The Case for Spiritual Malpractice

In case you are unaware, there is an incredible religious movement growing in America - one that is bringing back a number of individuals to faith. It has become so large that it includes its own series of best-selling books, television empire, internet community, and satellite radio show. However, I'm not referring to Rick Warren or Joel Osteen. In fact, this megastar is afilliated with no particular church at all. Her name is Oprah Winfrey, and she has won an astounding number of converts in the last several years. While her message may appear alarming to many, Oprah's success is worth noting. Perhaps a closer examination will allow Christian fans of Oprah to help separate the wheat from the chaff in this faith.


First, what could Oprah be "preaching" that has captured the hearts of so many (predominately women)? In a nutshell, Oprah's journey of faith has led her away from organized "religion" and towards a broader notion of "spirituality", with many New Age tendencies. As one listens to the teachings of her spiritual confidants, the seemingly Eastern tenets become clearer. Essentially, this worldview affirms the inherent goodness of human beings. However, one somehow becomes distanced from this purer version of the self as he/she exists in the everyday world. Thus, human beings need liberation. This is achieved through practicing spiritual disciplines of meditation and reflection in order to realize our true connection with the Universe. As one guest on her show put it, we all have an inner light - like one inside a lantern. However, that glass tends to accumulate dirt, preventing the light from emanating in full. Our goal is to repeatedly wipe away the dirt in order that it may continue to shine. Faith is specifically addressed as a journey rather than adherence to any particular doctrine.

This view of the world is inviting for a number of reasons. First, it rejects the traditional understandings of religion that have failed many. To these people, Oprah's faith presents a lifestyle of pragmatism. Rather than having to serve any notion of God, people are free to focus entirely on their own desires. Furthermore, this spirituality lacks any serious historically-sensitive baggage. While Christians are continuously haunted by the Crusades, and Muslims jihadist fundamentalism, adherents to this faith have nothing to be ashamed of. They are free to focus entirely on their own spiritual journey. In addition, this faith lacks so little definition that there are no serious disagreements within its community. Instead, there is the communal emphasis upon love and tolerance. However, perhaps the most fundamental attraction to such a lifestyle is its promise of purpose and personal fullfillment. According to Oprah and her friends, we all have a reason for being. Not only do we have purpose, though, but the possibility of true spiritual self-actualization. It is finally in our hands. A fan of Oprah articulates it quite well,

"Oprah shows us that people are longing for meaning and significance in their lives. They want to know they have a reason to be, a purpose for existing. And they seek practical help in living out that purpose. In some ways, Oprah addresses our existential dilemmas."

Apparently, Oprah has helped millions wrestle with the most profound questions of the human experience. Are our own any different? When turning out your own bedroom light, have you ever not paused to consider why we are here? Has the death of a friend of a parent ever led you to wonder if there really is any meaning behind our lives? Or is it all a matter of chance? Oprah's marked authenticity and vulnerability have given her audience permission to ask questions they have always wanted to.

Perhaps the most clarifying insight into Oprah's way of thinking has been a statement she made years ago on her hit television show. In discussing her own journey to spirituality, Oprah noted her conviction that God is a feeling rather than a belief, or in religious jargon, "doctrine". While this may sound poetic, I am absolutely certain she doesn't believe it, as much as I am convinced that you don't either.

Here is why: for if God really is a feeling rather than any sort of belief, then God is less of a truth and more of a mood. This becomes a very slippery slope. As soon as truth becomes subjective, you and I lose any right to claim something is right or wrong. You may "feel" or experience rape as a bad thing, but your neighbor may "feel" it is just fine. You may feel like your marriage is fulfilling. Your spouse may not - and sleep with another person. What does truth become, then? Not a question of right and wrong, but of power - whoever has the most power determines truth. "Might is right". This is an extraordinarily dangerous concept, and has a terrible history, not least to mention the Holocaust or slavery. Ultimately, the means justifies the end. This is the serious danger behind Oprah's spiritual movement. Without any serious definition or precision, such faith becomes impotent. Ultimately, this relativism has no ability to judge the ways in which you might have been wronged (or perhaps how you have wronged others), nor does it it have any true promise of hope. It ultimately leaves us with lives bereft of hope and meaning.

Unfortunately for its followers, this lifestyle places individuals at the center of their universe. The onus is upon them to both purify themselves and desperately try to find the good in even the worst of experiences. I recently listened to one show on spirituality hosted by Oprah and her panel of spiritual authorities. As caller after caller described their own experiences of tragedy, the panel essentially asked each one to smile and put on a happy face, or in other words, "To try to listen to what the Universe is teaching you" in the midst of it. What is the Universe teaching you when lose your job? What might the Universe want to say when your health insurance refuses to cover your child's cancer treatments? What might the Universe offer to a parent whose infant died upon birth? Sadly, this form of spirituality demands its adherents to pull themselves up by the spiritual boot-straps when things get tough. One caller even confessed her repeated failures to maintain this spiritual marathon, and asked what she could do to keep running.


