I John 4: Test the Spirits

To see a contemporary example of the kind of thing that John was talking about - check out Oprah's interview with her guru, Eckhart Tolle. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI9YPT2Sae8) It is just the same kind of philosophy that was beginning to affect the young churches of the first century.

John insists that "the universal consciousness" has a name and a face: Jesus, the Christ. And a pattern - righteousness, the way Jesus walked. And an outcome: self-sacrificing love that shows up in tangible care for people with bodies.

It is pleasant to talk about "universal consciousness" and "awareness." But the Spirit of Jesus points to Jesus, his way and the people he loves.

See What Kind of Love...

I have been thinking all week about another word to use for love to help me get a better grasp on it. I think of partnership, intimacy, union, and friendship, trying to walk around the word and get more of the facets... see what kind of love...

Everything in our lives with Christ is a function of that relationship. Joined with Jesus, we are God's children. In chapter 3 John describes some of the outworkings of that relationship ... becoming more like Him, living in a way that is consistent with the way our Father is, loyalty to his purposes (if He is out to destroy the works of the devil, how can we promote them?) and loving our brothers more than ourselves - as He did.

When Dan and Rachel were married, Roger, in his best man toast, said, "Rachel, I welcome you into my heart. I will love you like I love my own sister." I have often thought of that as a good description of love - "welcome you into my heart". When you welcome someone into your heart, what touches them, touches you. Your life intersects with theirs. God has welcomed us into his heart. If we are there - staying there, abiding there, - it shows up in our lives, in our love.

What Not To Love

One more thing on 1 John 2 before we move on to chapter 3. John tells us what to love - God and people - and what not to love. The Message puts it well: "Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him."

"The world" used in this way refers to the whole system that tries to run things apart from God: what is valued, what is avoided, how people look for life apart from God. Loving those ways keep us from loving God - and also keep us from loving people. Other people become a means to our ends.

This is more subtle than it first appears. It is easy to think that we are not "worldly" because we are not chasing fame, fashion and fortune. (And if we do, I got news for you - we're losing...). But it is easy for others to be props on our stage, and not to see them, not to value them for themselves.

The next chapter begins with maybe my favorite verse in the book " See what kind of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God - and that is what we are!" Let that simmer in your mind and heart for a while ... See what kind of love ... What kind of love is it?

I read a blog by a young man who had been an avid Christian in his teens - and now is an avid atheist. Puzzled by how otherwise intelligent people (like his parents, for whom I stopped to pray) could believe in God, he was at a family wedding when he had an ah-ha moment.

All the people there had based their lives on faith in Christ - the way they think and live and all of their family and friends were centered on faith in Christ. They couldn't think "rationally" because they would have to go against their whole community! He alone, in his opinion, had had the courage and intellectual honesty to do so. (He is so very young...)

Of course I disagree with his conclusion - that community commitment keeps people believing in God - because it fails to account for the very many whose commitment to Christ costs them their family, friends and even their lives. But he has a point.
John wrote his letter "that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with God the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." The more I read this letter, the more I see that that is the whole crux.

Fellowship - unity - partnership with God has 3 irreducible elements, and John goes around and around them through the whole book. Fellowship with God involves truth to believe, a way to live and a community to love. It involves the whole person, what we think, how we live, what we love. Pretty simple, really, but believers generally get tripped up on one of the other of those! At the end of his life, John has the heart of the matter.

For me, our young atheist is partly right. Part of what keeps me faithful to Christ and to his truth is ... well, you! When I feel weak or doubting, I don't have to carry it all myself. I just join in with the community of faith, with others who are more knowledgeable, more faithful, more intimate with God than I am. I need people like Laura T. at church who loves Jesus and follows him in the midst of big challenges. (Thank you Laura!)I need them - I need you - and they need me. That is part of what it means to be in "fellowship."

I will continue to think and read and pray about this ... I hope you will too!

God is Light - I John 1

This paragraph contains a well-known and often quoted verse – “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We know it – we just forget to actually do it!

The older I get, the more important this seems to me. Nothing is more essential to life with God, with one another and for our growth and well-being as a person.

God is light (life, purity, revealing) There is no partnership between light and darkness – if light is there, the darkness is driven out. How then can people who are sinful – who have dark places in their hearts and lives – that is, people like us, be in partnership with the God who is light?

