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Bill Maher on Loving our Neighbors

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Politically and theologically, I am fairly conservative. But when a liberal like Bill Maher makes a good point about Christians, I nod my head in agreement. Heck, maybe Bill has been reading my blog, because some of the points he makes I have made on this blog (Such as this point about a Pastor Leaving no Tip).

Before you watch this video, I should issue a warning: This video clip has foul language and crude humor. If that offends you, don’t watch it.

[Thanks goes to Sam Riviera for sending me this video.]

But someone might say… “Yeah, but Bill Maher is of the devil!”

… Right …

But then I did an internet search, and lo and behold, found a website which had “proof” that Bill Maher was satanic. Here is the evidence:

Bill Maher sign of satan

Not only is Bill Maher flashing the satan sign with his hand, that shirt looks pretty questionable as well… What is that? Some sort of serpent with a crown on it’s head?

Sigh.

I think it’s ironic that when someone criticizes the Christian religion by calling us to live according to the principles we claim to follow, we respond by accusing him of speaking for the devil.

Hmmm… That sounds eerily familiar to something that happened about 2000 years ago when Someone else showed up and started criticizing the established religion of the day…

Of course, now someone will criticize me of equating Bill Maher with Jesus…

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Jesus is Calling you to Leave the Church

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Have you considered that Jesus may be leading you to leave the church as you know it so that you can be the church as it was meant to be?

Please don’t dismiss such an idea too quickly.

leave the church

There are lots of people who leave the church today, and they often get criticized for abandoning God or disowning Jesus. But in my experience, I don’t find this at all. I find that people who “leave the church” have not given up on God or stopped following Jesus. Instead, many of them are simply learning to follow Jesus outside the four walls of a church building. They are seeking to be the church by following Jesus into the world.

So let me encourage you … if you find a rapidly growing unrest with church as it has always been done, this unrest may come from Jesus.

Millions of people today know that something is missing from their normal church experience, and they sense Jesus leading them to something more, but they don’t know what …

Some Christians think Jesus is leading them to leave the church they are in to start attending a different church down the street. More often than not, they get to this new church, and find that the internal unrest has followed them to the new building. So they start looking for a new church to attend, or think that maybe they misunderstood God’s leading.

Some Christians think Jesus is leading them to leave the church they are in so they can go on a mission’s trip to Africa. So they raise funds, pack bags, and spend $10,000 for a six-week trip to Africa. And while they might have a spiritual mountaintop experience while there, they find that the internal unrest followed them to the new continent, and is multiplied even more once they return.

Some Christians think Jesus is leading them to leave the church they are in so they can go to seminary and become a pastor or church leader. They have ideas for how the church could be different, better, more productive, and believe God wants to do new things in His church through their ministry. But in the process, they get saddled with a bunch of debt and end up leading a church which is almost identical to every other church in the country.

Some Christians think Jesus is leading them to leave the church they are in so they can follow “the New Testament pattern” and get involved in a home church or community collective. They long for that intimate setting where everybody has everything in common, where people get to share as the Spirit leads, and where there are no professional clergy, choirs, or classes. But they soon find that although the setting might be smaller, home churches are not that much different than regular churches.

Some Christians go through some (or all) of the experiences described above, and think that the unrest they feel is because church is simply a waste of time and energy, and so they leave the church … and Jesus too. They turn their back on all of it, saying that they tried the whole “church thing” and it wasn’t for them.

If you want Jesus to lead your life, I can pretty much guarantee you have gone through one or more of the experiences above. I have personally experienced all of the scenarios above, other than that last one.

So are these experiences wrong? Was that feeling of unrest not from Jesus after all, but from some self-centered desire to experience something new, do something adventuresome, or fulfill an unmet need?

leave the churchI say no.

I firmly believe that when people feel that Jesus is calling them to leave the church they are in, they are rightly discerning what Jesus is saying through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

The problem, however, is that when people feel Jesus calling them to leave the church they are in, along with this leading, they want to know where Jesus is calling them to go. But very rarely does Jesus offer this direction. If Jesus says, “Leave” and we say, “Okay … but to where?” Jesus will answer with “Just leave.”

The mistake is when we try to fill in the blank ourselves and say, “Well, I can’t just leave the church. So I guess I’ll go to another church. Or go to Africa. Or attend seminary. Or start a house church.” But Jesus never led us to those places, and so after going to these places where He never led, we will soon have that feeling of unrest again, and we will wonder if we misunderstood or misheard Jesus.

You didn’t misunderstand or mishear. But now Jesus has to call you to leave the church all over again.

Do you want to know where Jesus is leading you? Jesus is leading you to leave the church “as you know it” so that He can guide you into being the church “as He wants it.”

