Shorts

I read recently that ‘video shorts’ is already a billion-dollar industry. It shows my age….because I haven’t found any reason to engage in such a thing. When I do see a ‘short’, I’m reminded how polarizing out-of-context content is. I’m also reminded that attention spans are shrinking, and ‘shorts’ is encouraging that to shrink further.

But, I have a number of topics that seemed to be best discussed in a shorter blog format. So, following is a small assortment of such topics.

1. What percent of the 100% that I receive from God do I pass on? It struck me recently (yes, maybe it still is the talent parable–I can’t help it, that one is so good!) that God give me, literally, everything. Do I need to go into detail? No, because this is supposed to be a short. So then, if I have received everything I have and am, and God asks me to bless the world with it, that anything less than 100% means I’m keeping some for myself. Now, I think that puts a better perspective on 1)why wasting any resource (time, money, talent, influence) is wrong and hurtful, 2)how Good God is–the servants didn’t give an account of how much of the investment they used for ‘personal expenses,’ only what ROI they had gained on what they were given, 3)why God is totally justified and being angry at servants who do nothing with what they have received. Essentially, the received 100%, kept 100% for themselves, and passed on 0%.
2. Why do we think submitting to earthly stipulations, even strict ones, is an acceptable expectation but spiritual directions are unnecessary and ‘shouldn’t be defined!’ Our church recently did a renovation. We are also blessed with fast-growing families. So, our physical church leadership group had a detailed statement read from the pulpit, and in other forms, a list of don’t go here or here or there. The reasons were good and sound. Overbearing? A matter of opinion. The response from my children? Resounding discouragement and defeat. How odd, I thought. We don’t see any reason for concern to give descriptive directives of this type. In fact, the shaming and confrontation I might receive if my child is next to the sign in the front of the church or frequents the wrong area (because, by now I’ve forgotten all the do’s and don’ts and would guess that my 8-year-old has also) would be justified, maybe even applauded? But, why won’t church leadership give similar directives? Don’t listen to CCM, watch sports (men) or movies, wear cosmetics, scroll social media, wear short skirts (women), etc. The reasons for these expectations are also good and sound. Overbearing? Why so any more than the first example? Seems like a bit of a double standard to me. Church leadership should guard against such double standards.
3. “Let’s be like the early Christians and live compelling lives and then we wouldn’t need any extra-biblical things to bind us together,” was said at a church meeting. I think there are several problems with this statement: 1)It is pretty hard to know what every early Christian thought and did–there are few individual journal-type writings, and most writings were official published writings by church leaders. See my topic below on the folly of grouping 300 years of people together into “Early Christians.” 2)Obviously, they didn’t all live compelling lives. Check out Revelation 2 and 1 Corinthians 5-6;) 3)We don’t always know what, but I would die on the hill to defend this next statement–early Christians DID need and DID have extra-biblical things that bound them together. Read the writings. If they didn’t need extra-biblical, there wouldn’t be any writings except one sentence, “go back and read the approved texts!” Instead, there are volumes of writings. 3)The statement at the beginning may imply that peculiar, unique identifiers are the extra-biblical things–that if we were just so compelling, our Christian behavior would be the thing that binds us together. That view seems to assume that American culture is good or neutral, not evil. That, a Christian can look, act, talk, and think after the ways of American culture (which is left undefined by someone arguing this position so that they can appeal to only the best of American culture if pressed) and still live a compelling life. When said this way, maybe you can see the fallacy of such a view.
4. Who is the person, “Younger Generation.” I’ve never met him. I’ve never met any of these people that others talk about so much–I must be really missing out. “Conservative” “Liberal” “Progressive” “Older Generation” I would laugh if it weren’t so serious when someone asks a singular person, “Could you speak to us–what does your (fill in the blank) community think of this?” For the record, I’ve given NO ONE, not even my wife, authority to speak on behalf of me when it comes to my thoughts and thinking. How much more folly is there when someone tries to speak with authority for some group who has not ever asked them to represent them?! See my earlier post about the other problems with arbitrary groupings.