Russell Brand and Special Revelation

1. A Different Brand of Message

Even a loose cannon is right twice a day?

Along with thousands of other people online, I have been entertained by some of Russell Brand's viral posts (one on the existence of God, another on the problem of porn in today's society) which have circulated recently.
One can't help but wish the man was a believer, both for his own soul's sake and also in terms of the impact his native intelligence and charisma would allow him to have for the kingdom. (On the other hand, we see repeatedly in scripture and in life that God purposefully chooses the humble and unimpressive as His instruments to accomplish His purposes, for His greater glory.)

Mr. Brand is a man of... interesting beliefs, and an interesting background. If you weren't aware of his existence prior to those videos which are circulating to some extent in the Churchosphere, go searching for much of his other material and you might find yourself scrambling for the pause or back buttons. So understand that of course my post is in no way an endorsement of Mr. Brand as a good role model (he would insist that he is not, and we would all agree), or his opinions to be generally trustworthy. (He's a marxist, self-confessed heroin addict who enjoys transcendental meditation, for starters)

I'm not linking to the videos here because I'm not really interested in promoting Mr. Brand and his variety of other outspoken opinions on this blog; if you are a responsible adult feel free to find them on YouTube. ("Russell Brand", "Stephen Fry", "is there a God" will take you to the first. Take note, it includes Stephen Fry's arrogant, blasphemous little rant accusing God of being neither sane nor good.)

While Brand argues against the possibility of a literal interpretation of (any religion's) scripture, and says he doesn't like dogma or organized religion, he does argue enthusiastically that we live in a world where there is a sort of God behind everything, and whose image is reflected in us, and supports the basic idea of a sin nature. In the second video he argues that pornography is wrong, goes against conscience and warps our perspective of each other as human beings, and that both men and women (and he himself) should stop doing it.

The first video, though too vague to call support for a monotheistic concept of God, was also an effective refutation of Stephen Fry's disrespectful and unsubstantial proclamation of unbelief in a recent interview. Though lacking any logic and pretending perfectly good answers to his questions haven't existed for hundreds of years, Stephen Fry was rhetorically aggressive in his "assault" of theodicy, and millions of non-scientist science groupies, "brights," and god-denying, would-be intellectuals doubtless think it quite a devastating argument and the end of any discussion. (Ideological wars are reminiscent of the Bronze Age; most soldiers weren't particularly good at fighting and nobody liked dying, so it was often preferable to have two champions fight and each side could cheer theirs on.)

But Brand basically popped up unexpectedly and dismantled Fry's negative attack, and it's strange but compelling stuff. It's hard to think of an American equivalent, but it would be a bit like the countering argument to Bill Nye coming not from Ken Ham, but an excited Steven Tyler.

The strange thought occurred to me that, sadly, in some ways the videos are better than various sermons I've heard. I have sat through plenty of vaguely topical sermons, in churches both in America and in Taiwan. Honestly, watching those two videos of Brand's excited rambling probably made more of a difference in my life overall than listening to some of those sermons did.

2. Majoring on our Minors

How could that be? Because I'm a worldly Christian who needs dubious celebrities to say things on TV or the internet before I believe them? Because I'm not willing to search for some applicable truth to my life in every sermon I hear, even the bad ones? As Paul wrote, "By no means!" Much of what Brand says are simply purported truths he's personally noticed about our world that are misunderstood or purposefully obscured. One reason his words in those videos resonated with many people is that much of what he claims to be true is truth that can be seen from the world, what we would call general revelation. To borrow Paul's words again, from Romans 1, evidence for God can be plainly seen in what has been created. Those who reject that evidence are given over to depravity and sentenced to live out the consequences of the delusion they preferred to the truth.

