“Love like this is hard! I don’t want to love this way! It is not rewarding. I am not able do it so I always fail.” (Who wants to continue trying when they always fail?) “God can do it, but I can’t. He is God after all. People just take advantage of it. They never appreciate what I do.”

Any of these ring true for you? Loving like God tells us to love is a real battle!  I have had all these emotional and rational responses at one time or another. It just seems more difficult than life should be. Doesn’t God want me to be happy some of the time?

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s step back a moment and contemplate that love.

In Compelled By Love, the authors point to one passage to show their point.

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 ESV

The love that Jesus the Christ has shown for me is the love that I am to show to others—all others. God’s amazing love for me compels me to love others. My ESV says, “For the love of Christ controls us…” 2 Corinthians 5:14 Paul is saying that Christ’s love for him controls his actions toward others, most specifically those in the Corinthian churches. Instead of living for himself, he now lives for Jesus Christ. He is bound to Jesus because of the cross, but that is a good thing. This bondage is a freeing bondage. In my sinfulness, I am so bound by how people respond to me that I am not free to love others this boldly. I am always looking at how they will respond. I am not free to truly love them unless I experience this love of God. Every Christian has received this freeing love and can therefore love others completely.

But I don’t always want to love others this way. That is where the responses at the beginning of this post come into my life. Is there any hope for me? Absolutely, and you too! We will talk more, but that will be tomorrow.

About our approach to this book…

We plan to read a section every other week and then post on those sections, but each post will be short and to the point. This means the best way is to have a few posts on each section. If any of you want to write your thoughts in a post, send it to me and I will review it and then post it. This is a great way for us to focus our discussion as much as possible. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for reading along.

“Anyone knows that ants can’t feel. You’re so tiny you don’t look real. I’m so big and you’re so small, I don’t think it’ll hurt at all.” Quote from Hey, Little Ant. If you don’t have children, that book is probably not on your bed stand. But it fits the basic idea of Under the Dome. “Ants are people too so you shouldn’t punish or kill them.” While not a direct quote, that summary gets the main idea across. Sound familiar?

King compares the characters that we know and love to ants. Ants that have no real life. Ants that can be played with and you never have to worry about consequences. Ants that are expendable.

Is King on a campaign to get us to watch where we walk? Did an ant capture his heart? Are we suddenly to think about how small we are? Maybe there is a different connection.

“God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I’m the ant. He could fix my life in 5 minutes if He wanted to, but He’d rather burn off my feelers and watch me squirm!” Bruce from Bruce Almighty. It could have been any one of our characters.

“God’s a kid with an ant farm, lady. He’s not planning anything.” John Constantine in the movie Constantine. Get the feeling that this is a common thought?

Piper Libby, the faithless reverend, could have made these statements. I can’t find the reference now, but didn’t she connect her “god” to these alien kids playing? If you find the reference, put it in a comment.

Did King intend to mock the God of the Universe? Is “god” like those children who play with us and have no compassion, acting distant and unfeeling, cruel, unattached? (Pg 1062) It is hard to come to any other conclusion from this book. At best, God is ignored. At worst, He is just like the alien children.

So I guess we are to ignore everything God reveals about Himself. I wouldn’t suggest it. This view of God is unhealthy because it completely misses His love for mankind clearly presented in life and in Scripture.

We humans look at our lives, consider the pain and suffering that happens, and think God must not care, if He exists at all. We are very selfish and suffer from tunnel vision. We can’t see anything except what is happening to us. We refuse to see the tapestry that God has put together to actually care for humans. We can’t see His amazing love, because we don’t want to.

“The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.” Psalm 19:1

Maybe they just couldn’t see it because of the filth on the dome. Can we see it?

I hope that God opens our eyes before it is too late. We need to see from His perspective to understand. God’s gospel is the means for this sight. I hope we can see it.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Hey everyone! We have chosen the next book. It is Compelled By Love by Ed Stetzer and Philip Nation. The subtitle is The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living.