Fortunately, the race is over, as there is a God distinctly different from such an unmerciful, exhausting, and pantheistic existentialism. Rather than just one discipline away, this God chose to enter actual time and space that he might reveal the nature of the world. But rather than asking his followers to continually "dust off their lantern", he permitted his own child to suffer a tortuous death that we might be free from the judgment of our inability to shine. Not only a feeling, but truth Himself, this God offers the hope of a place where the true injustices of this world will be made right, and we will join him there . If you are exhausted from running the hampster wheel of this spirituality, or anything remotely related to it - if you are interested in a God that made His own arduous pilgrimage to you, you may experience it THIS day!



*Please note, while this entry is quite critical of the theological positions taken by Oprah Winfrey, I acknowledge and applaud both her humanitarian work and affirmation and valuing of women. These are two significant issues we must take more seriously in the body of Christ.

Luther & Lewis on Pleasure & Love

"...what the law (of God) demands, namely pleasure and love."

- Martin Luther

God demands pleasure? Really? Wow. This brings two thoughts to mind:

1) That we are WRONG when we outwardly obey God's commands while there is displeasure and unwillingness in our hearts. "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Sam. 16) Jesus was not at all impressed with the discipline and obedience of Pharisees. He said, "their hearts are far from me." The purpose of God's law is something much deeper than simply to "discipline" or "improve" us outwardly. The purpose is to show us the GOOD we were meant for and then to point out the sad fact that our hearts do not want it, but have rather been deluded to seek pleasure in EVIL.

We are like ignorant children who want to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the beach. (C. S. Lewis) God demands infinite pleasure and love, and somehow we have inwardly hated what he demands (even though it is exactly what we need and what we were made for!). According to the Bible, our problem is not that we do bad things sometimes, but that we want to do them all the time. And yet none of those bad things bring lasting pleasure or love. So then the law condemns our wayward hearts, and we are left desperate for a Savior, who alone can change us from the inside out.

2) That our desires are not too great but too small. (Lewis again) God is the author of everything that is good in this life, and therefore we Christians could be the sole defenders of every good and pleasurable earthly thing, rather than the smug prohibitors of pleasure that we often are. At a wedding banquet, Jesus turned water into wine. What a profound celebration of the goodness of wine and marriage amidst a world too accustomed to debauchery and perverse sexuality masquerading as "pleasure" and "love".

Here's the thing: We are, by nature, decieved about pleasure and love. We have thought the world to be their creator, and God to be their greatest enemy. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The world's "pleasure" is to drink from what you're drowning in. The world's "love" is to happily cheer you on as you drown.

But in Christ, who has fulfilled the law, we are met with a love that changes our hearts so that we find for the first time, actual pleasure in doing what is good. That's part of what we mean when we say Christ has set us free. We are reborn into a world that actually makes sense - where our hungers are met with actual food.

Gospel Break-Through

If you have ever wondered what "righteousness" God requires, if you've wondered if you will ever be good enough or worthy enough for Him, listen to these words. This is from a man named John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim's Progress) about the moment he realized that the gospel was actually good news. Maybe read it twice. If it's true, it changes everything:

Every little touch would hurt my tender conscience. But one day, as I was passing through a field, suddenly I thought of a sentence, “your righteousness is in heaven,” and with the eyes of faith, I saw Christ sitting at God’s right hand. And I suddenly realized — THERE is my righteousness. Wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say, “where is your righteousness?” for it was right before him. I saw that my good frame of heart could not make my righteousness better nor a bad frame of heart make my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.

Now my chains fell off indeed! I felt delivered from slavery to guilt and fears. I went home rejoicing for the love and grace of God. Now I could look from myself to him, and I realized that all those weak character qualities in my heart were like the pennies that rich men carry in their pocket, when their gold is safe under lock and key. Christ is my treasure, my righteousness. Now Christ was my wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and salvation.

Obama & The Gospel

Completely ASIDE from the realm of political viewpoints and policy, I was recently struck by the words of a friend, R.J. Heijmen, who had noticed Obama's "obvious joy, energy, and creativity" in his first few days on the job. Here's what he points out:

Letting his girls take [the day after the inauguration] off from school after allowing them to run around the White House all night, a treat which culminated in a surprise private concert by their favorite band, the Jonas Brothers.