Brand has indeed indulged in depravity, admits he still does a variety of wrong things when he can't stop himself, and can speak with sincerity of what results from it. In recent years, he has sought the path of becoming "a better person," and now apparently seeks to encourage everyone to be better people as well. It's a sort of secular gospel, with some truths we would recognize as scriptural mixed in there here and there, with a lot of hindu-ish mysticism and Brand's own randomness mixed in. It does come across as an interesting breath of fresh air in the addled chaotic mess that a culture of "do as thou wilt" has led us to. But clearly, it's not the gospel of Christ that brings eternal life, not the message the Church is on earth to proclaim.

Conversely, when the Church lays aside its unique identity and blessings, loses sight of a gospel focus and tries to copy what the World already specializes in, it fails almost every time. That extends all the way to the pulpit. If you just want to pick a topic and give a good talk, there's someone in the world who has more natural talent and can do it better than you. A gifted agnostic speaker could no doubt pick a Biblical topic and give a better talk on it than many preachers "sharing" a message. Many would be edified, (earthly) lives would be changed, etc. That's the power of a good speaker.

So what does the church have that the most positive, talented, morally-upright (in content, if not in life) speakers and encouragers don't have? We have the special revelation of God about Himself and His promises, accurately in the words of scripture and perfectly in the person of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to proclaim that revelation and live it out in this world. That's "all."

The Church instituted by Jesus Christ to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and make disciples of all nations until He comes has been equipped by God to do exactly that, and no one else can do it. So we preach Christ resurrected, and a hope placed not in this world but in its Creator. Or at least we should preach that.

Whenever we stop preaching it, whenever we start trying to make people better, or use man's wisdom to achieve God's results, or desperately long for recognition from Hollywood, the media, etc. to validate our way of life and thought, we fail.

What Russell Brand demonstrates is that general revelation, truth anyone can observe which ought to lead them to seek out God, is out there, and those in the world with the motivation and willingness to do so can perceive it, at certain times and in certain ways. This kind of general truth is never a bad topic, but if that's all we're preaching, we're not sharing much that Mr. Brand can't say too, probably more interestingly. We have more to offer: the words of eternal life.

3. Κήρυξον τὸν λόγον (Preach the Word)

So then, why do we keep trying to major on our minors? I don't even know. There are probably a hundred reasons, not least of which is the constant clamor of the world around us. We live in the "loudest" age there has ever been, with more distractions than have ever been, being bombarded constantly by more information than humans have ever had to endure. Eventually, it seems compelling. The problems with which we are confronted by the world seem compelling for the same reasons. That's an external factor.
 An internal factor is that a lot of pastors are tired. Regardless of whether or not they've ever been trained to dig deeply into scripture and present the fruits of that labor to their flocks in an effective and challenging way (globally, most have not), sometimes they simply have too much on their plates for one human being.

This could be their own fault, for not saying "no" when they should, but more often it's because a lot of Christians "delegate up," assuming many of the spiritual responsibilities of every believer are really the job of "professional Christians." (Of course Christians should try to do it more, but you have to do it, it's your job. Even as a fairly new missionary I've heard that line a time or two.)

I have good news for the church: God trusts you with the job too. There are no professional Christians, there are only professing Christians. Want to change the church overnight? Convince those sitting in rows on Sunday morning, or maybe even yourself, that church is not an event, it's us. We are the Church, and every believer is a priest; we are, as one of my Hebrew professors at seminary wrote, a Kingdom of Priests. Christ is our heavenly mediator, and we are His representatives on earth. There's no one else to give that job to; no one else is doing it if we aren't.

Of course, it's true pastors do have a sacred responsibility to proclaim the word. And a nice homily on showing gratitude or being kind to others is great, but it doesn't provide vital spiritual nourishment any more than a cookie does. We live in a wrecked world, infected with evil. Evil men are systematically rounding up and murdering Christians as you read this, both in Africa and in the Middle East. If the roots of our faith are not deep, the winds of adversity or attacks of temptation will simply knock us down. A topical message with a couple relevant verses simply won't cut it. Believers need the spiritual protein from the meat of the Word to build the necessary muscles, or we'll be weak Christians forever. And that's not the kind of weakness the Bible is talking about when it says "when we are weak, He is strong," it's more like the weakness of Proverbs 24:10: "If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small." We must Preach the Word.

