cHesed as Organizing Principal

There is a good conversation going on over at Missional Tribe in the Theology Group's Forum. The topic is : Trinitarian foundation for mission? Read through the various comments and then you will come to a spot where I explain a bit more about cHesed. Here's what I said, since we're in the midst of 40 Days of cHesed here!

Yes, exactly my point! In order to understand someone's shorthand, you have to have their key. Grace did a great job of giving her shorthand and then explaining it.

Matt, without my key you did not understand my intent. And I think this little bit of shorthand is basically pointing to "how do we get to what it is supposed to look like to be the church?" Is that how others understand the point?

So, let's see what it would look like fleshed out some:

In Christ = The reason that I am able to participate in the perichoretic Eternal Community is that I have "put on" Christ (as savior, Lord and elder brother) and my life is now considered to be "hid" in him. I am dressed for "dancing" when I "wear" Christ. [This is where "Christology" aligns for me.]

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Like Christ = Christ, as the only perfect human, calls me to be like him -- in his total cooperation with the Father and the Spirit, as well as his faithful cHesed/covenant keeping with God and with his Bride/the Church. (This is possible only as I allow the Holy Spirit to transform and empower. There is no expectation that I am to be like him in his "God" identity.) [Note: I fully understand that many do not have a robust understanding of cHesed and how this impacts how one lives day to day.] [This is where "Missiology" aligns for me.]

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With Christ = As I remember who I am In Christ and cooperate with the Spirit's process of making me Like Christ, I will be With Christ -- engaging in whatever "dance" it is that he is doing in conjunction and cooperation with all those who are also "in Christ". [This is where "Ecclesiology" aligns for me.]

I think cHesed is the organizing purpose. Quick definition: the duty to faithfully look out for the best interest of the covenant parties, according to the covenant terms and conditions. To love by submitting to the need of the other, to extend grace by serving the other, to show mercy by initiating that which in needful for the other to keep covenant.

If we have a covenant-making, Triune, perichoretic God, then faithful covenant-keeping (cHesed) is the main thing, as they say.

If you haven't taken a look at Missional Tribe yet, I hope you'll find time to do so. There is some great conversation taking place!

Shalom....

Meandered, again!

Thanks to Scot McKnight for including my series on cHesed in his Weekly Meanderings.

I haven't been too busy over here because things have really been hopping over at Missional Tribe! You can take a look at my blog there. And I've got a couple of groups going, too.

Come on over and visit ... there are lots of amazing conversations going on.

40 Days of cHesed—Day 5

Day 5 Seeing Life from God’s View

One of the most important concepts in effective communication is perception. It is a common saying that there is no reality, only perception. And while we do believe that there is ultimate reality, for the moment let’s consider the point of this statement.

What does it mean to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes? What does it mean when someone says, “Well, from where I stand, it looks like…”? It means that the view you see depends on where you’re standing. The front row of a concert brings a totally different experience than the balcony.

So, if you want someone to understand what you’re trying to communicate, you must make the effort to bring that person into your shoes. And, they must be willing to leave their view to embrace yours.

That is exactly what God did when he came to earth as Jesus Christ: fully God and fully man. He brought us God’s point of view and experienced our point of view.

In order to communicate his love for us, and the terms and conditions for his covenant with us, Jesus Christ left his heavenly view and was born as a human baby. He lived his life as a human to show us what a life driven by God’s purpose is supposed to look like.

When God looks at man (male and female, remember), the crown of creation, what does he see? He sees potential. Relational potential. Covenant partner potential. So let’s take a closer look at this concept of covenant.

In Day 3 we introduced covenant as the primary context—the relational boundaries and expectations—necessary for understanding God and his purpose. We used images of family and chores to help explain the importance of keeping covenant once we enter covenant. We even offered an opportunity to express your desire to become part of God’s family.

So now we need to take a little more time to explain what covenant is and why God views everything from this perspective. We know that God is an eternal community with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We know that he wants us to experience community, too. But you can only build community when you have a common understanding of how to act together. Humans, when they aren’t connected with God, don’t have much success with community building.

And so God had to show us how to build community. God uses covenant (a type of agreement or contract made between two or more individuals or groups) to give us that common understanding of how to act in harmony and unity.

