Supposedly, (according to George Burgess), 150 people are killed each year by falling coconuts. I don’t know if these statistics are even vaguely accurate, but this little tidbit was shared with me by James the other day moments after a very large coconut crashed to the ground just behind us as we walked along the road close to his work place in Les, Bali. I was reminded of this possibility again tonight as I was driving the motor bike out to the main highway from our rental rooms. A smallish coconut pounded to the ground just beside me and crashed into my motor bike, splashing both me and the bike with coconut water. Better the bike than my head is all that I can say.
I will preface my blog tonight by saying that I am neither a theologian, educated, nor very smart. However, I do believe that the Holy Spirit does speak to us, God’s children, and I simply want to share some of my thoughts with you.
Steve and a friend from Bali
I am sitting here listening to the callers chanting from the local Hindu temples. Rather acidly James suggested the other day that it may have been okay before microphones and loudspeakers were developed and the chanters used only their natural voice. Now however, their chanting can be broadcast at who knows how many decibels from the rooftops with the help of mega loudspeakers – definitely invasive and unpleasant. Also, the chanting can, and is done at any hour of the day and night. I suspect that there must be some sort of a rhyme or reason behind the timing, but I have yet to discover it. One of them seems to find 3:00 am as being a good time to serenade us all to prayer.
Several things are interesting to me: first of all, the chanting is done in Sanskrit – an ancient Indo-Aryan language that no one, probably including the chanters understands. The chanting and prayers are repeated over and over again, day and night. The temples interestingly, are places where the devout come to present offerings, light incense and pray, and also they become a social meeting place for men to gamble at cock fights and gather to drink arak – a locally made alcoholic drink.
Steve and more friends
This sounds just too familiar somehow. Haven’t we also made religion sacrosanct and forgotten the “whys”. Why, for example, were masses done in Latin – a language that no one spoke, understood, or could relate to except that it was a “religious language” and gave you goose bumps? Or, why was High German insisted on for religious ritual in many Mennonite groups while the congregants spoke nor understood nary a word of it anymore. Why do some still insist on the holy nature of the King James translation of scripture and debase other more modern translations as being less valid? Isn’t it all for basically the same reason as the use of the ancient “sacred” Sanskrit language by the chanters and callers from the Hindu temples? Isn’t it all due to “in-your-face” religion that we cherish as our way into God’s acceptance?
Why is it that Jesus had to warn us against performing religion like the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day with their chanting and prayers? In Matthew 6:5 he admonishes us “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get.”
How far are we really from this issue in our own hearts? Oh, it is very easy to ride a very holy high horse about the heathens across the little lane with their ungodly temples and their idols and their chanting and repeated babblings and prayers to some demonic god. But what about my own heart? Do I too make “religion” my default mode and forget the person whom I am to be worshiping and having a relationship with? God, after all, is more pleased with our love and relationship than in our unthinking religious rituals. First Samuel 15:22 states: “What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.”
Before I become too much holier-then-thou in my attitudes I must take a close look at my own heart.
A basic question for me that I still come back to constantly is the one that I have been reflecting upon throughout my recent entries, namely, how do I present, and represent the reality of the living Jesus to someone who is steeped in another religion? How do I present Jesus as relevant to someone who is very religious and devout in his faith to a false god?
Bali gods with an umbrella
I was reading the books of First and Second Peter earlier today and found something interesting in Peter’s writings. In 1 Peter 1 verse 3 he says “Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! God has given us a new birth because of his great mercy. We have been born into a new life that has a confidence which is alive because Jesus Christ has come back to life.”
Something jumped out at me in the very end of the verse – “a new life that has a confidence which is alive because Jesus Christ has come back to life.” I saw Peter, perhaps for the first time, as a man. He was a man who had lived with, worked with, eaten with, loved, denied, abandoned and been forgiven by the man Jesus. How difficult it must have been in so many ways to make that astronomical leap of faith from seeing Jesus as the man, the friend, to Jesus the Christ, God in the flesh. How necessary it was for him to say “our confidence which is alive because Jesus Christ has come back to life.” His confidence had to be grounded in the reality that Jesus had come back to life again from the dead. After all, he had spent over three years with Jesus the man. He had seen him die. He had seen his dead body in the tomb. His benchmark for confidence in faith was that this same Jesus was now resurrected from the grave and was now his living Lord.
