just{inspired}

Change of Venue

2010-04-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

I've changed my blog site. You can check it out at http://justinihara.wordpress.com/. Stop by and say hello!

Do You Stink?

2010-04-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

This past week I had several friends tell me that my apartment smelled like there was a gas leak. I sniffed around and sure enough it smelled like gas around our gas stove. I guess I didn’t notice it because it was so gradual. I called the apartment maintenance to request they come and fix it. Potential disaster avoided.

On the flip side, my wife and I were in a movie theater when a group of teenagers came in and sat in the row in front of us. Judging from their warm-up gear, I guessed the guys had just finished a track meet. Mid-movie one of the guys decided to take off his hoodie, which everyone sitting in his immediate vicinity realized was withholding a rancid stench. A wave of B.O. was unleashed and hit us like a brick. My wife and I discreetly moved to the back of the theater. After the film was over, we passed by some of the girls sitting with this poor guy. I only overheard a fraction of their conversation but I knew exactly what they were discussing: “…smelled sooo bad!” This poor guy’s odds of scoring any dates with those girls severely plummeted that evening. I still wonder if his friends ever told him.

Community is so important, not just because good friends give you the warm-fuzzies, but because they also tell you when something in your life stinks. They don’t sugar-coat it and yet they manage to do it in the most caring, compassionate and constructive way possible. You don’t want too many people in this role but you probably want a few close, trustworthy friends who know you well enough to perceive when something is wrong. We all have blind-spots and these people can save you from potential perdition, whether it’s from an exploding apartment or destructive choices with devastating consequences.

We don’t like to license people to be that close, do we? Do you stink? Have you given anybody that kind of vulnerable permission to speak into your life? Do you have anyone in your life to tell you when something smells like it's going bad?

Rob Bell: Resurrection

2010-04-04T05:47:00.000-07:00

Easter is a significant day of celebration. Today we celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the dead after his crucifixion and sacrifice on behalf of humanity. Here is a short spoken word film by Rob Bell on the significance of East. The script can be found here. Happy Easter!

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Live On Purpose (Not by Accident)

2010-03-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

There was a sign hanging up in the bathroom of my last workplace. Anne Herbert’s quote, "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" stared at me in the face every time I had to take a wiz. I’m beginning to realize how much I disagree with this statement. Why should our kindness be random? Don’t get me wrong. This world would be a better place if people were more caring of others. My issue is with the statement’s implied passivity.

Jesus tells a story about a traveling man who is attacked and left for dead on the side of the road. He lies there as he is twice ignored by religious officials who go so far as to cross the street to walk past him. Finally a man from Samaria (neighboring nation scorned by Israel) takes notice of this man and cares for him until he knows he is healthy.

We immediately vilify the two religious officials, but if we subscribe to “practicing random kindness”, then these two individuals did nothing wrong. A philosophy of random kindness allows these two men to pass by this particular circumstance and haphazardly help someone else and still be considered kind. But this doesn’t resonate with us, does it? That’s probably because this story isn’t about practicing random acts of kindness. This is a story about being the kind of person who is intentional with life. Truth be told, most of us try our best to avoid the streets where we are most likely to encounter this type of situation.

Living randomly leads to meandering around and responding to situations almost by accident. It is passive and requires minimal risk and sacrifice on our part. Living intentionally leads to walking the streets of the victims and the left-for-dead. This is why I follow Jesus, because he intentionally walks those streets and dares you and me to find life by following him. Don't accidentally live. Live intentionally.

Love in Detail

2010-03-10T03:45:00.001-08:00

I was excited. I was about to walk into my first Reentry Council meeting. The room was filled with about two dozen people, representing community and government organizations, who were trying to change the city and give previously incarcerated ex-offenders a second chance to live a better life. My nerdy, idealistic mind led me to imagine the heroic Jedi Council of Star Wars. A small part of me was hoping Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson would be there. You can imagine my disappointment when the conversation centered on data reporting and budget.

