Welcome to Hipster Theology

Disclaimer: I don't believe all "hipsters" believe in the theology I'm about to discuss, but we'll get there.

Don't judge me. You can't say anything till you've walked in my shoes. My choices are none of your business. These are the things we say to deter people from digging into our issues. We even like to put it into our theology. "Christians shouldn't judge" "Only God can judge me." Holy mole! We just found something that everyone from Miley Cyrus to Steve Jobs to Martin Luther can agree on!

Hold it. What is judgment? Here are some synonyms: Perception, sense, discernment. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I think somebody has the wrong definition of judgment and it sure isn't Webster. Where did this other definition come from? Culture. Our culture turned "judgment" into something those rich people on their golf carts and Ferrari's do to the lesser peasants. See that pregnant high school student? You can't judge her. She's been in places you can't think of. She's made a bad decision but hey, don't we all? See that guy doing drugs on the corner? He's homeless and going through more pain then you can imagine. See the thug stealing some beer from the gas station? Don't judge him. He's addicted and can't help it... That guy who just got murdered? Don't judge the perp... He's a good guy, he just made some bad decisions. The first couple examples seemed okay. They sounded familiar even. Where have you heard that? Probably on your run-of-the-mill prime-time drama. Let me rephrase those examples to a Christian worldview. See that sinner-saved-by-grace? She sinned against God and threw His commandments in the dirt. She was made in His image for perfection and she took that image and used it for momentary pleasure. Don't talk to her about it though...it's none of your business.

I read in a Book once (that I've quoted on here a few times) that as iron sharpens iron, so one man should sharpen another. When was the last time you sharpened iron? I haven't recently, but I can imagine. Iron is hard. Iron on iron is a grating sound and certainly not pleasant. Next question. Have you ever tried to sharpen a pillow with another pillow? It probably sounded great. It felt good. Problem. A pillow is not a sword, nor do they serve the same purpose. In the same way, there is a time to be soft on people and simply love them, but conversely there is a time for iron to sharpen iron. Notice also, a sword sharpens a pillow just as badly as another pillow. Sharpening requires two people who are ready for it. You need to be tough and you need to want it. This is the basis of Christian community. To confront someone's sin is a commandment. Is that not like seeing a friend drowning and saying: "That's none of my business"?

Now yes, all of us our drowning. So then we should all drown by ourselves waiting to taste eternal hell. I don't believe that for a second. Hold on Challenge your friend to keep swimming and pray he can do the same. Then together pray that God can strengthen you. Live the life that is open. Call in the brotherhood to confront you. Discuss your sins. Even...judge...you. What if instead of saying "only God can judge me", we said: Judge me! Point out my wrongs and tell me how I can improve! That is our Community that we're called to, not the sit-in-Starbucks-with-an-iPhone-and-judge-those-who-judge-others community we live in.

Do Something

7 o'clock this morning. Just before a Student Council meeting. Everyone in attendance is pretty dead, but still, we make small talk. The topic being current events. More specifically: ISIS. We talk about possible attacks on American soil and the many people they have killed. It makes me mad. Sad. Terrified. If only somebody would do something...

8AM. Class meetings before school starts. Our Spanish teacher is giving us our morning devo. There's JFK talking about why we chose to go to the moon in the 60s:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. -JFK

He did something, two months before his assassination. He didn't want to do things that were easy. What would be the point? Maybe it wasn't backed up by scripture in his speech, but God certainly doesn't want us to do the easiest thing all the time. Which leads me to my next experience today....

Around 10:30. Sitting in Plus Period, watching Victoria Osteen say:

“Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”

No Victoria. No amen. I don't know what version of the Bible she was reading, but in mine, I read a story about when God allowed Job's family to die. He allowed him to lose everything that he owned and then to top it off, He allowed sores to grow all over his body to the point where he sat in dust scratching himself with broken pottery while listening to his wife (the only member of his family not dead) tell him to: "curse God and die" (Bad wife) I think God is sovereign. If He is, then everything that happens, happens because He wants it to. Ask Job about the prosperity gospel that our friend Victoria is talking about. He might have a few words... God doesn't have us here to be "happy", He has us here to (among other things) spread the Gospel. The real one. The Great Commission is our mission. And it says that we should do something.

12:30. Sitting in Study Hall reading Death By Living by N.D. Wilson, which I haven't picked up in months and decided to continue today.

"Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them fill with laughter...........I have 250,000 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths to....(my family)...or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end."

At this point I should mention: The theme for this school year is "Beyond Belief". It's about how we should do more then simply believe in God and dig deeper into our faith. Theme verse? James 1:22:  "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." Doers. So there's that. Oh, and the theme song? Do Something by Matthew West. You think God was trying to tell me something? At this point in my day I still hadn't gotten it. I went through the rest of the day, learned about soldiers in World War One (they certainly did something) and went home. When did the obvious statements from my day come together? When I did some lawn mowing and (as per usual) Switchfoot enlightened the obvious in my life.

I wonder why would I wait till I die to come alive?

I'm ready now I'm not waiting for the Afterlife.

-Afterlife, Switchfoot

Huh... that sounds familiar... Oh yeah! It's been pounded into my head all day and some of the rest of the week! So what's the point in all of this? Obviously, God has been teaching me to do the hard thing. Not because it's easy, and not because it will make me happy, but because it will be my purpose. God's will is my purpose and if that means doing the hard thing, then I pray that I can have the guts to open my life to Him and let Him take the wheel (Cliche points!). When I'll be presented with something hard to do, I don't know. But until then, I make the choices He would want me to. Not my fear, not my laziness, not my pride and not my mind.