Over the last few months I have been thinking about what “missional” is and why it would be important. The more I thought about this and wrestled with it in Scripture, the more I came back to what love is. In the very beginning of the book, the authors state that the theme of the book is: “The Love of Christ Should Compel Believers in All Things”. I want to test this thesis and work through it practically. How would the love of Christ impact my every day living? How should it? Where am I in applying the love of Christ every day?

If these are of interest to you, pick up the book and join us for the discussion. The book is broken into three parts and that is how we will read it.

March 5th will be the first post on this book and it will cover pages 1-78. March 19th we will talk about pages 79-158 and on March 29th we will discuss pages 159-211. After that we will have a series of posts that summarize and discuss the application of all that we have read. This gives us a couple weeks in between each post and helps us to read and process what we are learning.

I hope that you will consider reading this with us. It should be a good time and I hope it will stretch each of us in our love motivated by what we have received. Thanks.

Hey everyone!
I wanted to get your thoughts about what the next book pick should be. I am pretty open to suggestions. I have some ideas and will choose one of them if necessary, but wanted to hear your thoughts first. Let me know soon. We will be picking in the next week.
Thanks.

Do you think King wanted to address the global warming issue in this book? I would recommend that you take a look at this interview with King and then come back and comment.

If you read the book, did you think this was covered well? What did you notice? Does it bother you when writers put things like this in?

I am very curious. More later.

Have you ever said something and afterward thought, “That is true, but there is another side to it”? As I thought about the last post for Under the Dome, I focused on the problems of the humility heralded. Now I want to highlight a positive.

Julia and Barbie learning to have humility and come to grips with their “sins” in the past, that is a good message. I applaud anything that brings attention to the sins of the “good” characters. This is something the Bible does really well. “No one does good, not even one.” That is just true and we need to remember it. Barbie and Julia’s “confession” is incomplete in that they do not turn to God with it, but I am thrilled that they see their own wrong. In that sense it is good that Big Jim was not the “sinner” that drew all the attention. He really was insignificant. The story was about Julia and Barbie. Too bad the rest of the book misled us in this way.

So Why the Big Story, Then?

King took us on an expedition that was a bit over the top. It would be like me taking you on a tour of the state of Arizona just so that I could tell you the story of one little cactus in Apache Junction. In King’s story, we are lead to believe that this story is about a variety of people and a few big issues. In reality, the focus is on two people. The rest are extras, most of which are killed.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the story. But I do think this is why many people did not like the ending. It felt forced and trite. It didn’t really fit. The book was a grand epic; the ending was a short story ending. There was just a little disconnect.

I still liked the book. After a thousand pages, I would bet that it is very hard to please people with any ending you choose. I certainly don’t hold it against King. He tells good stories. This book simply should have been shorter and more focused.

King’s longer books like this one feel like real life; they meander and stumble about with no clear indication of what is important and what is not. Most people do not like this in life and hate it when it comes to storytelling. Readers want stories that make sense of life, not ones that mirror it. We want meaning. We want clarity. We want to be able to see what is important because insignificant details are not normally included. King ignores this in his longer works. In Under the Dome, we believe Rusty is important. He is not. The story is about Julia and maybe a little about Barbie. Everyone else is just along for the ride.

What did you think about the ending? Did it satisfy you?

Is there a point or have we wasted hours of our lives reading these thousand pages? It wasn’t a waste for me; was it for you? I saw a point. I may not have liked it, but I saw it.

MAJOR SPOILERS. If you have not finished the book and want to discover the end, do not read below this!

The Point

In the end it was one person, Julia, begging for the lives of the survivors. Some alien child held their lives in the balance, determining if they should live. Most didn’t. Questioning the realness of our characters, the child felt justified in playing this little game. Is this a lesson in spirit verses physical? Interesting.

The real lesson? Human arrogance is inappropriate; humility is the only way. Julia and Barbie learned that their little lives were not as “big” as they thought. They were insignificant and they needed to learn that.

But this humility is not like the virtue God speaks about in the Bible. Humanity has earned (“paid for” is the way Julia explains it in the book) some of what is coming to them; that should cause us to be more humble. We are not in charge. God’s expectation of humility is more directly related to our sins against Him, but we will save that discussion for another post.