Basic to God’s covenants is that everyone has something of value to contribute. It’s not just a one-way deal of what God does for us. In God’s eyes, we have partnership value. He offers us the privilege of relationship with a purpose – to assist him with the reconciliation of humanity.

God’s covenants, then, are based on the following three truths:

1. God has unlimited power but has willingly chosen to restrain that power for the sake of relationship with man. He wants us to love him, but he doesn’t make us do it.

2. God has given man free will, which includes the capability (as God’s Image Bearers) to make good choices—even if we don’t always use it.

3. Both God and man have a mutual desire for reconciliation of the relationship between Creator and Image Bearer. Deep in each human heart is the echo of God’s voice—the God-shaped piece that is missing.

We’ve said earlier this week that people have trouble keeping their word and restraining their desires. Sometimes we need to put it in writing so that we can be reminded of our promises.

God understands the need for this kind of activity. But when God makes a promise, he doesn’t write it on a piece of paper and sign his name. He makes the kind of binding agreement called a blood covenant.

Sounds serious, doesn’t it? Well, it is serious! The Old Covenant God made with Abraham, and renewed with Moses, was a blood covenant. Why blood? Because blood symbolizes the preciousness of life, that’s why.

To make a blood oath, then, was to bind your life to another life. Whatever happened to one, happened to the other. If one needed protection, the other would die trying to save them. The possessions of one were available for use by the other. Selfish interest was set aside for the best interest of the other. To break a blood covenant was punished by death; and only death released you from its terms and conditions.

We do not really have a clear picture of what cutting a blood covenant is like today. Probably the closest image we have comes from the Native American ceremony for making blood brothers—especially to pledge peace between sworn enemies. Each man would cut his finger or wrist and then press it to the other’s so that their blood mixed together. They were now blood brothers—and the scars they carried were life-long reminders of their bond to each other.

When God made a covenant with someone, he required the touching of sacrificial blood to ratify the agreement. One might say he required the parties to sign their name, make their mark, in blood. This was a kind of oath to join the lives of the parties to each other and abide by the agreement, with a self-curse attached if one was unfaithful. Something like “may my fate be the same as this animal if I prove unfaithful.”

God made this kind of covenant with Abraham when he promised to make him the father of many nations. Abraham cut the prescribed animals (a costly sacrifice) and divided them so that one could walk between the pieces. In doing this, Abraham touched the sacrificial blood. Then, later, God passed between the pieces as a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch, symbolically touching the blood – ratifying the covenant. (See chapter 15 of Genesis.)

This is the picture God gives us of cutting a covenant. It is a powerful image. In the New Covenant, Jesus Christ, as the representative of God and as the representative of man, ratified our adoption, signing his name to our adoption papers with his own blood. That is why Jesus died on the cross—he was our covenant-making sacrifice.

So, did you see a glimpse of life from God’s view? It is an amazing sight, isn’t it? Amazing love and amazing grace effectively communicated to us by God through Jesus Christ.

Today’s Look at 1 John

Read 1 John 1:1 through 2:11 again. While you’re reading, think about the wonder of Christ Jesus becoming flesh that he could be the covenant-making sacrifice for our adoption.

Keep Breathing!

When you invite God to share your day today, thank him for his covenant. Thank him for sending Jesus to help us understand what our purpose is. Thank him for sending Jesus to die on the cross to pay the price for our adoption. Ask God to help you hear the echo of his voice in your heart—so that you’ll be more willing to listen and make good choices today. Ask God to help you see today from his view.

40 Days of cHesed—Day 4

Day 4 Made to Last Forever

Yesterday we read that when we are adopted as God’s child; we join his community—the eternal community. And that means that part of God’s gift to us is eternal life. What is eternal life and why were we made to last forever?

In order to answer those questions, we’re going to spend a little time understanding what it means for God to have made man (male and female) in their image. Yes, we said their–since God (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) said “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” (See Genesis 1:26-27.)

What does it mean for man to be made in God’s image? What does it mean for man to have received the Breath of Life from God—and become a living soul?

Basically, being made in the image of God means that God intended that we thrive in community, that we live in harmony and unity, and that we join them in the eternal community. When we accept adoption as his children, the Father gives us eternal life as part of our inheritance. We say “part” because eternal life is something we begin now, while we are still on earth. But it is also something that we will get the rest of later in heaven, after our days on earth are over.