So in conclusion, if our faith is weak, and our understanding of the Word is weak, we cannot boldly proclaim Christ to the world. We won't even see why we should, let alone be willing to risk loss and embarrassment for it. Maybe we'll retreat to nice-sounding messages with "enough Bible" to be legitimate. Maybe we'll even retreat to "positive, morally-uplifting" messages that lack scriptural foundation altogether. At that point we're no more helpful than Mr. Brand; we've left our spiritual inheritance, and wandered into the domain where he speaks with more authority to many than we. How embarrassing would that be?

Bit by Bit - Grace Lag

Explanation for this blog series (Can skip if you're a gamer):

Back in the day, the internet was a source of great excitement, because now anyone could share their thoughts with millions of people. Shortly afterwards, the internet became a source of great frustration, because now anyone could share their thoughts with millions of people.

As one of those people trying to get your eyes to continue reading my words, I am aware of this difficulty, and that you don't want to waste your time. Therefore, I am trying to write about things regarding which I have some experience and can contribute something valuable. Whether I succeed or not is a subjective question that only you can answer for yourself.

For most millennials/Gen Y, especially perhaps those of us in the early years of the generational cohort, video games were a part of growing up. The first Christmas that I can remember distinctly, we got an NES, and 8-bit theme songs immediately began embedding themselves into my impressionable kid-brain. My parents, having bought it for us, decided to see what sort of thing it was, began playing around with it, looked up and found a couple hours had passed without their realizing it, and have instinctively disliked video games in general from that moment on. (They see nothing unusual with an evening of TV watching, however. Accepting the latter and not the former seems like a pretty clear example of generational bias to me!)

Anyway, what I'm trying to do with this series is connect in a humorous but truthful way with a generation who was raised on video games, whether console or computer or handheld. Video games, by their very nature, impact one's ways of thinking very deeply, and have affected our culture so greatly that probably very few people realize the true extent. Arguably, what sports analogies/metaphors were to earlier generations, video game metaphors are to ours.

For example, I know what "well boys, we're in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded" means, but I don't 'feel' the analogy, it's not instinctive. I might even have to pause for a moment to process it. But for millions of us, saying "alright guys, we're at the final boss battle" communicates the same basic idea in an instinctive way. (Attend a business meeting years down the road and I bet you phrases like this will be thrown around.)

Since, for better or worse, so many of my generation's minds have been engaged in game-playing for hours every week for years, to me it only makes sense to speak to this subculture. Paul uses metaphors based on the culture of athleticism in Greek metaculture, something the Gentiles he wrote to (and probably most Jews of the period as well) would be familiar with. Though we are also a culture which highly values athletics and have no trouble understanding these metaphors, I boldly submit that thousands of students who know the meaning of "run in such a way as to win the prize" would still reflexively nod in deeper understanding if one paraphrased it "play in such a way as to beat the level."

So, with that being said, here's the first entry..

Bit by Bit: Grace Lag

(Bit by Bit is a series I'll do from time to time expressing gospel truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

One of the most frustrating phenomena a gamer can experience is lag. Your rocket-dodging skills are rendered useless as your character freezes on screen; a confused second later and you are dead. Or you are trying to recreate the batcave in minecraft and have to mine the same block 3 times before it stays mined. Or your game simply sits there inert until your internet connection stabilizes, and meanwhile your party members are messaging you impatiently. Nobody likes lag, except maybe griefers, who can only be described as the enemies Jesus commands us to love, if indeed we count them as human beings.

Lag is an old word which entered English before Shakespeare, from Scandinavia. (Thought to derive from the Norwegian "lagga," meaning "to go slowly." One imagines a bunch of vikings making fun of that one longship in back with an oar that keeps getting stuck.. "Ja, it's locked up again, they're lagging bad." Sweden's gaming culture has deeper roots than I'd realized...)