The highlight was during the break when I talked to Jamie. Jamie works for Homeward, an organization that focuses on local research on the issue of homelessness. Homeward staff and volunteers go out into the community and listen to the stories of just about every homeless person in the city. From these stories they compile and analyze data so that service providing organizations can know who is experiencing homelessness and when, how long, where and why they are experiencing homelessness. Service providers can take this information and create new initiatives to address specific trends in the issue of homelessness and poverty. I learned that in order to effectively meet the desperate needs of others, people have to pay attention to and address the details like data reporting and budget. This is not something I am naturally good at. It makes me think that the Jedi Council was probably less like the one in my mind and more like the Reentry Council, addressing the minute and seemingly boring details so that something significant could happen. That’s not very sexy. Maybe that’s why details are so often overlooked.

In what has become traditionally known as “the Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus invites his followers to live a life that pays attention to the fine details of our hearts. He calls us to examine and address issues of our hearts, like bitterness, condemnation, lust, egotism, and fear. He finalized his talk with an illustration of building the foundation of a house on solid ground versus building a house on weak ground:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

The details through which we build our lives are important because when hard times hit us, how we hold up is largely in part due to the details that have been built into our hearts. The life Jesus calls us to live is found in the details. It’s not sexy, glamorous, or easy. But it will make us more loving and generous people when we seemingly have nothing left to give. It will enrich our relationships when we are so prone to damaging and destroying them. Jesus invites us into transforming the details and texture of our hearts so that we can fully experience and express how beautiful life really is. The love that Jesus wants to build in and through us is found in the subtle details that we often overlook.

So what do the details of your heart look like?

How Valuable?

2010-02-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

My wife strikes up a conversation with a guy in a coffee shop and when he discovers that she works with children with special needs he begins to complain about how school funds went to help a child with special needs that could have been used for science supplies in his daughter’s school. I find it interesting that this man’s argument was the same case made against African American children receiving equal opportunity in education as white children.

This video is a story of a child named Nicholas who was born with almost no brain. This child will probably never grow up to become a "productive member of society." But this does not prohibit us from witnessing the love created by his life.

During Black History Month my wife's encounter makes me think: We now celebrate diversity of ethnicity, socio-economic background, talents, and more increasingly, sexual orientation. But I have to ask; do we celebrate the diversity of intellect or ability? Or do we consider those who are not up to par on intellectual development, like Nicholas, not worth the hassle?

We celebrate people if they have some sort of disability or obstacle and they overcome it. We value people for what they can do in spite of their disability. Fortunately, today many people with special needs are invaluable members of our communities and workplaces. But what about people like Nicholas who might not be able to do anything we consider commendable? What if they can’t overcome their obstacle to be, what society considers, “successful”? That is when those people become “burdens on society.” In our culture, we assign a dollar value to their existence and they aren’t worth the money we wasted on them—we should have paid for the science supplies. It’s survival of the fittest.

Jesus emphasizes the value of humanity in God’s society, or kingdom, as he preaches that the kingdom of heaven is made accessible to everyone through him. The Scriptures continually talk about how God confounds the wise and connects to the simple. Jesus consistently upheld this value by loving humanity, knowing we had nothing we could adequately give in return. Perhaps it is no accident then when Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” These are people who seemingly had nothing valuable to contribute to their community, yet they were blessed simply because God made them with as much value as he made with everyone else.

We don’t really like that about God, do we? If you’re like me, I want to be loved because of what I can bring to the table. We like to think that our talent, resources, intellect or religiosity makes us valuable. But if God acted on that kind of favoritism, then blessing would be reserved for an elite breed of human and we’d all be left wanting. Miley Cyrus is worth over a billion dollars and I just found employment. How am I supposed to compete with that?

Is it possible that people like Nicholas contribute to society by their sheer presence? Their presence puts us in a position to step outside of ourselves and help others belong, to care about humanity over talent, to value life over contribution. We see a story of beauty instead of tragedy. I think that’s the amazing thing about following Jesus. As we invite him into our lives, he leans into the core of our hearts to change how we perceive and care about people. Instead of dehumanizing others based on what we think they lack, we discover what it means to be truly human.

Job Searching Insights from 'The Bachelor'

2010-01-11T11:45:00.000-08:00

Numerous people competing for a single position. Interviews becoming more in-depth as the candidate progresses in the process. Waiting anxiously for the next opportunity to distinguish oneself from the other candidates.

