The Phillies made it, AGAIN!

Wow, this is amazing. The Phillies are in the world series again! Two years in a row. Back to back. What an amazing accomplishment...

And where am I? I'm about as far away from all of it as you can get. On the other side of the world. Where not one person has told me. Where not one soul has mentioned how overjoyed their hearts are about this outcome. About how worried they are about facing the Yankees.....and on and on....I'm missing it all. And honestly, it's opened my eyes to something major.

Now what I am about to say is not meant to spoil any joy, kill any fun, or take away from the excitement of the world series. Especially when our good ol' Phils are in it. But I just wanted to share some reflections I've been having recently about this phenomenon we call "sports."

When I went back home in July to see my family and friends for a month, there were many things that I missed, many things that I enjoyed, and also many things that I had forgotten about. One of them is "sports chat." In South Korea, they have sports, but it's much less pervasive in the culture. Teams are not categorized by location, but instead by company. So the Samsung team will play the LG team. Things like that. So needless to say, not too many people care about it. The only thing Korea really gets fired up about is the World Cup. And as for now, I'm not really around for that. So being in South Korea for so long, I forgot how much of American's conversations are dominated by, and often centered around sports.

Literally, basically, honestly, I would say 80% of the people I talked to in America mentioned the Phillies within the first 15 minutes of conversation. It's just classic, "how's the weather?" conversation; instead it's "how about them Phils?" But it seemed so much heavier than I remembered it. And then I realized why?

BECAUSE the Phillies are actually good now! All of a sudden, everyone wants a piece of them. It was in the air went I went home. I could smell the Phillies on people's breath. If the Phillies won that day, everyone was happy and talking about it. If the Phillies lost, everyone was depressed and talking about it. Either way, the Phillies were on everyone's mind.

And in some ways, this seemed to be a good thing. It seems to be a common unifier amongst people. People can have nothing in common, but you mention the Phillies, and they're talking like they were college roomates for 4 years.

When I came back to Korea, I was reflecting on my time back in the States, and I thought about how strange the Phillies environment was to me. Immediately I was reminded of Marshal McLuhan. His famous quote goes,

“We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish.”

People can't see their own blindspots in their own culture. Fish don't realize water, because they're swimming in it. In the same way, people don't realize things that are obvious to outsiders, because they are neck-deep in them. It's how they live. It's the air they breathe. And sports seemed to me to be the most relevant, eye-catching example of this in America today.

Now, what water am I referring to here? Well, let me take a moment and refer you to a Mark Driscoll video clip. Please watch it now, and then continue reading my blog. It's only 2 minutes longs, so please, please watch it now.



Driscoll said, "Your god is your sportsteams, and you build multi-million dollar stadiums to house them."

Now I am no foreigner to idolatry. Media, attention, approval, recreation, things like these are constant sources of idolatry in my life. It just so happens that sports was never one of those idols for me, so maybe it's a cheepshot for me to point this one out, but that's the penalty for the Phillies making it this far I guess^_^.

Now before you start defending yourself, which I'm sure you could do well, and I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, I would just ask you to take a moment, and think about all of the time this past week you've thought, talked about, researched, or watched the Phillies. How much has it dominated your conversations with friends, co-workers, church members? How evenly balanced have your affections for the Phillies been with your affections for God?

Just in the clip I posted a couple blogs ago, the title was "Test Yourself: Christ or Football?" Do you love the Phillies more than you love Christ? Now this may seem like a patronizing question to some, and I'm sorry if it is, but for me it's earth-shattering and extremely heart-wrenching. I think about all of the time I spent "worshiping" movies. All of the time I spent adoring movies and trying to push other people's affections towards movies. I think about all of the money I gave to movies. All of the time and energy and thought I gave to them. It's shameful for me. It's humbling. It made me completely re-evaluate everything now to the point where I've had to almost completely divorce myself from movies for a while so that I may get my affections straight.

In the same way, you need to ask yourself the tough questions. Because your life will be laid bare when you do. You'll be left with nothing but a plea for the grace of Christ to cover all of your sins. Any shred of self-sufficiency you had will be gone! Any sense of merit before God will be blown away.

I want you to picture a world where every time the word "Phillies" comes up, we replace it with "Christ." What would that look like?