People who are in partnership with God do not walk in darkness, habitually avoiding seeing what is in them that is at odds with God, with life. They walk in the light – as a pattern of life, they allow the light of God’s presence and his word to reveal what is there. They acknowledge what is there – recognizing and admitting what is sin and death to them. And – this is important - they acknowledge that Jesus has taken all of that on himself on the cross.

I am learning to ask, in every situation: Lord show me more about this – what is it that I am feeling? What is behind that response? What do I love more than I love you? Where am I looking for life?

Our response to a glimpse of our own part of the brokenness of the world (sin) can be:
“I am not listening … where’s that remote?
“It isn’t really wrong … its not my fault … if he/she/it/they would just…
"I am such an idiot … why don’t I ever change?"
"I will be better than that from now on..."

NO! – here is what John reminds us to do – confess it, acknowledge it! “Lord here I am, this is what I really feel/think/do/am.” Then carry it to the cross – “He himself has borne our sins on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." Give thanks for his grace and mercy. It is enough.

This is the pattern we follow all our lives. You won’t ever get past it, or won’t need to do it anymore. The result of walking this way over time is, I think, greater humility, a greater appreciation for the mercies of God, and a greater compassion for the others around you.

There is a warning here as well – John makes it clear that those who walk in darkness – in a way of life that is out of character with God – are proving that they have no partnership, no fellowship, with him.

No Secret - I John 1

“Just suppose I could show you a way to accomplish anything and everything you choose to accomplish in your life... You would be interested in hearing about that, wouldn't you?” James Arthur Ray, promoting his “Harmonic Wealth Weekends”

There have always been plenty of people claiming to have some secret knowledge - something which, for the initiated, brings them into the real "secret" of life, into wealth, success and happiness. This recent one required being in a sweat lodge with 60 other people ... and $10,000.

John has something entirely different - public knowledge. He is telling us what he (and others) saw, touched and heard. His message is not based on someone's ideas. It comes from something that happened. This message, the gospel is not good advice. It is good news.

This public fact - the life, death and resurrection of Jesus - is what convinced me to be a Christian. And it is what I go back to when I have doubts, when I begin to wonder if this is all something we have made up, group think, no different than the poor deluded people in the sweat lodge. Something happened - and I can find no other explanation, no other conclusion for it than the one John and his friends came to.

John writes "so that you may have fellowship with us... and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." I have been pondering that this morning ... what does it mean to have fellowship - partnership, union, participation, intimate connection - with the Father and the Son? (One place I am looking at is John 17.)What do you think?

“No particular religion matters, neither ours nor yours. But I want to tell you that something has happened that matters, something that judges you and me, your religion and my religion. A New Creation has occurred, a New Being has appeared; and we are all asked to participate in it … Don’t compare your religion and our religion, your rites and our rites, your prophets and our prophets … All this is of no avail. We only want to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard… that here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”
Paul Tillich, The New Being
Quoted in Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

Book Club Blog -

Pastor John (the letter doesn't say who wrote it - but it has traditionally been accepted that it was the Apostle John. Notice the same themes and language in this letter as you find in John's gospel) is writing to a community of believers. There are problems in the community (if you are, or ever have been part of any community whatsoever, perhaps this does not surprise you...)

Here are some of the things I noticed that John seems to be concerned about.
1. Some wrong teaching about Jesus - people were promoting a "spiritualized Jesus" denying that he really came "in the flesh", that he was really human. There were "anti-christs", or as my friend Matt calls them "imaginary Jesuses." (1:1-2, 4:1-2, 5:1-2)
2. This was sowing confusion and doubt in the community ... are we "spiritual" enough? (3:19, 4:3ff)
3. There was conflict in the community: arguments, one-upmanship, not taking care of one another. (3:16, 4:20)
4. People were concerned with being "spiritual" , but not with being righteous - that is, in right relationship with one another and with God. (2:4, 3:7)

What did you notice? What were the "big ideas" in this letter? What is the tone?

Here is a quote from Eugene Peterson to think on: "If Jesus is divested of all human features and characteristics, loving Jesus is stripped of all the details that have to do with the life we are actually living with our family and neighbors. And here's the thing: a dehumanized Jesus is a lot easier and more pleasant to love than a difficult spouse, or an angry teenager, or a rude neighbor, or an insufferably boring brother-in-law - all of them so very very human."


For this week, read chapter 1. There are just 2 paragraphs - what is John emphasizing here? Why is this important?