The church Jesus wants has little to do with the things that are often identified as “church.” The church Jesus wants has little to do with fundraising, mission’s trips, attendance numbers, ministry programs, large-group events, personality cults, best-selling authors, TV and radio programs, stained-glass windows, padded pews, professional choirs, or regularly scheduled Bible studies.

Instead, the church Jesus wants has everything to do with personally loving our neighbors, hanging out with “sinners,” spending time with societal rejects, defending the cause of the weak, and a variety of other ways of living that look just like Jesus. But you will never learn to be the church Jesus wants until you take the step of faith to leave the church that you want.

Do you feel a growing unrest or dissatisfaction with the church? That’s not wrong. That’s Jesus calling you to leave the church. Will you follow?

P.S. Please note this: I am not telling you that Jesus is calling you to leave the church you are in. If you sense no such leading from Jesus, then stay put!

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How do you heap burning coals on the heads of your enemies?

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burning coals on the headProverbs 25:22 instructs us to heap burning coals on the heads of our enemies. 

But what does that mean?

Initially, this sounds like a terrible thing to do, but this strange command is in the context of giving bread to our enemies when they are hungry and water to our enemies when they are thirsty.

Pastors and other Bible teachers have noticed this connection, and many have gone into great hermeneutical contortions trying to explain how it would be a good think to light your enemy’s head on fire.

I even heard one pastor say that when we were kind to our enemies, but they refused to repent and become a Christian, this would only increase their suffering in hell.

Isn’t that nice?

Aside from the troubling idea that anybody who is not a Christian is our enemy (!!!), what sort of person only serves others so that their future suffering in hell will intensify?!

This is probably an extreme Christian view (I hope so anyway), but most commentaries I have read on this text interpret the burning coals in some sort of figurative way so that it refers to something along the lines of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, or a searing of the mind with the truth of God’s Word, or bringing upon your enemy a red face of shame, or something like that. Regardless, most Christian teachers believe that heaping coals on the head of your enemy refers to some kind of pain or punishment inflicted upon your enemy.

A while back I decided to study Proverbs 25:21-22 for myself.

Proverbs 25:22 and Burning Coals

As it turns out, heaping coals on someone’s head is not figurative after all. And it is definitely not talking about hell or anything negative.

To the contrary, the statement about heaping burning coals on the heads of our enemies is parallel to the statements about blessing our enemies with food and water. When this Proverb was written, people heated their homes and cooked with fire. But sometimes, a person’s fire would go out during the night, and before they could cook their breakfast, they had to go to a neighbor’s house to get a coal so they could relight their fire.

So Proverbs 25:22 teaches that if the fire of your enemy goes out, and they come asking for a coal to relight their fire, instead of turning them away or giving just one, we should be be extravagantly generous. How? We must keep one coal for yourself, and give all the rest of the burning coals to our enemy.

One commentary that gets it right is the Bible Knowledge Commentary on Proverbs. It says this:

Sometimes a person’s fire went out and he needed to borrow some live coals to restart his fire. Giving a person coals in a pan to carry home “on his head” was a neighborly, kind act; it made friends, not enemies.

Proverbs 25:22 instructs us to give our enemy so many burning coals they have to carry them the way burdens are carried in the Middle East: in a container on the head. Then they can go back and immediately bake their bread without having to wait for the wood to become suitable coals for cooking.

burning coalsThis is quite different than setting someone’s head on fire.

This understanding of the burning coals makes more sense, doesn’t it? Yes, and especially in light of Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount to bless our enemies and pray for them. Jesus points that God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous and the sun to shine on the evil and the good and we should do the same (Matt 5:45). And of course, this is exactly how Paul used the passage about burning coals in Romans 12:20-21, where he concludes by saying, “overcome evil with good.”

This reminds me of how Abraham Lincoln responded when asked why he did not seek to destroy his enemies, but showed them leniency instead. He said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

We are to Love Our Enemies

God does not want us to be nice to my enemies so that their judgment will be worse in the end. That is not love. He wants us to show love and kindness to our enemies simply because our enemies are people too and God loves them just as much as He loves us. Though our enemies may never turn to Jesus as a result of our kindness, we are to love them just the same.

This post is part of the February Synchroblog where bloggers were invited to write about the topic of loving our enemies. Here is a list of the other contributors. Go check out what they had to say on the topic!

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Biblical Illiteracy is Not a Problem

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OK, OK, despite the title of this post, I fully admit that the vast majority of modern day Christian are biblically illiterate.

Biblical Illiteracy

Most cannot name the books of the Bible or find Scripture verses when asked. Shockingly few know how many apostles there were, or how many plagues, and what the difference is between Noah and Moses, or John the Baptist and John the Apostle. Aside from some of these historical facts of Scripture, the vast majority have no clue about the major teachings of Scripture regarding the Gospel, the atonement, the church, the Trinity, or most of the other central doctrines of the Bible.