What would unify us?

What would bring us joy?

Wha would bring us tears?

What would dominate our time, conversations, and affections?

CHRIST!

I think about all of the eagerness to discuss sports, and I replace that with an eagerness to share the love of Christ with one another, and the thought is almost too lofty to entertain. Do we see the idolatry in our own hearts? Or are we so saturated by it that it has become the water that we swim in?

Now once again, I don't be to rain on the parade. Continue to celebrate and watch the games. The Phillies winning can only help the city of Philadelphia I think, so in that I rejoice. But I pray that as you watch, and as you cheer, and as you rejoice or lament (depending on the outcome), that you would have Christ first and foremost in your affections, and that he would be the one dominating your thoughts, conversations, and time!

One more video to hit home and the all surpassing greatness of Christ, and the ulimate triviality of our earthly idols.

I should care more

Recently I've been pretty hit with a few striking realizations that in fact, aren't very new or very difficult to realize. The first hit me when I was walking back from church one day. Every Sunday, after church, when I get back to my section of Seoul, I pass some street preachers next to a department store. I don't catch much of what they're saying, but the giant poster with Christ on it and person in flames makes it pretty clear to me what is being talked about.

Now many people I know might look down upon this style of Evangelism. Saying that it's not effective. That it's too pushy. That people don't want to hear about hell, damnation, wrath, punishment, and anger. They need to be wooed into the grace of God. So, I thought, what's the opposite of this street evangelism.

I won't mention any names, but the opposite is the "Prosperity Gospel." So, people in the past have said, "Ok, the whole fire and brimstone thing is out-dated, we need a new angle. How about selling the gospel to people. Cater to their already in-born idolatry and show them how the gospel can give them everything their idolatrous heart needs. Maybe that will bring in some church attendees."

AND THEY WERE RIGHT! The prosperity preachers bring in some of the biggest memberships in all of the world. These preachers write best-selling books, (translated and sold at record-breaking numbers in Korea as well), they're on all of the TV stations, radio stations, and everyone loves them. Even people who don't believe in God tune in to listen to them.

So I guess, they must be right. If it's working, why criticize it...right?

WRONG!

I don't recommend it, but there's this video by one preacher (I'm not mentioning names because I don't want to go down that path of bitterness), where he criticizes the street evangelist saying, "No one is stopping to listen to you." And I thought to myself, he's right. No one is stopping to listen to the street evangelists. When I pass these guys in Korea each week, I never see anyone stopping to listen. But the question is WHY?

Why are millions upon millions of people dedicated to the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, but no one every stops to listen to the guy telling people about hell? Well, for one, it's only natural. People don't like bad news. Nobody likes facing harsh realities. It's much more appealing to go to the guys promising all of these blessings without any kind of commitment, then to go to the guy who is asking you to take up your cross daily or you're going to burn. So it's only natural for people to go the prosperity preacher.

Secondly, and much more devistatingly, people are blind to the truth. If every day, you wave a 100 dollar bill in front of a blind man, it doesn't matter how clear it may seem to you, he's not going to reach out and grab it. In the same way, no matter how clear the message of the gospel may be spoken in the streets, apart from the Holy Spirit, people will never stop to listen. Then why are so many blind people going to these prosperity preachers? If they're blind to truth, why would they go? Because the prosperity gospel is not the gospel. I've already shown you that Piper clip on the prosperity gospel I think twice now, but here's the link one more time for anyone who's interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s

So anyway, I went on a big tangent, but the point was, about how I felt about those street preachers. I think most Christians wouldn't identify themselves with those people. Saying, those guys seem a little strange to me. But the more I think about it, they seem to me to be the only sane kind of Christian there is!!

If you, as a Christian, know that apart from saving faith in Jesus Christ, a person will go to hell, FOREVER, why wouldn't you be telling people about it daily. I mean, these street preachers seem so similar to the early church. Look at Acts 3:11-26, Acts 2, Acts 5:25, Acts 6:8, the entire ministry of Paul. They seem a lot like street preachers to me. I mean, if you know that Christ is coming back, in glory, and that everyone not saved will ask for the rocks to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:15-17), if you look at Luke 16's account of the rich man who goes to hell and then begs to have Lazarus dip just the tip of his finger in water to cool is tongue, if you really believe this to be true, how can we coast through life? How can we?