‘The Bachelor’ has the uncanny resemblance of job searching.

This dawned on me while I watched the show with my wife as I relived the painful experience of hopeful anticipation and bitter rejection. If you’ve ever subjected yourself to the dating process and subsequent breakup process, then you know what I’m talking about. You tell the job you are interested in her and if you are lucky, she responds. When she does you go out on interview—that is pretty much what a date is. She asks you about your previous work experience and interests. If she likes you, a second interview is made available and if you do well there, you get the job. Upon rejection, you immediately enter the break-up process: convincing yourself of all the reasons why you didn’t really want that job anyways. In fact, she’s a stupid jerk and she would have been awful for you. Rinse and repeat.

So if you are in the process of dating or job searching, know that you are not alone. Also, there are great resources for both pursuits online. One can dream of a future in which both are simultaneously available from one website so as to minimize the amount of times we must undergo the grueling process.

Re:New Year

2010-01-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

Last night people gathered together to celebrate the coming of a new year and, in eager anticipation, counted down together as the clock struck midnight. But at “zero” nothing really happened. Nothing changes except the clocks and calendars. At the risk of sounding cynical, it was kind of anticlimactic. But then we go to the gym and realize that the exercise machine we normally use has a waitlist three pages long because, of course, the new gym members have made resolutions to go to the gym more. All one has to do is wait a month and the names on that waitlist will begin to disappear as resolutions are abandoned. Unfortunately, we are more often than not among the evanescent names.

Why do we fail so often in our resolutions? Is it that we don’t try hard enough? Maybe we just lose our motivation. We get excited about change so we join the gym while we’re motivated. Maybe we go for a month or two but all too often that excitement fizzles out as our motivation dwindles. The exciting change isn’t as attractive anymore. Or perhaps our aim is off. Perhaps we are looking for the right change in the wrong area.

There’s a reason why they are called resolutions: Chances are we tried them last year. They are revisited solutions to revisited problems. They are “re: solutions”, which strangely look very much like “re: ligion” because they both tend to have something to do with our behaviors and habits. “Religion” comes from the Latin root ligare, which means “to bind”. So to be a part of a religion is to be rebounded or retied to something. For a lot of people, religion is about resolutions for how to behave—a list of “do’s” and “do not’s”— or a list of doctrinal statements with which we agree. Whether we believe in God or not, we all have some sort of religion that satisfies our desire to make sense of our lives—something that helps us find meaning in the midst of the chaos we encounter. We tend to turn to our religions and resolutions because we want change from dysfunction, and order from chaos. But if you’ve ever tried to uphold a New Year’s resolution, you know that lasting change cannot be found in dogma or lists.

Jesus calls us to a different way in his life and teachings—a life beyond “do’s” and “do not’s”. He tells us that when our lives are oriented around a love for God and others, religions and resolutions become obsolete. Our hearts begin to change and what we care about follows suit. Behavior and belief then simply become a byproduct of the inner transformation. Jesus explains that this inner change comes when we entrust our heart with him—we put our confidence in who he is and what he can accomplish in and through us. Instead of binding ourselves to attempted behavior changes or ideology, Jesus tells us to bind ourselves to him and witness a beautiful life through a renewed heart—a heart we can trust because it is full of love. It is a heart that cannot be created by our own resolutions. It can only come from being in an intimate relationship with him.

So if your resolutions fail this year, take heart because if you’re like me, maybe you don’t need more New Year’s resolutions. Maybe you just need renewal.

I hope you have a joyful Renew Year.

How to Not Be a Protagonist

2009-12-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

Two things I longed for after seeing Avatar: 1) I could visit Pandora. 2) All villains were like Colonel Miles Quaritch. The film is a visual masterpiece and seeing it in 3D enhanced Pandora’s majestic qualities. Also, the villain was clearly the villain. I wish that were true in life because it seems to get more complicated than the stories I see in films. Take the situation between Israel and Palestine, for example. Both are calling themselves heroes and the opposing side villains. Or maybe make it more domestic: Republicans and Democrats. Virginia just held a gubernatorial election last month and after watching all the campaign commercials, both candidates made each other out as villains.