But guess what?

Biblical illiteracy is not a problem

I believe that Biblical illiteracy is not a problem. Widespread biblical illiteracy is not that big of a deal to me.

Biblical illiteracy is not a problem. The real problem is that Christians don’t even put into practice the little tiny bit of Scripture knowledge we do have!

As I wrote previously, the entire Bible can be summed up in 24 words:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strength, and your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The problem is not that people don’t know the Bible. The problem is that we don’t even follow or practice the little bits we do know.

Jesus said that the entire law and prophets were summed up with those words above (cf. Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27-28).

If we do not even attempt to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, or make any attempt to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we do not need more Bible knowledge crammed into our heads.

We don’t need more Bible facts; we just need to get out and put our love of God into practice by showing love to others.

Loving Others

For most of us, this begins at home with showing sacrificial love to our spouse and children. It means giving up our desires and needs to help achieve the hopes and dreams of those in our family.

biblical illiteracy not the problemSomewhere along the way, showing love to others requires that we also show love to our neighbors. It is a tragic reality of most Christians that while we spend hours at church hearing and studying about loving and serving the community, very few followers of Jesus know the names of the people who live in the homes on either side of them, let alone the needs, worries, and concerns that they have about their health, they job, their marriage, their children, or their finances. So along with loving our families, we can also making loving our neighbors a high priority.

I believe that while we are loving others, it is then that God helps bring greater insight and understanding to the Scriptures. It is while we are loving our neighbors that the stories and doctrines and facts about Scripture come to life. It is while we are loving others that the Holy Spirit illuminates our  mind with the meaning, intent, and proper application of  the Bible.

If the church wants to combat the increasing biblical illiteracy of our modern age, the solution is not more teaching, but more loving. 

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How to Host a Halloween Party

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Every year on Halloween, rather than go down to a local church for a “Hallelujah Party” or hide out in our house with our lights turned off, we host a big Halloween party for our entire neighborhood. This is another practical way we have shared the love of Jesus with our neighbors. (To get more outreach ideas by email, enter your email address at the bottom of the post.)

The day before Halloween we hand out quarter sheets of orange paper in the neighborhood, inviting neighbors to join us at dusk.

Here are some of the things we do:

Build A Fire In The Driveway

On Halloween night, we take our iron chiminea and put it on the driveway. Then we build a fire, put a circle of chairs around it, and hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters on the driveway.

We have also started to invite the neighbors to join us.

Last year, we put out a big pot of chili. And of course, chili needs cornbread to go with it. And since the night can be chilly, we put out hot cider and hot chocolate. While we’re at it, we make a few batches of our Secret Recipe Cookies.

Pumpkins, Cats, and Candy

halloweenWe fill a large bowl with candy bars. Sometimes there is a neighbor who will not get home from work until later in the evening, and she gives us a package of candy to hand out for her. In addition to the circle of chairs, we set up tables to hold the food and carved pumpkins, fiber-optic pumpkin heads, and cats.

People start showing up just after dusk. We light the fire and people gravitate to the food tables and the chairs around the fire. Several neighbors bring their bowls of candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters on our driveway instead of at their houses. A few also bring food and drinks to share.

Some people stay all evening. Some only stay for a short while, eating a bowl of chili, and chatting with friends and neighbors. Others came by with their children, greet a neighbor or two, grab a cookie or cup of hot cider, and continue accompanying their children on their trick-or-treating rounds.

Tricking Our Neighbors?

Did we do this so we could invite people to a Bible study, church service, or give them Christian literature? – Never! People can smell this sort of fake evangelism a mile off. Don’t befriend people just to invite them to church.

We do this so we can get to know our neighbors better, and so they can get to know each other better. We’re learning to love our neighbors like Jesus, and before we can do that, we have to get to know them.

halloweenAnd we do! Simply by spending time with, eating with them, and sharing life with them, we get to know them. Inevitably, we have conversations about life – including the meaning of life and its problems and where God is in all of that, hopes, needs and a variety of other issues. These all take place before, during, and after these events.

What A Great Neighborhood!

Do people want community? In our experience most people definitely do.

After last year’s Halloween party, several people at the Halloween party commented that their friends and relatives have said they wish they lived in our neighborhood, a neighborhood where people know each other and have neighborhood parties. One of our friends who does not live in the neighborhood commented this week “What a great neighborhood!”

People often say, “You need to go to church to be in community.” I say, “We are the church, in our community!”

We are the church as we get to know our neighbors, live in community with them, and show them the love of Jesus.

We’re learning to love our neighbors and help them in places where they need help, in places where we are able to help. We’re helping build community, a community where people know each other and care about each other, a community where people talk about inconsequential things as well as about really important things, including Jesus.

Do you want to share Jesus with your neighbors?

There's more to it than inviting them to church...

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