Many different ideas about eternity are floating around out there. For those who do not believe in God, eternity just doesn’t exist. When this life is over, there’s nothing else. We see the evidence of this belief all around us.

• Moral absolutes of right and wrong have given way to moral relativism—what I think is right is right for me; you are free to believe whatever you want. Any behavior can be rationalized away—if you look at it from a certain perspective.

• Restraint of our immediate desires in order to achieve a more important future desire—the ability to delay gratification—is all but non-existent! We want what we want when we want it—and we want it NOW! The future is uncertain, at best. We should only concern ourselves with the present—and live it up while we can! The current outrageous levels of lack of commitment and personal debt attest to the seriousness of this lack of restraint.

• Personal responsibility for providing sufficient support for our families has given way to The Entitlement Mentality—that the government or the church or the schools or the wealthy or somebody else owes me a certain lifestyle. I no longer have to live within my means—I deserve to have just as much as the next person.

• The incredible work ethic on which our great country was founded—and which those who continue to seek refuge in this country still display, has given way to an attitude of doing the least possible work for the most possible return. Corporate and white collar crime and identity theft are on the rise and cost our economy billions of dollars every year.

• Instead of our word being our bond, we look for loopholes through which to escape accountability. You just don’t seem to be able to trust anyone anymore. Lawsuits are often the first resort, especially if there is a “deep pocket” corporation we can blame for our problem, instead of working to resolve our differences fairly.

Whew! That’s quite a list. Sadly, these attitudes have begun to creep into the very fabric of our society. They are threatening to become the accepted norm. We even find them in the church.

These attitudes can only thrive when people don’t understand that they bear the image of God. That we are living souls—souls that will continue to exist after our bodies are gone. That we were made to live in community—God’s covenant community, the church. Eternal life begins for us when we are born again into God’s family. Each day we are living in two worlds—the physical, mortal life on earth, and the spiritual, eternal life that will continue forever.

What we do today has eternal consequences.

And that is why it is so urgent that we share God’s invitation with those around us. Forever is a long time to miss out on. And that’s exactly what will happen for those who refuse God’s offer. They will miss out on heaven—and spend eternity without God in hell.

People who don’t understand God or his covenant tend to believe that God sends people to hell. Actually, people choose to go to hell when they reject the offer of heaven. Remember, God gave us free will in order for us to choose how we will spend our eternity.

Today’s Look at 1 John

Read 1 John 1:1 through 2:11 again (you will notice by now that I'm linking to a different translation each day from BibleGateway!). While you’re reading, think about John’s descriptions of love.

Keep Breathing!

When you invite God to share your day today, thank him for making you a living soul—meant to last forever. Thank him for sharing eternity with you each day. Ask him to help you restrain your short-term, earthly desires in favor of your long-term, eternal inheritance.

40 Days of cHesed—Day 3

Day 3 What Drives Your Life?

You’ve heard that saying coined by the Real Estate industry: When you’re looking to buy a home, the three most important things to consider are location, location, and location.

Well, when you’re searching for your life’s purpose, to understand God and his Word, the three most important things to consider are context, context, and context.

What is context and why is it so important? The current flood of books and seminars and programs and inspirational speakers, whether Christian or secular, are all trying to do the same thing. They are trying to provide a perspective for understanding your life. Because they know if they can help you focus your creative energy toward understanding your goals in life, they can help you “be successful.”

The next question, then, is what does it mean to be successful? Today, we want to consider what being successful looks like from God’s perspective. The concept he uses for that perspective, or context, is called covenant. If we’re going to understand anything about God, we must understand that he is a covenant making God. Covenant is the context in which we must understand all his actions. It is what drives God.

In the reading for Day 1, we talked about relationships being challenging:

• That they require you to spend time talking together about what you want to do.

• That you have to communicate clearly what you want the other to understand.

• That you have to agree to some boundaries and ground rules for executing the plan.

This process of negotiating boundaries and ground rules is the process of reconciliation—what God calls making covenant. God has offered us a covenant for living in community—with him and with each other. Jesus Christ came to earth to bring us God’s offer personally. Isn’t that an amazing gift of love to us?

His amazing offer is what we call the gift of salvation—the Good News that God wants to adopt us as his children, with Jesus Christ as our elder brother! This gift is offered freely. There is nothing that we can do to earn it or buy it.

