going to be that way, but I realize that it won't. 50% of the country is going to be very upset, and the other 50% are going to be very happy.

I know for a fact, that regardless of the outcome of the election, I will continue to remember that my joy comes from the Lord, and not the politics that divide us.

My prayer today is with the Church. My prayer today is for you, I pray that you are able to let the gospel transform you, and that in doing so, you'll remember that we are called to be better than this.

If this note ever passes along Joe the Christian's desk, let me give an emphatic thanks to him, for showing me that there's a better way to do politics.

Ace of Spades

At the risk of being a sell-out, I set up this website to talk about my thoughts and feelings. I've been thinking a lot lately and wanted a place to put my thoughts down. So, I hope this blog somehow gives some insight into my mind.

So, what's the significance of the name of this site? Who is the revolutionary nazarene? Well, we'd be remiss not to note that Jesus was the original revolutionary nazarene. I've started to think about that more and more often, and in my desire to be more and more like Jesus, I've taken up the mantra of a revolutionary nazarene.


I got this idea from a guy I used to know named Chris Bean to read 52 books in one year. I started in the first week of April with a book I had been meaning to read for a while, The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. This is a great book, and a must read for anyone who has the desire to be a follower of Jesus.

I'm posting a brief excerpt, it gives me hope that Christians can honestly do the right thing. That's something I really needed to hear, and it speaks to me on a personal level because I don't have health insurance and I worry about living in our society without it.

"Whispers of Another Economy

We need the imagination to dream what this sort of radical interdependence could look like. In our community, one question we continually revisit is health insurance. Many of us feel uneasy living without it, especially as we have kids entering our communal life. And yet it is difficult to use that privilege when many of our neighbors go withut health care. It conflicts my spirit to take assistance from the government when I believe it is the primary responsibility of the new community to care for one another. A few years ago, I came across a collective of thousands of Christians who pool their money each month in order to cover one another’s medical bills. This feels much more in harmony with the spirit of the early church, the sense of being a big family with a parent with a big wallet. So I am now a part of that community, and each month I get a letter telling me who’s in the hospital, where my money is going, and how to pray for my sisters and brothers. Over and over, I have seen the divine multiplication meeting peoples needs. And a few years back, I had an accident and racked up a $10,000 medical bill. I brought that need before the community and it was met in full."

If you haven't read this book, go and get it. It's phenomenal.