Later he states in 2 Peter 1:16-19 “We weren’t, you know, just wishing on a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ. We were there for the preview! We saw it with our own eyes: Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father as the voice of Majestic Glory spoke: “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight.” We were there on the holy mountain with him. We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears. We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard—God’s glory, God’s voice. The prophetic Word was confirmed to us. You’ll do well to keep focusing on It.” (The Message)
Jesus the Christ – the resurrected Jesus. Jesus resplendent with light, the One of whom the Father stated “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight.”
Somehow this brings everything back into focus for me again. Have we been trying to make everything too complicated with our theology degrees, our libraries with tome upon tome written upon the most obscure (and perhaps irrelevant) aspects about religion, while we have forgotten the meat and potatoes of the real person of Jesus?
What did Paul say when he began to boil the Christian faith down to its essence: “Friends, let me go over the Message with you one final time— this Message that I proclaimed and that you made your own; this Message on which you took your stand and by which your life has been saved. (I’m assuming, now, that your belief was the real thing and not a passing fancy, that you’re in this for good and holding fast.) The first thing I did was place before you what was placed so emphatically before me: that the Messiah died for our sins, exactly as Scripture tells it; that he was buried; that he was raised from death on the third day, again exactly as Scripture says; that he presented himself alive to Peter, then to his closest followers, and later to more than five hundred of his followers all at the same time…that he then spent time with James and the rest of those he commissioned to represent him; and that he finally presented himself alive to me.” 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 (The Message).
I fear that with all of our religious professionalism, our degrees and seminaries, our religion and dogmas, our rituals and libraries upon tedious libraries of books about Jesus we may have missed the real McCoy – the One to whom the Father affirmed his divine love.
Woman in a field
Clay Crosse said it well in his song “Saving the World”
“So many preachers, so many churches and denominations got their opinions and their documents and statements and beliefs and sometimes there’s a miscommunication and we complicate the truth and convolute the story. But as far as I recall I do believe it all comes down to a man dying on a cross saving the world, rising from the dead doing what He said He would do. Loving everyone He saw. When it’s said and done it all comes down to a man dying on a cross saving the world.
It isn’t a secret, and maybe I’m being simple minded, but it’s about Jesus and a way, a truth, a life that can change a heart and soul forever. And we need to be reminded it’s the power of the blood that brings us to redemption. We can rise above the fall, and the reason for it all comes down to a man dying on a cross saving the world, rising from the dead doing what He said He would do. Loving everyone He saw. When it’s said and done it all comes down to a man dying on a cross saving the world.
An old man in Bali
All the people beneath the steeple are just reaching for the truth that can save a helpless soul. We wrestle with the mystery in the teaching, but the news is all good. I think that we should remember one thing, it is all about a man dying on a cross saving the world, rising from the dead doing what He said He would do. Loving everyone He saw. When it’s said and done it all comes down to a man dying on a cross saving the world.”
It is not religion that the world so desperately needs nor for which hearts are so longingly crying out. There are plenty of religions to go around – and more besides. If Christianity is no more than a dogma and another religion – even if a very nice and good one – then it is less than worthless. Men and women are bound enough by plenty of religiosity and religion, they don’t need another one.
A strangling god
But they need Jesus. Jesus who died for their sins exactly as Scripture says. Jesus who was buried. Jesus who was raised from the dead on the third day. Jesus who then presented himself alive and as Savior. This is the Jesus, the Christ that the world longs to meet – not another dead religion.
My prayer is that we all would fall in love again with the living Jesus. When we know this Jesus He will overflow from our lives as healing and living water – flowing from our very bellies just as He said he would do.