The word has a variety of connotations, but in the gaming sense it is a gap between your input and the realization of that input. This either results in delayed realization, or a failure for your input to have any effect at all. Let us say, for example, you are playing an online shooter, and right before a bad lag, you give the game a command:
<Toss a Grenade>

Having done so, in one sense the grenade can be considered thrown, because, unless your connection gets totally dropped or the lag exceeds a certain time limit, your command will reach its destination, some bits will shift around, and eventually the display will show you a graphical representation of the result. Most games do not have a Ctrl-Z function, so once you have told the game you want to toss a grenade, you cannot then take advantage of the lag-induced delay to quickly Undo the grenade toss, there is no such command. So the grenade, for better or worse, has already been thrown.

Yet in another sense, the grenade has not been thrown. While waiting on the lag to resolve, you do not know at what point in the process of a) the command being issued, b) the execution of the command, c) and seeing the results of the command you are. You do not know whether the grenade's actions have been seen by other people before you, or whether perhaps the delay was simply too long, and the results of the command will never materialize. From your perspective, the grenade has not yet been thrown.

So we could say, regarding the throwing of the lagged grenade, that it is "already but not yet" thrown.

This, as it so happens, is a very important theological concept: in a similar fashion, we say that Jesus is "already but not yet" enthroned.

Christ has received that name above every other name, that at His name every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under it. He has been proclaimed Lord; He has won the victory. Yet Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that He must reign until all His enemies have been put under His feet. If Jesus already won, what's all this "until" business? If the command was effective, why can't we see the results of it?

Lag.
Intentional Divine lag.

God is purposefully delaying the inevitable earthly display of Christ's victory and rightful status of sovereign Lord of all creation. There is no extra requirement Christ needs to fulfill, no steps God must take before Jesus is ready to assume His place as the Alpha and Omega, the God-King of a world burned clean of evil. Jesus assumes humanity, wins the total victory, comes back to life as the firstborn of the dead, ascends into heaven with the disciples thinking He will return at any moment, and... pause. Confusing lag in the display of what is proclaimed to have already occurred, and that was two millennia ago.

But why would God introduce two thousand years of lag into His victory? 

Short answer: For us. The lag is the world's limited-time opportunity to come to God before the end.
Jesus won the victory, and before He takes charge, He delays, offering the world the chance to change their allegiance, to join His side before He destroys all His enemies, which they currently are. That is purely grace. And it is intentional grace, because His self-sacrifice and victory over sin and death were unnecessary for Himself. He did it for us, so that we could share in His joy instead of perishing in His wrath.

The Apostle Peter talks about this in 2 Peter chapter 3:

⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Peter is saying, I think, something to the effect of: "I love you, but you really shouldn't complain that after saving you, God is delaying His return to save other people too."

It's natural, of course. No one likes lag. Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation and our own inner selves are groaning in frustration at the delay. But the delay is for the salvation of millions of people from every tribe, clan, people group, and language.

So we have to endure the lag because we know the reason for it, though no one specifically enjoys it. Except possibly griefers, as I mentioned earlier, but Peter mentions their ilk a few verses earlier in chapter 3 as well: 

³ Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. ⁴ They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

In other words, scoffers gonna scoff. But we know that the level isn't completed until the required number of hostages are saved, and that having been rescued it's our job to free other hostages. Would you want Jesus to come back before your friends are saved? Take advantage of the lag, then, and tell them about Him.
This game has no save points or restarts; when it ends, it's over.

TL;DR:
God's gracious lag is a chance for the world to quickly swap to His side, because Jesus is just about to log onto the server, and as we all learned in Unreal Tournament, you want to be on the side that has the Redeemer.

"Relevancy"

Beginning in the late 19th century, in the face of seemingly unanswerable attacks by post-Enlightenment scholarship, many German liberal theologians tried to save what they saw as the valuable cultural institution of Christianity by removing the supernatural portions of our Faith. They perceived their goal as that of saving the Church, but only succeeded in attempting to discard the Faith itself. In so doing they denied the power of the gospel, and were left with only the fading inertia of whatever positive moral influences it still provided in their society, and the lovely exterior covering of tradition and meaning it had accrued over time. (For my computer-literate friends, we might say they wanted to throw out most of the source files yet somehow retain a functioning GUI.)