I don't know what it is? Perhaps it's that we truly don't believe in hell. Or perhaps it's that we have so trained ourselves to run from anguish, that when a "Holy Anguish", that comes prompted by the Holy Spirit, fills our hearts and minds with anguish for the souls of the lost, we just run from it. I'm not sure why I'm so passive towards making disciples. I'm not sure why I'm so scared of making social situations awkward by bringing up Christ amongst non-Christians. I'm not sure why I feel like street evangelism would be the hardest thing in the WORLD for me to do.

And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that street evangelism is always the best way, or that it's even a good way to do evangelism. I'm still wrestling through that in my mind. I realize that there's a time and a place, and that the best evangelism happens through relationships, not yelling at who are passing by, degrading them and calling them sinners. I understand the rejections very well. But my point is that we keep sitting in the judgment seat of these street preachers, saying how primitive they are, while we have no room at all to judge, because at least they care enough to give it a shot. Who are we to judge on a particular method, when we don't even make an effort to evangelize using any method.

And I just can't escape this desire in my heart to scream to my soul, "WAKE UP! SEE THE REALITY OF ETERNITY! MANY OF MY FRIENDS ARE GOING TO HELL! DON'T I CARE?"
I used to be so burdened by this that I fell into deep disillusionment with the idea of God's love, which I have already talked at length about in my blog post on predestination. But now, instead of questioning God when I see the harsh reality of eternity, I now question myself. I question my inactiveness. My passivity. My apathy towards the lost. If your friend had cancer, and you had the cure, wouldn't you want to give it to him?

I heard a really powerful sermon on this by Francis Chan, and he gave the story of this pro basketball player who was a Christian. And he said he kept having this recurring nightmare where he saw many of his teammates going to hell. And his teammates were looking back at him, with their hands in the air, looking at him and saying, "Are you kidding me? You mean to tell me that you knew I was going here, and you never tried to save me from this? You never tried to warn me?"

I don't know...I don't know...I don't know how anyone can coast, or put life in an entertainment mindset when people are perishing right and left. You have to become literally insane to become like that. How was I so insane for so many years? Oh how far God has to go with me. Oh the depths of my own heart. Oh how merciful God is to me not to show me how deep the sin in my life really is. Oh how selfish I am, to think that a Friday night watching a movie is time better spent, than on reaching out to someone going towards the flames.

The Christian life, can NEVER become lazy. Once it does, you've lost touch with reality.

I'll end with a video from an ATHEIST. Just watch, you'll see why I put it up here.

The Sponge...

I recently heard a very interesting, tough, difficult, and yet more glorious aspect concerning the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Recently Pastor Mark Driscoll went to Israel to prepare for a 3 year sermon series on the book of Luke. He went to many of the major areas in Israel where Jesus was, and he took a film crew with them to capture these areas on film. He said he learned something new and incredibly insightful about Jesus on his trip.

At one point, in their journey, they went to an ancient restroom. In there, there were no stalls, it was basically just a room for people to go. As most people probably guessed, they didn't have toilet paper back then. So they usually used water to clean themselves after using the bathroom. But something else they also did was use a sponge to wipe off afterwards. But unfortunately, once hundreds of people starting using the same sponge, some people in turn got infections. So in order to disinfect the sponges, they would soak them in vinegar and sour wine. Does this sound familiar at all?

John 19:28-30 - "Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

Could it be that this sponge was the same sponge filled with the filth and dirt of hundreds of people's waste? It's discusting to think about, I know. But what part of the crucifixion isn't? Seemingly, in the gospels, this gesture seems to be an act of kindness on the part of the guards, but perhaps not. I don't know about the certainty of whether or not this sponge was meant for that purpose, but what if it was. That the last thing Jesus tasted was that bathroom sponge. And yet, in the midst of them shoving that into his mouth, he said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." And then right afterwards, to say, "It is finished." That the work of salvation and forgiveness had been completed in that moment.

And then I thought about my own life. How often do I shove the sponge into Jesus' mouth? How often do I mockingly reject him with my sinful ways. And yet, in such great love and mercy, he forgives me, he loves me, and he sacrifices himself for me.

Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God would die for me!