A few nights ago, a few friends and I watched the movie Minority Report.  For those of you that are unfamiliar with the movie, it is a Tom Cruise film about the idea of catching criminals before they commit crimes and punishing them for the crime that they have already committed in their mind.  This film seems to investigate this system and raises many moral and ethical questions.  The whole idea of the Precrime Unit hinges on the fact that the people who had these thoughts to commit crimes such as murder would inevitably go through with those thoughts and commit murder.  Does the law extend to cover punishing people for crimes that they have already committed in their mind and heart?  The question reminded me of when Jesus redefined the law.  In Matthew 5, we see Christ talking about the Mosaic Law.  He mentions the two commands which command the Isaraelites not to murder or commit adultery.  These are two of the commands that most of the people had not broken and were seen as the “worst” sins.  He then goes on to redifine breaking these commandments.  He takes murder and says that to hate someone in your heart is to murder them.  Then He says that to lust in your heart is the same as committing adultery.  Therefore, when looking at what should be punished as sin, God will punish not just the actions but the thoughts whether or not they lead to actions.  This is a passage that seems to help enforce once again, as we see so often in scripture, that we are helpless and stuck in our sin.  The more and more we realize how helpless we are without Christ, the more and more we develop a love for Him and a deeper understanding of His grace.

This was originally written in January of 2007:

So far, this year has started out great for me spiritually.  I went to Passion and was beat up by almost every speaker about areas in my life that were not in line with God’s desires.  God taught me so much and then also opened my eyes to experience more and more of His grace.  The fullness of what Christ has done for each one of us on the cross will never be fully grasped.  The more and more, however, that God allows me to glimpse a taste of what divine love and divine judgement look like, I am spurred on to more of a heart and lifestyle of worship.  I have read several books over the course of the Christmas break on sin and purity.  Some authors such as John Wesley believe that sinless perfection can occur on earth prior to heaven.  While others such as John Calvin and Martin Luther would disagree .  Becoming pure and holy in my lifestyle is something that I want to pursue passionately even if fulfillment of that may not come until I stare my Savior in the face and glimpse the fullness of majesty.  I am praying for holiness and purity in all areas of my life.  The Holy Spirit working through me will be the only strength that I have to keep from failing and failing.  This is also where God is showing me accountability comes in.  Accountability is so frequently used as a modern day Christian buzzword that I think that we tend to miss the point.  It should not be me getting together with someone else and determining that we both stink at living the Christian life and moving on, but rather it should be a passionate pursuit of glimpsing and imitating the holiness of God.  The question comes down to “Do I want to serve God and seek purity in this situation or would I rather enjoy the here and now pleasures of sin?”  I am praying to be molded into someone who seeks purity above all things.  I am still definitely unfinished, but I am trusting in the Holy Spirit to do His work so that I can more clearly represent the beauty of a life lived for Christ and His glory to a dark and sin-infested world. 

A major theme that was dealt with in the film Amazing Grace was the theme of facing the demons of the past.  This was seen through the life of John Newton.  The background story on John Newton is very interesting.  Newton was the captain of a slave ship before coming to know Jesus Christ and becoming a pastor.  He also wrote the most famous and frequently sung hymn, Amazing Grace.  Newton’s role in this film is that of the pastor of William Wilberforce when Wilberforce was growing up.  Wilberforce goes to visit Newton when he is struggling with addressing the issue of slave trade and meets a very regretful and sorrowful old ship captain.  Newton does not want to talk about his past and his experiences in the slave trade industry.  He is haunted by the sins of his past.  Newton shares with Wilberforce that he sees the faces of the slaves all of the time and refuses to go back to the past in his mind.  The picture painted by the filmmakers here is austounding.  You have this picture of a man who has penned the famous words: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”  This is a great hymn that expresses the grace that a person has in Jesus Christ, yet Newton is struggling to embrace grace himself in his own life.  Newton, like most of us, seem to have an idea on the concept of grace – that we were hopeless and helpless sinners who have been set free by Jesus – but we struggle to embrace grace in our own lives.  Grace seems to stay in our heads as a concept and never make it to our hearts and lives.  The film paints the struggle of Newton in truly embracing this Amazing Grace that he wrote about.  I feel like this is a struggle that we all have.  A struggle to embrace and accept the grace of Jesus Christ and His death on the cross for being sufficient to cover our sins, struggles, and past.  Near the end of the film, Wilberforce goes to visit Newton to find him writing a book about his past.  Newton has finally come to a place where he sees the grace of Jesus Christ being truly sufficient for him.  He remarks to Wilberforce that he can finally see.  This is what drives us in our devotion and desire for Jesus Christ.  Grasping amazing grace not just as a concept but as a lifestyle transforms us!  This is one of the messages of this thought-provoking film.