I suspect decades down the road, American cultural Christianity (from the megachurches down) might be accused of something similar: discarding the hard truths of Scripture not to remain relevant in the face of Rationalism, but to remain relevant in an entertainment-crazed culture in which the only absolute is that the final arbiter of good and evil is society's collective opinion, which must never be contradicted or opposed.
And looking around, we do find that much of the Church in America is preoccupied in chasing the idol of false relevancy. This is sadly ironic in that one thing the Church, commanded to communicate eternal, unchanging Truth to the world, has always been particularly poor at is achieving the sort of relevancy which must constantly change with the times and trends. The church seems bent on playing catch-up with the world, either "Come see, we do that too," or "We made our own, Christian version of that," not realizing that while this attempt to stay on top of secular trends may seem cool to those who remain within the Christian bubble, it is woefully unimpressive to those who do not.

Imagining an elderly couple trying to use communication age acronyms like "lol" and "ikr" to seem relevant to their grandchildren is a good illustration. Will this impress their grandchildren? Most likely not, though they may find it amusing. And outside the family context, as a longtime youth worker I can testify to how embarrassing it is when anyone old enough to have children in school tries to adopt the latest speech styles of students "to relate to them." (Seriously, don't ever do it, we cringe in embarrassment for you.)

Few things make a person seem more actually out of touch than trying to pretend they are relevant in this particular way. Part of the reason for this is that, seemingly contrary to popular opinion, students are quite aware that older adults have useful lessons to offer them. And this is what they want, not inherently doomed attempts on the part of the speaker to pretend they are still young enough to be socially relevant. All people want to hear something which they think will be valuable for them, and the style used to convey it should be whatever can best not interfere with its delivery.

The earlier example is the same; the grandparents don't need to try to be trendy, their grandchildren (hopefully) already love and respect them. And if not, then attempting to adopt their language will only hurt the cause. Grandparents are 100% relevant, however, when they offer what only they can, the unique dynamic of love, wisdom, and affection which leaps across two generations and enriches both.

The Church is no different. We are not Steve Jobs, who walked the earth 2 years ago and is now dead. We are the Body of Christ, who walked the earth 2000 years ago and lives, and is the source of life. We've been given precious, eternal truth, and our clumsy attempts to impress the world by looking like it merely distract. The revelation of the identity of God and atoning work of Christ has overthrown empires, and permanently changed the course of human affairs. The trends of a particular decade are vanishingly flimsy and transient by comparison. (And there is a secret which seems to have eluded even those relevancy-chasing church leaders but is apparent through the example of Islam today: In our relativistic age, that which refuses to compromise is increasingly relevant by its very nature, like a rock in a stream which forces the water to flow around it.)

The Church is only relevant when we deal in what only the Church possesses, the unchanging, eternal truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which can transform a life today just as easily as it did a thousand years ago.
It is not the world's message, it is a message which the world lacks, and is dying to hear.
Life-saving truth is always relevant.

Why I'm Going to Taiwan, Part Three

This is the last of a three-part series on why I'm going to Taiwan for long-term missions.

Reason I'm going to Taiwan #3: The gospel is barely present there.

This might seem like a very obvious reason, but I have listed it third for a reason. While it indeed is a perfectly appropriate motive for taking the gospel cross-culturally in general (An all-consuming zealousness for God's greater glory in all the world would seemingly be the highest motive, but wiser men than I have weighed in on this issue), it does not necessarily lead us directly to a particular ministry field. We must be careful not to substitute pragmatism or even splagchnizomai for God's leading. Many places in the world lack widespread gospel presence, and while that fact obviously shows we have much work ahead of us to fulfill the Great Commission, we must still go through the process of seeking God's will and determining to which ministry field we will go.