If you're like me you’ve become the Jake Sully of your own story. I truly believe that everyone wants to be the protagonist in his or her story. No one aspires to be a villain and I don’t think most villains would identify themselves as such, nor do I think they’re like Colonel Miles Quaritch from Avatar. Sometimes they’re like the candidates in the campaign commercials, Tiger Woods, the Taliban, or even (and sometimes especially) the other drivers on the road. Most of the time they’re like your spouse, your parents, your kids, your boss, or your co-workers; and not because they’re plotting genocide or some gross human rights violation. Maybe it’s because they’ve done something to offend you, or they just simply disagree with you. So in order to remain the hero in your story, they must become the villains. Unfortunately most of us follow the pretense that in order to be a hero, we must also have villains. We create them at the intersection of our imagination and our “righteous” indignation. Are you really the protagonist of your story or are you the villain in someone else’s? Sometimes both can be true, which is the great tragedy of human nature.

I think Jesus knew this about us, which is why he had to step into humanity to show what a heroic story looked like. Jesus didn’t create villains—he created heroes. Sure the Pharisees were opposing him but he even said that their teachings were solid, just don’t follow their life example. When we take a good look at Jesus’ life we find that he created heroes, mainly out of people whom the Pharisees considered to be villains.

Heroes create heroes. Villains create villains.

When we try to become the protagonist in our own story, it leaves too much room for us to identify people as our antagonists. But the life that Jesus called us to live forfeits the entitlement of ‘hero’ and yet is nonetheless heroic. Instead of being centered on us, heroism is perpetuated through us. We become the catalysts of change in the lives of others and those lives we touch begin to live a heroic story.

What would the world look like if we focused less on being heroes and more on making a hero out of others?

Christmas: A Reasonable Time?

2009-12-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

Comedian Jim Gaffigan compares people's behavior during the Christmas season to that of a drunk person. We go outside and chop down a tree and put it inside to decorate it. Then we take decorations and lights and put them outside our residences. We spend billions of dollars on gifts and stuff them in socks or put them under the decorated tree. After all is said and done, we take everything down, put away the lights, and sign a two-year membership contract at the local gym because we ate too much but then only go for the last part of the month of January. This begs the question: In a society that values logic and reason, is Christmas really all that reasonable?

In college I was taught that reason is the means to arriving to truth. The problem I ran into was I couldn't figure out whose reason I should subscribe to: Plato, Hume, Aristotle, Descartes, Freud, etc? A lot of very reasonable people arrive to many different truths. I've heard a lot of people give up and say, "There is no truth" or "That's truth that works for you." Erwin McManus in his book, Soul Cravings, points out this search for truth comes down to who we can trust. Oftentimes our issue is not with the truth but with trust. The problem with reason is that it is only as trustworthy as the person who is utilizing it. Where some can use reason that can theoretically lead to altruism, generosity, and utopia, others can use reason to justify atrocities like murder and genocide.

This is why I follow Jesus. Jesus did not try to use pure logic to explain the kingdom of heaven. In fact, Jesus often went against what many would consider reasonable when displaying what the kingdom of heaven was like. Jesus did not talk all about how we should use reason and logic to make this world a better place. Jesus talked about what we should care about. Jesus talked about values and adhering to those values. When doing so defied all sense and reason, he called it faith. When doing so cost people something, maybe even their well-being or lives, he called it love. The more I've trusted Jesus with my life the more I've been challenged to do the unreasonable. The more I've interacted with those who have lived unreasonably for the life Jesus called us to live through the Scriptures, the more I've seen them care more about humanity and practically do something about it.

Maybe Christmas is unreasonable. A virgin birth followed by God being born on earth to walk among us seems unreasonable to many. But maybe it's not supposed to be about reason. Maybe it's supposed to be about what we care about. Maybe it's about engaging the things that seem to us, in practicality, unreasonable: love, generosity, service, sacrifice. Perhaps Christmas time is about celebrating a time when God did the unreasonable and stepped into human history to give us hope for humanity's future. For some of us, perhaps Christmas is about interacting with God for the first time so that we can begin to see what God values and to live unreasonably for what God cares about.