The film Amazing Gracepresents a very interesting struggle through the life of the main character, William Wilberforce.  For those of you unfamiliar with the storyline, Wilberforce was a member of one of the ruling houses of the British government.  He was very influential in helping to abolish slave trade in the British colonies.  Wilberforce was a committed Christian who had grown up in a church environment under the pastor John Newton, a former slave ship captain turned minister.  Wilberforce had drifted away from the faith of his youth as he grew older and more powerful in politics.  The film tells the story of Wilberforce struggling with the atrocity of slavery and coming back to a point of seeking to become more of a man of faith.  The most interesting part in this struggle was when Wilberforce struggles with whether he should quit his role in the government in order to go into a ministry role or whether he should stay in politics.  Wilberforce is facing a struggle that so many people face at some moment in their lives.  He is faced with whether he can truly serve God in a profession that is not culturally considered to be a “spiritual” one.  He comes to a conclusion which God took and used to change the entire government.  Wilberforce decided that he could most effectively serve God not by locking himself into a church and ministering to a few but representing hundreds in the government and being a voice to those slaves who had no voice.  This film did an excellent job in pointing out this commonly seen and promoted dichotomy between sacred and secular professions.  The story of William Wilberforce helps to prove that God can and desires to use someone for His glory and whatever profession that he or she is in.  Serving God does not mean that everyone should go into full-time ministry but that each person should seek to do ministry all the time in wherever God has put him or her. 

 

Last weekend, I finally rented the movie Amazing Grace.  I rented it after hearing rave reviews from everyone that had seen it.  This movie to my surprise ended up being a great film.  It seemed to deal with the horrors of the slave trade and had a desire to draw you as a viewer not only into the story but to draw you into action.  I really liked seeing how the producers choose to depict certain historical characters such as Equino and John Newton.  The movie did an good job of bringing these people and their stories to life in an interesting way.  The only downside of the movie, however, was the length.  The storyline seemed to drag in the middle of the film.  It seemed like the producers were fluffing the story with unnecessary subplots in order to lengthen the film.  I do feel like this was worth watching and contained several themes that required further thought and exploration.  There were two major themes that became apparent in the portrayals of two of the main characters which I will explore further over the next few days. 

The book unChristian is a wake up call to the church.  We as Christians need to stop talking about living the Christian life and following after Jesus and start doing it.  Jesus calls us to live lives of radical mission reaching out to the least of these and having a heart for people who do not know Him.  We need to be the people who live authentic, Christ-centered lives that glorify God and draw people to Him instead of turning them away.  My hope and prayer is that God would raise up a church that is focused on His gospel and glory and is willing to be Jesus’ hands and feet to a closely watching world.

The sixth perception presented in unChristian is that Christians are judgmental.  This is something that I hear young adults raise all of the time as a problem with Christianity.  I think the reason that we come across as judgmental is that we fail to accept people as they are.  We have a fear of people that are not like us, and we tend to look down on them and stereotype them in light of this fear.  Another issue in light of being judgmental is that we think that everyone should act like us.  We see morality as something that we can legislate, but this seems to never work.  Take for instance the wet paint sign on a wall when we see the sign that is encouraging us to not touch the paint it just makes us want to touch it all the more.  We cannot expect people who do not know Jesus to live like Jesus.  We judge people and stereotype people which just leads to further division between us and further hurts us in sharing the gospel.  We must not judge people and expect people who do not know Christ to live like people who do.

