So last night I watched Garden State and for some reason the last couple of scenes really stuck out. Zach Braff and Natalie Portman are sitting in the airport waiting on Braff’s character’s flight. Portman is trying to convince him not to go.
Andrew: “This isn’t…This isn’t a conversation about this being over. It’s…It’s… I’m not like putting a period at the end of this you know. I’m puttin’ like an ellipsis on it…”
So he finally gets on the plane. Cut to Portman crying in a telephone booth in the airport.
Samantha, incredulously: “What are you doing here?”
Andrew, out of breath: “Look. You remember that idea I had about working stuff out on my own and then finding you once I figured stuff out?”
Samantha: “The ellipsis?”
Andrew: “Yeah. The ellipsis. It’s Dumb. It’s dumb. It’s an awful idea. And I’m not gonna do it, okay? Cause like you said, this is it. This is life…and I’m in love with you Samantha. I think that’s the only thing I’ve ever been really sure of in my life. I’m really messed up now, and I got a whole lot of stuff I gotta work out. But I don’t wanna waste any more of my life without you in it, okay?”
Samantha: “Yeah.”
Andrew, with growing excitement: “And I think I can do this! I mean, I want to. We have to, right?”
Samantha, very happy: “Yeah!” (She starts laughing nervously.)
Andrew: “Right?” (He starts laughing too, though a little more relieved.)
Samantha: “Yes!”
They hug.
Andrew: “So what do we do?”
She starts to shake her head.
Andrew, with a bit of desperation: “What do we do?”
They kiss, the camera pulls back and then fade to black.
There are few couples we know who have slowly extricated themselves from the mainstream church. We used to get together pretty regularly, but we all had either crazy schedules or events going on in our lives and so we only get together sporadically, and rarely all at one time. So earlier in the evening we had one of the couples over for dinner and Ryan helped me put in a ceiling fan. We were sitting around talking after working and dinner and I felt the need to steer the conversation toward God. I always feel like there should be some sort of momentous dialog or prayer or something every time we get together.
I get various pieces of mail addressed to me from my time in the church. I got a glossy flyer for some sort of upcoming conference for teen girls and we started talking about it. I mentioned Steve Sensenig’s post about the music industry and some of the comments about intertwining money and business with things of God. It was obvious who the target demographic was and I said I understood what they were trying to accomplish, but it seemed so far removed from real life. Conferences like this create this false impression of living life only on the mountain tops. Once these kids get back into the real world all they start looking for is the 'peaks', thinking the 'valleys' mean they are doing something wrong.
Ryan mentioned how church was like that and he was tired of trying to seek the next 'high' in his walk with God. Annie said she has never been this guilt-free since she has stopped attending the I.C. (Institutional Church). They talked about learning about real life and maturing and growing up.
The last lines of the movie really resonated with me concerning church and seeking God. When all of the busy work of the I.C. is taken away, we start to ask, "So what do we do? What do we do?"
We start to see how immature our faith and walk really are and we start to grow up and trust in God. Or we don't.
Any thoughts?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Just who's 'vision' is it anyway?
These excerpts are a bit longer, but raise some interesting questions in regards to how 'church' is done in America and maybe more importantly, how it is lead.
Sarah Rooney posted a link to her husband's blog that really snapped me back into reality today. It is a video excerpt of people trying to escape from North Korea into China.
I have been mulling over this post for a while, so hopefully it comes out right.
Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together :
"It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us..."
"One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood. ...Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood."
"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a 'wish/dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams... By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream... A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish/dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive."
"He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even thought his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary idea of community demands that it be realized by God, by other, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself."
I really don't have much to add, but what Bonhoeffer has to say does raise a lot of questions.
For example:
If the churches of Bonhoeffer's time became mired in the political arena and ultimately had to swear allegiance to Hitler, then where does that leave the churches in America who have bound themselves so closely to the Republican/Conservative Party? Does that mean the churches endorse killing, torturing, and holding prisoners to fight terrorism? Even if the torturing and imprisonment scandals turn out to be false, is that what the Kingdom of God and Jesus should be considered advocating?
If Bonhoeffer is right about God not being a fan of visionary dreaming, where does that put the visionary pastor? What happens to the pastor who has a vision or mission statement when it doesn't work out?
Of the multiple churches that have split while I have attended, Bonhoeffer's words are spot on.
At what point did we become so arrogant that we thought we had a better plan than Jesus modeled?
I think it happened when the church leaders wanted their numbers to grow internally, instead of equipping to go out into the world.
I think maybe it happened because the more people who are inside the walls doing things means more money in the coffers instead of out with the people who need to hear about God the worst. If the people are trained up to go out and work on their own, what happens to the professional church staff?
I'm sure you have your own questions and maybe even answers to mine. I would like to hear them, so fire away!
Sarah Rooney posted a link to her husband's blog that really snapped me back into reality today. It is a video excerpt of people trying to escape from North Korea into China.
I have been mulling over this post for a while, so hopefully it comes out right.
Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together :
"It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us..."
"One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood. ...Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood."
"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a 'wish/dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams... By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream... A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish/dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive."
"He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even thought his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary idea of community demands that it be realized by God, by other, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself."
I really don't have much to add, but what Bonhoeffer has to say does raise a lot of questions.
For example:
If the churches of Bonhoeffer's time became mired in the political arena and ultimately had to swear allegiance to Hitler, then where does that leave the churches in America who have bound themselves so closely to the Republican/Conservative Party? Does that mean the churches endorse killing, torturing, and holding prisoners to fight terrorism? Even if the torturing and imprisonment scandals turn out to be false, is that what the Kingdom of God and Jesus should be considered advocating?
If Bonhoeffer is right about God not being a fan of visionary dreaming, where does that put the visionary pastor? What happens to the pastor who has a vision or mission statement when it doesn't work out?
Of the multiple churches that have split while I have attended, Bonhoeffer's words are spot on.
At what point did we become so arrogant that we thought we had a better plan than Jesus modeled?
I think it happened when the church leaders wanted their numbers to grow internally, instead of equipping to go out into the world.
I think maybe it happened because the more people who are inside the walls doing things means more money in the coffers instead of out with the people who need to hear about God the worst. If the people are trained up to go out and work on their own, what happens to the professional church staff?
I'm sure you have your own questions and maybe even answers to mine. I would like to hear them, so fire away!
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