Across Church Street
A Community Confession
Confessing our desire to be like Jesus.
Jesus is our first love.
We stare at him.
Jesus is our provider.
We receive from him.
Jesus is our sovereign.
We yield to him.
Jesus is our example.
We love like him.
Jesus desires everyone to know him.
We help others do as we do.
Respect the breed
Nonbelievers will not (cannot) act like believers. But believers should not act like nonbelievers.
Some days I run past a man walking his dog. Invariably, the dog pulls hard at the end of its leash and barks nonstop until I'm out of sight. A voice in my head asks "WHY WON'T THAT DOG SHUT UP?" Its owner mildly chastises the dog—I suppose to make me see that he cares.
What I and the owner need to realize is it's the dog's nature to pull and bark. It's a Border Collie after all, not a Saint Bernard. The dog's nature is to herd things.
Same with people who stand outside God's kingdom. They have a nature that's well-described in the Bible. We Believers did too, once.
It makes no sense to expect a Border Collie to behave like a Saint Bernard. But when a Saint Bernard acts like a Border Collie, there's a problem. Disciplined training is prescribed. If speaking of Believers, to be trained by Christ.
People like us do things like this
Our work is to discover who we are in Christ and to become students of a culture defined by Christ.
Seth Godin is an insightful entrepreneur, marketer, author, and speaker. Seth teaches an approach to marketing that's based on psychographics rather than demographics. To explain this term psychographics, he uses the statement "People like us do things like this."
It's a simple sentence that addresses identity (People like us) and culture (do things like this).
This little statement reminds me that when we come to Christ, we're given a new identity and we're brought into a new culture. Our job, then, is to discover who we are in Christ and to become students of a culture defined by Christ.
Let's read the New Testament with this lens and ask Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude to be our guides. Let them tell us who we are. And let them show us what the Kingdom is like. Then, more and more, our words and our works will show others that people like us do things like this.
- advent & christmas
- imagination & creativity
- technology & AI
- knowing God
- human dignity
- faith & trust
- incarnation & cross
- kingdom of God
- community
- reconciliation
- spiritual formation
- epistemology
- prayer
- gratitude
- culture
- creation & nature
- discipleship
- love
- Holy Spirit
- humility
- church
- poverty & mercy
- politics & society
- mission & witness
- holiness
- parable & metaphor
- identity
- eternal life
- doubt & deconstruction
- leadership
- grace
- justice
- scripture
- spiritual life
I practice the spiritual discipline of rescuing earthworms on paved surfaces. It's a reminder to me that I can pause what I'm doing, get a little dirty, and help. Also, that I've been given the responsibility to care.