The party he held at the White House for 200 randomly selected supporters, whom he encouraged to "relax and look around."

The dinner he held in honor of John McCain.

The fact that he is a "struggling" smoker (give the guy a break!).

Perhaps all of this "fruit" is the result of the imputed righteousness that he has been granted by the American public in the form of 80% approval ratings. I can only hope that it lasts.

Of course, the "struggling smoker" part is not necessarily a way that he's brought joy or creativity to office, but it is one way that we're able to see Obama as an actual human being who has issues just like you or me. This leads well into RJ's final comment, in which he suggests that Obama's special kindness to his children, some random people off the street, and even his opponent(!) perhaps arose from the "imputed righteousness" of America's overwhleming approval.

"Imputed righteousness" means rightness, worthiness, beauty, goodness that is not built-in but stamped-on. It is not pre-existing on the inside, but gifted from the outside. It is the gift of unconditional love. And it is the meat of the "good news" that Paul brings to sinners in the New Testament, when he says: "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law (apart from ourselves!), has been made known..." in Romans 3. Or when he says, "You have clothed yourselves with Christ..." in Galatians 3.

Yeah, we actually believe that God sees the righteousness of Christ when he looks at us. Because Christ died in our place, we stand in His. And this not only saves us, but makes us into the kind of people he created us to be. His Love compels us.

If you have a father who is always expecting you to earn his approval, despite your best efforts, it can only be embittering. But if you have a father who loves you unconditionally (no matter how much you let him down), you will actually want to please him. His love will compel you.

Perhaps this could explain, at least partially, the impotence and failure that (most people think) marked the end of Bush's time in the White House? Maybe not. That's a complicated situation. But unconditional love is a powerful thing! And God knows he needs it now.

PIN Ministry Update

“If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” -Isaiah 58: 10

Ross and I would like to thank all of you for the countless donations of hats, gloves, scarves, socks, toys and toiletries that you gave to PIN ministry this Christmas. We would also like to take this time to thank any lama, sheep, alpaca, badger, or any other anonymous animal donors who so selflessly gave of their luscious fur, coats, pelts, and what have you. There was plenty of hard work and selflessness that went on behind the scenes to make this project a success - and a success it was – we made over 200 festively decorated gift bags for men, women, and children.

In the Bible we are continually reminded about the poor and afflicted and how we are to treat them – in over 300 verses actually! But why? What is it about being a Christian that leads us to serve those who have less than we do, to care for the homeless and dejected? Why does the Bible beckon us to look beyond ourselves to the needs of others? Dallas, the creator and director of PIN ministry, reminded me of the reason in one of his most recent sermons to the homeless community…

On the Sunday when we went to drop off Galilee’s donation - the 200 gift bags, each lovingly tied with a green bow and cheerful red tissue paper - Dallas spoke about why he invites outside churches like Galilee to come and do volunteer work at PIN. He said, “It’s not because we need them. I don’t need these churches to come and help – we have tons of volunteer already!”


I began to wonder what the world I was doing there. Why did I just spend so much time trying to work on these darn gifts? Why did I have poor Middle School boys make Christmas cards with markers and construction paper mostly against their will (while making faces that looked pretty similar to the kid on the right)? Why did we ask our parishioners to come every month and sacrifice three and a half hours of their Sunday evening if they don’t even need us??!! I was definitely a little offended.

And then he said it…
“I ask these churches to come and volunteer so that they can experience Christ and the joy of serving as Jesus served us! I ask them to come so that they may actually be encouraged by you (meaning the homeless men and women present) by how you love each other despite your extreme poverty. So that they will see, that though you have nothing and they have everything, the Spirit of Jesus is alive within you – and you have joy!!!!”


Of course Galilee was there to serve the homeless, but what Dallas was trying to say was that when we went to PIN, Jesus was doing something within us! By giving of ourselves we could experience the privilege of commonality with Christ. This is why Jesus calls us to serve and love the poor all throughout the Bible! This is how He loves us, as the ultimate servant. So, let us continue to experience the joy of knowing our maker more intimately - through service.

Alien Dinosaurs: They Are Real.

I have great news friends. I've recently come across an extremely convincing piece of evidence in support of my Alien Dinosaur Conspiracy Theory. You see, dinosaurs had over 160 million years as the dominant vertebrate animals on our planet. This is a suspiciously long period of time for such a powerful race of animals not to have evolved into a species as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than modern humans. Hmmm.

