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Tag: Ordinary

Change The World?

Published by Jeff Kennon on June 3, 2015

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We are told to change the world! Jesus told us that we are “the salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” We must therefore, let our saltiness preserve and our our light shine. “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” so we must “let [our] light shine before others, so that they may see [our] good works and give glory to [our] Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:13-16).

What I wonder however, about the mandate to change the world is whether we really know what it means and what it looks like in our hum drum day to day living?  Another question I have is whether we are actually commanded to change the world. That discussion will have  to occur on another day.

In Michael Horton’s fairly new book, Ordinary, he is worried that our call to change the world is actually becoming something we hide behind. He writes, “Changing the world can be a way of actually avoiding the opportunities we have every day, right where God has placed us, to glorify him and enjoy him and to enrich the lives of others.” In other words, we can become enthralled with a social justice cause in some other country that we bypass the people God has placed in front of us everyday.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about justice around the world. We should be. It’s important. But what I think Horton is worried about is that in our desire to be change agents in the world, which always appears to be in some place other than where we live, we lose sight of doing good to the people around us. It’s like a group of students leaving on a mission trip to India for two weeks while driving by an apartment complex comprised of people from India just two blocks from where they live. Again, not saying we shouldn’t go to India. Just wondering if we are aware of those that God has placed right in front of us.

I’m thinking that our context of what it means to change the world, therefore, needs to be adjusted. The reality is that the lady who scans my groceries at the nearest food store could be struggling financially with health bills. Our next door neighbor could have a struggling marriage. The school we pass each day to and from work most likely has children that are neglected at home. The list could go on and on and I think you see the point.

Could it be that changing the world is truly about taking notice of your day to day life and realizing the opportunities that God has placed around you? Granted, praying for our neighbors and children in our local schools may not be near as glamorous as doing so overseas,  but since when has doing good for the glory of God been about us anyway?

Let’s look around some today. Miracles might not happen. The person you decide to smile at and be nice to may not reciprocate. It may just be another one of “those” days. But continue to be open and remember that many times, if not all, God uses the ordinary to do something extraordinary.

 

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Moving Beyond Amusement!

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 20, 2015

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“[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)”
–Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman

These words by Neil Postman have proven to be characteristic of our age. We long for entertainment and fear boredom. This has dramatically affected the way we educate. Material must be presented in ways that grab and keep the attention.

I don’t believe we should ever seek to be boring, but the reality is that if everything we deliver or teach has to be exciting, then its relevancy will be based not on truth, but on whether it entertained. The topic which is most exciting will be deemed as the topic that is most important.

Our entertainment driven culture has no doubt affected the way we do church. And in some ways, it should. We should learn to be engaging and learn how to tell better stories from the pulpit. The danger however, is when we feel the need to make the next church service more enthralling than the last one. When we do so, we forget the purpose of why we are at church to begin with as well as portray a false image of what it means to follow Christ.

The reality of life, and even the Christian life, is that it is not all entertainment. Some of it is rather ordinary. And some of it is a bit of work. On a Sunday morning, the sermon you hear in church might not be as exciting as the one you heard the week before. This is okay and needed. If we begin to think that Christianity and church is about a quick enjoyment of a worship service, then we have missed the heart of what it means to follow Christ.

Following Christ is about being conformed into his image (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 4:24). This means we live a life formed by the cross as we walk humbly in obedience to God, sacrificially loving and serving those around us. This is not always easy nor glamourous. As Tim Chester has written, living for Christ involves learning to wash the dishes.

You should not think however, that though our lives are filled with the ordinary, that they will be void of joy. Christ has come to give us life. And when we see the life he has given us, we will recognize all things we do as permeated by His grace. Washing dishes provides us with the opportunity to consider others. Being obedient, though difficult, will be seen in light of God’s purpose for all of humanity. Our lives will become ones in which we trust God with the mundane and understand that it is through the ordinary that God sometimes chooses to do the extraordinary.

Christianity is more than an entertaining experience. I’m not saying that we don’t or can’t experience God, but if we begin to buy into our media saturated culture and reduce following Christ to just an experience which is valued only by it’s entertainment value, then I’m afraid we will begin to stop making disciples. Instead, we will be producing consumers.

We must therefore, move beyond amusement  into amazement; amazement of what God has done for us through Christ. And for this to happen, we must trust, beyond our methods, the Spirit of God. Paul, when he preached in Corinth, made the following statement: And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Cor. 2:4-5). We do well to do the same!

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