Missiologists would identify our current phase of world mission as focusing on unreached people groups. This is as it should be, as our responsibility is to take the gospel to every culture, and not to move through cultures one by one until the gospel is accepted by a majority in each (something which we know from Scripture (Matt 7:14) will sadly seldom occur).

So one can see that the least-reached areas deserve special attention and focus, and many are called, as was Paul, to preach the gospel where Christ is not known, so as not to "build on someone else's foundation." (Rom 15:20) But the appropriate ministry area for any particular missionary, however, is not necessarily the "least-reached" one, but the one to which God leads him.

For me, realizing (really realizing, not just acknowledging as a fact) just how few Taiwanese know God or have a chance to hear about Him in a relevant way rocked me to my core. Knowing that for every 100 Taiwanese people I saw on the crowded streets, at least 97 of them did not know Christ, and would die unreconciled to God and be eternally away from His presence, was almost more than I could bear. (For more info on the state of the church in Taiwan or anywhere else, I recommend looking at the latest edition of Operation World.)

That was one of the primary motivators for me to consider missions in general. (I hadn't yet decided on Taiwan in particular, that process is described more in the first two parts of this series.) I enjoyed my job as an engineer, and knew it was a blessing from God. But I could no longer in good conscience merely sit at my desk every day and make a very good income knowing that halfway around the world, people I had become quite aware of through my trips were living and dying almost wholly without the knowledge of the gospel. I could not do it.

So I began to open myself to the idea of missions, although I had never considered myself missionary-material before. Honestly, I wasn't crazy about working with people at all at this point. I did C++ programming mostly at work, and it made sense. Tell the computer to do A, and if it didn't do A, you could be more or less certain that you had told it wrong. People, on the other hand, were unpredictable, and seemed to get emotional over the strangest things. (On the Myers-Briggs personality test I am an INTP, aka the Rational-Architect, which is not at all what people generally consider "a missionary personality.")
So I prayed to God, and suggested that if He wanted me to be a missionary, He would have to help me develop a heart for people in reality and not merely the abstract. This prayer He has been continually answering since I prayed it; I am a very different person now, though still an INTP. (I have also learned that there is no "missionary personality," and that INTP's or ESFJ's are equally able to love people and serve God cross-culturally. I am living testimony that someone whose idea of a satisfying night was reading books on Chess strategy alone with some hot tea can be used by God just as much as someone whose idea of a satisfying night is sharing your deepest feelings with two dozen of the new best friends you met last week... but more on that in a later blog entry!)

Concurrent with this growing missional awareness was the realization that God had plans for me that involved Taiwan specifically. During my second trip to Taiwan, while praying at the gospel-sharing evening of our summer camp, God spoke to me as clearly as He ever has, and let me know that I needed to go back to Taiwan. I asked the missionary field leader there what to do. He recommended I stay in Taiwan for a year and experience life and ministry there, and then make a decision about longer-term ministry, if that was applicable. After prayer, I felt strongly that this was the next step God was leading me towards, and so I agreed to do it.

Then it was a question of quitting my engineering job. Strangely, this was one of the easier parts. Once God had made something as clear as He had made this to me, it was simply a question of whether or not I would obey Him. And I had no desire to end up in whatever the equivalent of a big fish's stomach for three days would turn out to be for me... so I thanked my boss for the opportunity to work at my company and the experience I'd had there, and gave notice. To say that the next year I spent in Taiwan was life-changing would be both trite and an understatement. By the end of that time, I was not only convinced that long-term service in Taiwan was something God had prepared me to do, but that I would be happy to do it, if that was His will. (The process of determining that with confidence is dealt with in the previous two entries.)

So that completes the story of why I am going to Taiwan, and I would welcome any additional questions you might have.

Praise be to the Lord Most High for calling each of us in our weakness and imperfection as vessels of His own gospel, that we might share in the eternal blessing of bringing glory to His name!