According to scientists, it only took half that amount of time for monkeys to evolve into homo sapiens, and it only took homo sapiens 300,000 years to invent Go-Gurt, Xbox Live and NASA missions to Mars. Just think what we could do with 160 million years! Or rather, think what the dinosaurs must have already done with all that time on their hands. Suspicious isn't it? My theory: they evolved to unheard of levels of intelligence until finally, leaving their less evolved counterparts behind to become fossils, they escaped the earth on hi-tech space ships intending to colonize other planets, as any self-respecting community of super-evolved intelligent dinosaurs would have when facing the threat of a giant world-ending meteor.

I know you must think this all very ridiculous. My answer to you is no. Not nearly as ridiculous as my absurd over-use of hyphens in this blog entry. But back to business...

We have recently come across an ancient record (the youtube video below) which proves without a doubt that these super-evolved now-alien dinosaurs actually came back to visit their simpler dinosaur ancestors for a time. And of course, even the simpler dinosaurs could talk at that point, since they apparently had 160 million years to develop spoken language! (Unfortunately the one they called "Spike" was still evidently a bit behind the evolutionary curve.)

Perhaps you cannot imagine what a thrill it must be to have such an intricate theory finally confirmed as fact. I know. Well for me, this renews my hope that one day we may be able to meet these wondrous, intelligent creatures from our past, from our planet, and yet from beyond the great beyond. They are the alien dinosaurs.

The last three minutes of this video redefine prehistory. That's all you need to watch.

Doesn't God Want Us To Succeed?

Below is a clip from John Piper, a pastor, theologian, and author from Minneapolis. In it, he professes his "hatred" for what has become known as the the "prosperity gospel". Strong words. The "prosperity gospel" is a message, a theology, and really a phenomenon which has found explosive popularity in the church in recent years, both in America and in the world at large. The idea will probably sound familiar to you - you may have seen it in best-selling book titles, heard it on TV when you were flipping channels, or maybe you even agree with it yourself. It goes something like this:

"God wants you to prosper. The more you seek God and do what he says, the more you will see health, wealth, and success come into your life. And if things are not going well for you right now, you need to be more obedient."

Is this a helpful mindset? Is it accurate? Here is Piper's take:

Faith As Need

A thought from 19th century fantasy writer George MacDonald (literary mentor of C. S. Lewis) on the subject of faith in weakness:

“The man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, ‘Thou art my refuge.’”

This is a staggering reminder to me that, for the Christian, faith is not simply to believe or to assent, but to lean, to trust, to need the thing outside itself in which it finds true refuge. It is faith that finds the cross of Christ absolutely necessary and central, rather than merely symbolic, inspirational, and peripheral.

(You may also recognize MacDonald from Lewis' Great Divorce, where he shows up as a fictional version of himself, leading people into Heaven. Any hero of Lewis' is a hero of mine!)

The phenomenon that is, “fail.”

I love how one-word declarations seem to come into fad every now and then. For me, high school was peppered by shoutings of, “random!” whenever something ever so slightly off-kilter would occur. And then we moved to, “crucial!” for whatever seemed awesome or important. And more recently, there was “awkward!” in order to fill uncomfortable spaces- or to create them for the heck of it.

The current exclamation was first brought to my attention while I was helping to coach a soccer practice. Someone would miss a shot: “fail!” Someone would send a pass just a little too far to the right: “fail!” There was lots of laughing- we were having a light practice and it was all in good fun. However, after having the word tossed at me a couple of times, it got me thinking about the nature of what was actually going on.

Why might it be so enjoyable to highlight subtle mistakes with the word, “fail?” How did a word of weakness and error come into popularity? Could it be that we take comfort in other peoples’ mistakes because we know that we are just as capable of making them? Could it be that we are finally facing the reality of the imperfection we live in? Does the humor of this come from an ironic use of the word considering the fact that we are a culture entrenched in striving for success, achievement, and perfection?

I think that this phenomenon is hitting on one of the sweetest parts of the gospel: we are all the same in our need. It isn’t difficult to see that we are a broken world; we lie, we try to control others, we look out for ourselves, and we fail one another. We need help. We need rescuing from the outside, because no matter how hard we try, we can’t fix ourselves. We need hope that we are not left to work ourselves to death trying to be “better people” (whatever that is).

This is what Romans 3:22-23 is getting at when it says, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We are all the same in our need, in our falling short, in our “fail.”ure. But, thankfully, we are not left to fend for ourselves in futility. We are met by a God who takes our failure, our sin, upon Himself and dies for it on a cross. He then conquers it and offers us life in Himself. Therein lies the beauty of Colossians 2:13-15: “When you were dead in your sins…God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Therefore, I make this proposition: when we hear the word, “fail.” pop out of our mouths, let us recognize that we are the same in our failure, and let it point to Jesus’ power in and victory over our failure. We are never left alone in that failure; He has come to give us light, hope, and full life right in the middle of it.