Citizen of the Invisible

2009-11-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

This morning I was informed that my vote wasn’t going to count. Apparently someone at the DMV messed up when I registered to vote along with my change of address and my registration didn’t go through so I could go ahead and vote in my current district but it wouldn’t count. I was livid. Then I ate some breakfast and calmed down. When I was in college I drove several hours home and back just so that I could vote in the gubernatorial election (I forgot to register for an absentee ballot). I take my right to vote pretty seriously.

Election Day is such a stressful day, isn’t it? It’s the climax to a year of political mud-slinging and divisiveness. Politics has become such a taboo topic in our culture because of it’s potential for conflict and disagreement in both the workplace and at the family dinner table. I understand why so many people would just want to stay away from the subject and talk about other important things like sports, weather, and Taylor Swift. Yet voting is still important because, as citizens, it is our voice to make a difference in how things are governed.

Author James Kunstler pleads with us not to refer to ourselves as “consumers” because that implies we do not have “obligations, responsibilities and duties to our fellow human beings.” He suggested that we instead refer to ourselves as “citizens”, an identity with which we take ownership of creating a better world that worth sacrificing for.

Jesus calls humanity to a similar kind citizenship. He says, “the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” He advocates citizenship, but not one that involves confusing ballots with a fifty-page packet full of propositions and lesser-of-the-two-evils options for candidates. It's citizenship of faith, hope, love, uniqueness, unity, passion, sacrifice and Spirit; all of which cannot themselves be seen or touched but the result of which touch the lives of people around us we often do not see. Jesus once tried to explain this concept to a religious leader in Israel: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Jesus advocates a citizenship of the invisible.

I can’t help but think: Why is God invisible?! Sometimes that’s so frustrating!

I think this is why Jesus talks so much about faith, and not just in the sense of believing that God exists. I think faith gives us “the eyes to see and ears to hear”, not only the presence and reality of the invisible God but also the presence and reality of people who to us are often invisible. Throughout the Scriptures, God continually calls his followers to take care of the marginalized and oppressed. Jesus equates living the greatest possible life to living a life of love and service of others.

When we seek to see the God who is invisible, he leads us to those who need to be seen. Then we experience the life of faith, love and hope for which we were created to live.

I’m a little bummed I didn’t get to vote, but the difference my life makes in this world will not be determined by my choice on a ballot. It will be determined by my choice everyday to be a citizen of the invisible.

5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do

2009-09-30T11:05:00.000-07:00

Gever Tulley spoke at TED in 2007 on 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. I found the topic intriguing because when I was little, my brother Nate and I set fire to a tree in our front yard (it was mostly Nate, I swear!). Lo and behold, the first activity on the list was "play with fire." Boo ya dad! Ground me for a month will ya?!

"Gever Tulley is the co-founder of The Tinkering School a weeklong camp where lucky kids get to play with their very own power tools. He's interested in helping kids learn how to build, solve problems, use new materials and hack old ones for new purposes."

Summary:

1) Play with fire
2) Own a pocket knife
3) Throw a spear
-This helps build muscles, develops spatial recognition, problem solving, visualization, attention, discipline, and concentration
4) Deconstruct appliances
- This teaches the child that no matter how complex things look, they can be learned, known, and understood
5) 2 Parts
a) Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- Begins a conversation about the understanding of laws, interpretation, ethics, and accidental breaking of laws
b) Drive a Car
- This is a very empowering experience. It gives the child access to a bigger world that he or she does not readily have access to

The basis for Tully's message is that parents spend too much effort and energy on child safety and not enough on child development through exploration, experimentation, and creativity.

Consumed

2009-09-28T08:06:00.001-07:00

Recently I watched the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic on DVD with my wife (please take note of this). In case you haven't seen it, it's about a single, young-adult female named Rebecca Bloomwood in New York who finds herself in massive credit card debt due to an overwhelming desire to buy new stuff. Where this was a cute chick-flick, I think it also provides insight into a greater cultural conversation that begins with a quotation of Oscar Wilde by a friend of mine:

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

Many of us can relate to Rebecca's exaggerated issue with shopping on some level: the dream-like feeling of anticipation in the moment right before we buy something and the excitement the very moment we buy it. But the next moment sucks, doesn't it? Because then the thought, "What did I just do? Did I really spend that much money?" invades our skull and spreads immediately to our stomach. Then the purchase ends up in our closet with all the other things we bought that never reached their full potential.