We must, however, be willing to accept the gift. And accepting the gift means accepting the terms and conditions that come with it. We have to be willing to restrain our free will in order to choose relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Why would we want to do this? Well, being adopted as God’s child is a wonderful privilege. With it comes a new life in Christ—starting with a clean slate. Nothing from our past separates us from God any more, because God has given us a new identity—all things that happened before are forgiven. That sounds pretty good. But it gets even better!

When we are adopted as God’s child; we join his community—the eternal community. And that means that part of God’s gift to us is eternal life. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow….

Having looked at two of the amazing benefits of accepting God’s offer, we need to take a look at those terms and conditions we talked about earlier. We can’t do any work that will earn us the right to become children of God. But we do have work to do once we become children of God.

Yesterday we talked about God in parental terms. Since we are told to call him Father, that’s an OK thing to do. Before we think about living in the Father’s family, let’s take a look at our own earthly home.

What is life like at your house? Do you have any responsibilities or chores? In healthy homes, each person has chores they do in order to share the burden of daily living. Consider this list of chores for starters:

• making your bed

• taking out the trash

• washing the dishes

• caring for the yard

• shopping for groceries

• cooking

• cleaning the bathroom

• washing windows

• sweeping/vacuuming

• maintaining the vehicle(s)

• doing the laundry

• putting away your clothes/shoes/socks/coats

• putting away your toys (little kid toys as well as big kid toys!)

While not an exhaustive list, you probably will have recognized something on this list that you could consider your responsibility. But there’s more:

• saying “please” and “thank you” and other signs of good manners

• sharing and taking turns

• using kind and polite words

• helping (especially without being asked!)

• listening without interrupting

• playing

• telling the truth

• being gentle

• keeping your hands off things that are not yours

• doing what your Mom and Dad asks you to do—without grumbling!

Life in a family is made up of behavior as well as attitudes, isn’t it? And a healthy family requires healthy behaviors and attitudes. It is no different in God’s family. As a matter of fact, this is a large part of the work we are to do when we become God’s children. It is part of what God calls keeping covenant. Keeping covenant drives God as much as making covenant does.

So, what drives your life?

Stay with us—and as the days pass, we hope that you’ll discover that your answer is “covenant” and “covenant keeping.”

Have you already accepted God’s offer to join his family? If so, great!

If not, will you consider it? We’ve got many more days ahead of us in our Journey Guide, but if you know that you want to accept God’s offer to adopt you as his child, why not do that now?

Today’s Look at 1 John

Read 1 John 1:1 through 2:11 again. While you’re reading, think about the wonder of God forgiving us in Christ Jesus.

Keep Breathing!

When you invite God to share your day today, thank him for his amazing offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ. Thank him for being a covenant making God, which drives him to want you to be part of his family. As you learn more about covenant keeping, ask him to show you one “chore” you can do in your earthly home for which you’re not currently responsible—but would be a blessing to the rest of your family. See what happens if you and God do that chore together for the rest of this week—and, of course, don’t tell anyone what you’re up to. Let them notice it on their own!

Epiphany 2009 and the Birth of Missional Tribe

It has been a whirlwind these past few months ... but just like giving birth to my three children, the joy erases the memory all the pain and hard work. Well, most of it....

Sonja put up a Facebook group for Missional Tribe just a couple of days ago in anticipation of the launch -- and there were already 119 members at the time I wrote this post!

Google "Missional Tribe" and you'll see a blog-storm of buzz. It's pretty amazing.

The day has finally arrived ... and you can read or download the Launch Announcement PDF here! And then you can check out Missional Tribe for yourself and see what you think! Just remember that the site is still in beta testing, so be patient and gracious ... and your comments and helpful suggestions are welcome!

40 Days of cHesed—Day 2

Day 2 Accidents or Plans? Understanding Restraint

At the most basic level, it seems a comforting thing to believe that God has precisely planned everything that happens in your life. It makes you feel secure in an uncertain world. It gives some meaning to your difficult circumstances. That’s why we embrace the phrase, “God is in control.” Somehow, it seems to help to know that everything that happens is what God wanted to happen all along. Or does it?