The fifth perception of Christians noted in unChristian is the they are too political.  This has become a huge issue recently and was greatly seen in the last few presidential elections.  Young adults have begun to closely associate Christians with a political party which creates lots of problems.  The main problem is that they see anything that they disagree with the political party doing as something that Christians are doing and that Christians support. This adds an additional arena which creates even more concerns that young adults have with the church.  When a future presidential candidate takes time to meet with a prominent Christian pastor to seek approval and additional votes, we have reached a new level of connection between the church and a political party.  I am not saying that we should not be involved as Christians in politics or vote our values.  I believe that these are both things that we should do, but the problem comes when we as Christians strongly unite ourselves with a political party.  I heard Prison Fellowship founder and former White House aide to Richard Nixon, Chuck Colson, say something in an interview the other day that sums up the Christian’s role in politics very well.  He said that when a Christian unites himself or herself with any ideology besides the gospel they only dilute their impact.  When we as Christians unite ourselves with the ideology of any political party, we are in turn dividing ourselves from everyone who is part of another political party.  We are dividing on an ideology with regard to government policy which is making it even harder for us to share the gospel with someone because we have created an additional barrier and division with the person.

The fourth description of Christians offered in the book unChristian is that Christians are sheltered.  This is something that seems to turn people outside of the church off to Christianity because they see Christians as having a disconnect from the world around them.  This makes people see Christians as people who can relate to real world situations and struggles.  This idea of Christians being sheltered is something that the church today seems to embrace.  The argument is used that the world is sinful and evil and that we should shelter ourselves from the world by constructing a Christian bunker within the walls of our church so that we do not let the evil of the world rub off on us.  This is seen in the great amount of church programs and Christian companies we have in America.  It is now possible with the additions of the many Christian companies to go work out, go to the doctor, and go through our everyday lives as Christians and have very little interaction with people who do not know Christ.  This is also seen by all of the opportunities that Christians have to be involved in church functions which have gone from being just a Sunday and Wednesday thing to something that you could be involved in almost everyday of the week.  I am not saying that either of these things are bad in and of themselves, but we are without knowing it creating an in-group versus out-group mentality.  The Christian in-group is who we spend all of our time with while missing an entire out-group who needs to be told about Jesus.  This sheltering in the Christian bunker keeps us from fulfilling the Great Commission and reaching others with the love and gospel of Jesus Christ.  We seem to spend most of our time hanging out with the religious people, yet we claim to follow a Savior who spent His time ministering to prostitutes and tax collectors.  Jesus hung out with the out-group crowd while we so often stay to the in-group crowd.  Jesus called us to be in the world but not of it.  We are bunkering ourselves in a Christian bubble in order to be not of the world but are missing the fact that no matter how think we think that our bubble is we are still in the world.  Since we are clearly in this world, we must look for ways to connect to the hurting world around us in need of a Savior.  I think that this can be done through many ways, but it must start by building relationships with people in the out-group.  Once relationships are being developed, we can then open up and share the gospel with others.  This is done partially through finding a common ground whether that be a longing or desire or an idea presented in a movie that you both have seen.  We must be willing to learn and be exposed to the culture enough that we know how to speak its language.  This is a language that revolves around media and different worldviews presented therein.  We must be willing to open out eyes to what people around us are seeing and experiencing in order to know how to connect to their lives and experiences in order to share Jesus with them and make them disciples.  Christianity was never intended to be lived in a monastery or the modern-day Christian bunker.  We must embrace the call of Jesus to impact others by first and foremost being willing to come out of our cave and build relationships with them.

The third perception of Christians as presented in unChristian is that Christians are antihomosexual.  This perception comes from Christians tending to harp on this particular sin over all the rest.  Christians also tend to further promote their negative view of homosexuals by making jokes about them and treating them differently from everyone else. Christians look down on homosexuals and so often see themselves as superior.  There is a difference in opposing legislation regarding homosexuality and being antihomosexual.  I would argue that you are not being antihomosexual if you vote against a bill that would give marriage rights to homosexuals if you are against such a piece of legislation.  You become antihomosexual when you begin view them as less than human and horrible people.  They are just people struggling to find acceptance, meaning, and love just like anyone else.  We must extend the love of Jesus to them and not a hatred for them because of the sin that they are struggling with.  Jesus must be the one to change a person’s heart.  We cannot legislate morality and force others to reform their lifestyles prior to Jesus transforming their lives and then by the power of the Holy Spirit transforming their mindset and desires.  We must be willing to love them for the broken people that they are while remembering the broken people that we were before Jesus put us back together.