Potential is what excites us about the purchase. The image of ourselves in the future with the purchase motivates us to temporarily forget the cost and move into a future without consequence.

Imagination can be a powerful influencer on the future, for better or for worse. The problem is when we limit our imagination to ourselves, we limit ourselves to a life as a consumer. Rebecca's problem was that her imagination came to a halt with herself and she trapped herself in a limited reality where she could find no way out of her predicament. Consumption doesn't really demand a lot of imagination, does it? And if we're not careful, we can become consumed with consuming.

The Scriptures describe God as a consuming fire and Jesus invites us into a relationship with this God to be consumed by his transforming presence so that we can move from being consumers to givers. Because when fire consumes something, it is never the same again. Jesus invites us to move from a life of getting and taking to a life consumed by generosity, passion, love and sacrifice. We are invited into a movement, a mission, a passion to serve the world. Now that takes imagination. It takes a lot of imagination to see potential through all our problems: our world's, our city's, our neighborhood's, our family's, and even our own.

But that's why I follow Jesus. He invites us into a life with him where our imagination is expanded and we can be a part of his bold movement to unleash the human potential and heal the world. It requires risk when we are afraid, sacrifice when we have nothing, and love when others see no value. It takes a lot of imagination to see humanity as God sees us, but it takes courage to engage his movement to truly love the world.

Transformational Tribe

2009-09-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Seth Godin's book, Tribes. He comes from a marketing background but the insights he shares in this book can translate to almost any arena that involves people.

He argues that tribes, not factories, hold the potential to change the world. A Tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connect to a leader, and connected to an idea. Factories are jobs where your boss tells you what to do and how to do it. They are stable, predictable, and require minimal responsibility. Every tribe has a leader or leaders and these leaders are usually considered heretics because they challenge the status quo and engage people in the process of change and innovation, whether it is corporate change, organizational change, or cultural change. Below you can watch Seth Godin's TED talk. If that doesn't work for you, here's a link. Check it out.

I found his discussion of the elements of faith and religion and how they relate to tribes particularly interesting. He argues that faith is a foundational component to humanity, but religion "represents a strict set of rules that our fellow humans have overlaid on top of our faith. Religion supports the status quo and encourages us to fit in, not to stand out.” Religion does not have to strictly remain in the spiritual arena. It can be taken into any area: business, education, culture, entertainment, science, etc. At it's best, it reinforces faith. At it's worst it "reinforces the status quo, often at the expense of our faith.” He argues that heretics challenge the status quo of the religion they're living under and in order to lead, you must do the same.

With this I can't help but think of the heretical life of Jesus. He challenged the religious system, transformed lives, and created a transformational community while he was at it (not to mention miracles and rising from the dead). Not only that, but he also calls his followers, those who have faith in him, and indeed humanity to live in the same transformational way. Jesus launched a transformational tribe: a vibrant community of people transformed by their relationship with him, moving in the world, challenging the status quo with the message that what we are truly searching for, what it truly means to be human, the Kingdom of God, is accessible through him.

Seth Godin uses the term, "Sheepwalking", for people who just follow the way things are, like sheep, and settle for mediocre lives. I like this term because it reminds me of when Jesus told his friend, Peter, to "Feed my sheep."

What was Jesus saying? Don’t sheep eat grass? Last I checked you didn't really need to feed animals grass. It's just kinda there. Or was Jesus implying that Peter shake things up and offer the “sheep” of Israel a new kind of food? Was he implying that Peter get their attention away from mere aimless existence and invite them to an experience that would shake them from their "sheepwalking" and lead them into living life to the fullest?

If Jesus called his followers to be a transformational tribe, also known as the church, then why do so many churches function as factories for theological information and not as tribes that change lives, cities, and cultures through their relationship of love with the living God? After reading Seth Godin's book, I can't help but ask myself, "What is my religious system?" Oftentimes I feel like I settle for knowing about God, rather than knowing God. My friend Steve Saccone once said, "In order to be people who God uses to influence the world we must first be influenced by God...because our lives are much more powerful than our words.” As I read about Jesus' life in the Scriptures, I am continually challenged to resist the temptation of complacency and to settle for mediocrity and instead allow God to challenge my own religious system to live the life that he created me to live. If you're like me in this, maybe we can journey through this in a tribe.