While we frequently can be heard to say, “God is in control,” what we mean is more like, “God has everything under control.” It’s like parents and toddlers. No parent of a normal two year old actually thinks they are in control. An honest parent knows that they are not in control of what their child will do. The child is working very hard at growing and developing in accordance with their inherited personality traits and their environmental challenges and opportunities. Although some do believe otherwise, a parent really cannot make a child learn something until the child is ready to learn it.

At best a parent can feel they have things under control. Having things under control means providing as safe an environment as possible in which the child will be able to grow through appropriate experimentation without undue risk of injury—whether physical or psychological. The parent helps the child learn what they are ready to learn when they are ready to learn it.

Most parents have some kind of plans for their children. They want them to be well educated, to develop artistically and/or athletically, to mature into responsible men and women. And, if they are Christian, they want them to accept God’s invitation to be part of his eternal family.

What parents cannot do is make their child want to do something the child does not want to do. And so they have two choices as they raise their child: coerce or persuade.

Coercion goes against the will of the child. It uses the parental position of power—overtly or covertly—to dominate the child and force submission to the parent’s will. It may look successful in the short term, but it leads to serious trouble in the long term. At best you have compliant children who may or may not be able to make good decisions once they’re on their own in the world. At worst you have children who rebel when they are legally able to escape the parent’s control. And there are all shades in between.

Persuasion seeks to influence the will of the child. It uses the love and trust and respect the child has for the parent to encourage proper choices. Persuasion provides information—including benefits and consequences—to enable the child to make their own choices. It also follows through with the benefits for good choices as well as the consequences for poor choices.

In the simplest terms, then, coercion can actually keep children dependent and enable them to avoid responsibility for their actions, while persuasion allows children to mature and become responsible for their actions.

This is all well and good, you may be thinking, but God is sovereign and can do anything he wants! And we certainly believe that. But we also believe that God has chosen to restrain his power by creating us for relationship and giving us free will.

Now, we don’t want to get into a deep discussion today of topics like methods of interpretation of Scripture, free will versus predestination, or the sovereignty of God. But we do want to introduce you to the importance of restraint in being able to understand God’s nature and how he has chosen to interact with those who bear his image—humans!

Restraint, an essential element in righteousness (being in right relationship), is what enables persuasion rather than coercion. Restraint sets aside one’s immediate desires in order to serve the best interest of the other. Restraint allows intimate, dynamic relationships to grow. It allows free will to foster maturity, not demand conformity.

Restraint is pivotal to righteousness—because you can’t be righteous and dominate another. That’s why God can have everything under control without having to be in control of every action. He has secured our environment through his New Covenant with us—nothing can happen to us that God cannot make into a blessing for us (Romans 8:28-29). He seeks to influence our behavior toward faithfully keeping the terms and conditions of the covenant through the Holy Spirit’s gentle acts of persuasion in our hearts. But he has not decided in advance exactly what we will do or be because he has restrained himself and given us free will. That is God’s choice!

You are not an accident—you are a gift from God! Your life, however, may be full of accidents.

Are you willing to give up the comfort of believing everything that happens to you is God’s plan for you? If you are, then you are choosing to accept the fact that we live in a fallen world where bad things sometimes happen to us just because. Because of evil people, because of poor choices (your own or other’s), because of damaged genes, because of ill health, because of pollution, because of bad habits…the list goes on and on.

If you are willing to give this up, you are choosing to live by faith. And faith requires restraint—from knowing what and why and how and when—in order to wait for God’s will to be revealed in God’s time. As Pandora found out, in the Greek myth, unrestrained curiosity causes trouble.

Sometimes God intervenes in the midst of our circumstances—sometimes he doesn’t. You can take responsibility for your reaction to what happens to you by restraining your desire to know why and looking forward to the blessing God will bring from it without making God responsible for it.

It doesn’t take away from his sovereignty that he allows us choices. Because God’s greatest attribute is his restraint, not his power.

Today’s Look at 1 John

Read 1 John 1:1 through 2:11 again (try a different translation!). While you’re reading, think about the wonder of God coming to live with us in Christ Jesus.

Keep Breathing!

When you invite God to share your day with you today, thank him for loving you enough to risk giving you the freedom to choose his company. Thank him for restraining himself to only leading you today where you’re ready to follow. Thank him for allowing you to have a responsible part in what you will do and be instead of living a life that has been completely planned for you. Look for other signs of his freedom and restraint as you spend the day together.