Life is Like a Brown Sweater

Julia’s story gives us help in understanding King’s point. Julia is stranded and vulnerable, but a girl helps by covering her with a sweater. “Wear it home, it’ll look like a dress.” This phrase comes up again as the title of the last “chapter.” It is meant to be the moral, if you can call it that. Covering. Reminds me of Adam and Eve, except “god” in this story doesn’t care. There is no compassion. How sad to think this is the lesson we should all learn. We are not as important as we think we are. (True) We have done things that have “paid” for a response against us later that we need to accept. But if we beg, we may escape some of the really horrible things that could happen. (We can’t make it better. We need the gospel.) Humility is a good thing to learn, but I would suggest this is a meaningful virtue because of the difference between God and us. He creates; we are the created. That means we should be humble.

Having Said All That…

I liked the book. Over the next few days I will post more thoughts on the book and some of the themes. I have several things to discuss, so be watching for them.

Thanks for reading along. I hope you did not see it as a waste of time. We have much to learn, maybe especially from people who disagree with us.

Yesterday I mentioned that God used this movie to convict me. No question about that. Since seeing the movie I have been thinking about how important God’s word is to me daily. Certainly it is not the gospel, but it helps me know the gospel. It is not meant to be an idol, but it is God’s very words that bring me to my greatest Treasure.

Eli tells Solara that before the war people had more than they needed, they threw away things that people would kill for now and that they lost their ability to know what was precious. Hard not to feel that right between the eyes in this country. And for Christians, wow!

“What one thing would you take to a deserted island?” As long as that is not a reality, we like to think about it. God changed that question for me. What do I currently act like is the most precious thing in my life? If God gave you a backpack with one thing in it that you treasured most in the last 6 months, what would be in your pack?

The Bible. Precious. That should be our reality.

Talking about wisdom and understanding, “…if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure…” Proverbs 2 convicts us too. What about this one: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” Psalms 119:11

God is the ultimate goal; that is true. But how precious is that book that He gave us to point to Him?

It is easy in this fast paced world to lose our bearings and leave the path. I understand. I live there too. But let’s be thankful that God brings reality crashing back into our lives so we value what truly matters.

I think some meditation and memorization is in order for me. What about you?

What exactly is a “Christian” movie? For those who have read this blog before, that is not a new question. Check out Sitting on my Christian Couch to see one example. The problem is really about what “Christian” means. Is it a point or an agenda? Is it something that is owned by a follower of Jesus? Is it simply the person who follows Jesus? People label things “Christian” all the time. Christian music is probably the biggest example. Is that simply music produced by a Christian? More Christian music exists than we think if that is the case. Typically what people mean is that the idea or point of the movie, music, etc. is a Christian idea or concept. For the sake of discussion, we will accept that for now.

Now that we have that out of the way, does Book of Eli present a Christian message? No.

This is not a movie about Christ or written by Christians, as far as I know. It is simply a movie about the Christian’s book—the Bible. It might be about God, but I doubt it. I think God shows up just to help the story rather than for us to focus on Him. In the movie, the bit parts and the starring roles are reversed. God plays the bit part, and humans will get the Oscars. Although I doubt God would show up to get His Oscar even if He got one.

I think it is a good movie, just not a Christian one.

“Christians” bloggers are asking this same question, but many of them have different reasons for questioning. They want to know how all the violence, hacking and shooting, could possibly be “Christian.” I would just recommend they read their Old Testament again this year and pay attention to the violence. It is not absent. Is Eli any different than Ehud who kills a king in one of the most powerful descriptions of violence I have read? Judges 3:12-30

Certain things in our culture are vitally important; those things that will help humanity become better. That is the point of the movie. If the gospel is what they were trying to preserve at the exclusion of everything else, then it might be a Christian message. Would anything be different in the story if we replaced the Bible with the Koran? I don’t think so. The only difference is that Christians would reject it as non-Christian. The story would make the same point and in the end the Koran would have been placed on the shelf next to the Bible.

This movie is about what matters—about what is precious. That is a good discussion. I enjoyed the film. It convicted me of many things that I needed right then and there. Let’s talk about that.

Tomorrow we will look at what does matter. See you then.