Redefining Our Neighbor

2009-09-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to an event downtown to see speaker Percy Strickland talk about Church Hill Activities & Tutoring (CHAT), a community of people who are transforming their neighborhood by opening their doors to the children of their urban neighborhood. Percy shared some incredibly stories of urban youth who were once struggling through school with little to no positive parental influence and are now finding employment and going to college. He shared that this whole concept came from Jesus' teaching to love God and love your neighbor. CHAT's origins started with Percy and his wife choosing to live in an area where they could strategically and daily engage in the lives of their neighbors, among whom is a higher population of prostitution, teen pregnancy, drug dealing, and substance abuse. Percy's involvement in the lives of youth began when he played basketball with some of them and had them over for dinner later. You can read the rest of their story here.

What would the world look like if we had more movements like CHAT?

Percy shared what it would look like:
- In a neighborhood where others are afraid to even go into, he is not afraid to live because he knows all of his neighbors and they know him.
- In an area where the teen pregnancy is extremely high and most children are born into single-parent homes, there have been ZERO pregnancies among the female youth who have participated in CHAT's community.
- In an area where crime is higher and a youth can expect to go to juvenile hall at some point in his or her life, there have been ZERO crimes committed among the youth who have participated in CHAT's community.

CHAT is an illustration that we need to redefine what it means to be a neighbor. The people around us don't have to be addicted to crack for us to be a potent influence in their lives.

When Jesus was asked the question, "Who is my neighbor?" in reference to his teaching to love your neighbor, he responded with a story about a man walking into town who was beaten, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. After two members of the religious community deliberately ignored the man, a Samaritan man (ethnicity despised by the religious people of the day) took care of him. Jesus then said to "go and do likewise". The answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" is "We are". I am his neighbor. I am her neighbor. I think it's important to redefine how we think of a neighbor.

Instead of framing it as, "He is my neighbor," which implies that at some point during the week he's going to come over and ask to borrow a hammer, a screwdriver and some salt and never give them back, maybe we can frame it as, "I am his or her neighbor," which implies that at when they come over to ask for things we eagerly respond by not only letting them borrow things but also offering to help them with whatever they are doing (Plus you can get your stuff back when you're done. Live missionally and think strategically.)

I think CHAT is a beautiful example of a community of people who are living with transformative faith in Jesus, are known by their transcendent love for others, and are the voice of hope for a community in desperate need.

An individual person can do a lot of good. A community of neighbors who have been transformed can change the world.

Perspective

2009-09-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

I was at an event a couple weeks ago and the speaker made a comment that threw me off guard:

"We all know the evils of Islam, as we all remember from the attacks on our country..."

Wow. I was baffled. Clearly this is an incidence of extreme stereotyping, ignorance and a lack of friends who are muslim. My next thought was: "I should expect this, I'm in the South." But then I realized that this was also stereotyping and so I was just as guilty for making a blanket statement from a negative perspective of a people who identify themselves with a particular group based on the actions of a small representation of that group. I think we're all guilty doing this, the frequency fluctuating depending on the person. For most of us I doubt we're even aware of it. Nobody wants to have a distorted perspective on people. But have you ever challenged your own thought process and perspective on the world? It's difficult to become aware of our distorted perspectives to say the least. I think what helps me is living in community.

Eric Bryant, author of Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, said, "Stereotypes exist because friendships don't."

I wonder how our lives would look if we began to challenge how we look at others. Maybe our starting point is simply looking at others. What would change if we became friends with people who are different than us, not simply because they are different but because they actually have value?

I think this is how God calls us to see others, not because it's the PC thing to do but because it is truly how he sees everyone. This would make sense because if God exists and the Scriptures are true, then it would mean that God created everyone with unique value. From this angle, John 3:16-17 makes sense. We love what we value. Jesus came because of love for humanity.

What would the world look if we stopped classifying people based on our perceptions and began believing in people because of their God-given potential and value?