The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Part 34

The Death of Hugh Hefner

I shared this last night on Facebook:

‪Hugh Hefner was a materialistic misogynist.  

Money and stuff were markers of success in his mind.  

And women were the objects of male-domination fantasies in the playboy world he created. 

Hopefully, Hefner came to follow Jesus Christ for forgiveness and new life before he left this earth. Those are gifts that Christ, God-enfleshed, offers to all who repent and believe in Him. 

But Hefner's "philosophy," for those who follow it, is a spiritual train wreck to hell.‬ It leads away from God, away from authentic relationships with others, away from the new and everlasting life that only the God definitively revealed in Christ can give.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Living Water is a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Let Jesus Deep-Six Your Fear

"There is a lot of fear in the world, we shouldn't make our imagined fears bigger than someone else's real fears."

That's what my son, Pastor Philip Daniels, observed while presenting this video from George Takei over on Facebook.

I couldn't possibly agree with Philip more.

I am especially stunned by the amount of fear that exists in America today. It makes me think of Jesus' words about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. That's because most Americans--at least white Americans who make up the lower middle class, like me--are wealthier, safer, and more secure than any other people in the world, more than any other people in the history of the world.

I can only read the fear that pervades America today as an indication of our poor spiritual health, of how far we have wandered away from the God we meet in Jesus Christ. Because we so value the finite things of this world, our culture and our politics are pervaded by shallow hedonism, indifference to others' humanity, and constant fear.

And this fear exists despite how much safer America is than at any time in the past twenty-five years. When money, pleasure, and personal happiness are your gods, fear takes control.

We are so afraid of losing what we have, that we are in danger of losing the life that only the God we know in Jesus Christ can give to us.

Christ calls us to a life of love for God and neighbor, set free from sin, the inborn condition that leads to things like fear, hedonism, authoritarianism, racism, and terror.

I want the boy in this video who longs to become an inventor and a pastor to be able to see his dreams come true. That can only happen when the leaders and the people of the world let go of fear and act with hope and faith.

This doesn't mean that we dismantle our armies or our missile silos; there are still bad people unwilling to live in relationship with God and neighbor, from whom children and all people need to be protected. It is to provide for such protection, security, and the general welfare that God has established governments on the earth.

But, if we will turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, the prince of peace, our lives will be transformed and we can live in the midst of the dangers and difficulties of this life without fear and instead, with hope, with faith, with peace.

I recognize that we live in a pluralistic nation. I don't believe in an established religion for the United States. I believe that Christianity, in fact, thrives in pluralistic societies because when people can freely consider Christianity in comparison with other ways of approaching life, Christianity will win people's hearts and lives.

But, having experienced life with Jesus Christ for forty years now, I can tell you confidently that He imparts the peace of God to those who trust in him (even as I confess to trusting Him imperfectly) and is, as He Himself has said, "the way, and the truth, and the life." Please consider following Jesus and be empowered to deep-six fear!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Americans and Our Stuff

"Possession is nine-tenths of the problem" (Dr. Winston O'Boogie, aka John Lennon)

I agree with my son who, when linking to this piece from becoming minimalist over on Facebook, said that the greatest threat to Americans, spiritually and in every other way, is our materialism.

In 21 Surprising Statistics That Reveal How Much Stuff We Actually Own, Joshua Becker catalogs some bracing facts, some that really might surprise or even shock you.

A sampling:

1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times). [I worked for an inventory service when I was in college, counting by hand, items in grocery, discount, drug, and hardware stores from Columbus to Portsmouth, Lancaster to Nelsonville. It was tedious. But I have a feeling that counting items with the same techniques we used before the advent of bar codes and scanners would be more daunting in my own condo than counting the merchandise in those stores was.]

5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks. Currently, there is 7.3 square feet of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation. Thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self storage roofing (SSA). [I find myself chuckling almost every time I see the signs for self-storage facilities, imagining people walking into the units to store themselves overnight.]

7. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally (UCLA). [No mention is made here of how many children spend hours playing with the boxes in which their toys have been packaged.]

15. Americans donate 1.9% of their income to charitable causes (NCCS/IRS). While 6 billion people worldwide live on less than $13,000/year (National Geographic). [We ignore Jesus' words, I think, to our own eternal peril: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" (Luke 12:48).]

19. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list (The Daily Mail). [I threw this one in because I so identify with it. It's frustrating, but it really is one indicator of having too much stuff, I suppose.]

Becker writes:

The numbers paint a jarring picture of excessive consumption and unnecessary accumulation. Fortunately, the solution is not difficult. The invitation to own less is an invitation to freedom, intentionality, and passion.* And it can be discovered at your nearest drop-off center.

I think that he's right. In the past few years, I've been flushing lots of my possessions, taking some to places like Goodwill, Volunteers of America, and Salvation Army, while taking books and some recordings to Half Price Books, more for the privilege of divestiture than for money, because Half Price doesn't hand out a lot of that. I've also enjoyed giving a lot of my classic vinyl records from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, to my kids.

Possessions and all that goes with them can hold us down. My seminary professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us to never have so much or be so rooted in a place that we weren't ready to move on a day's notice. Schein was warning us, in part, against identifying our lives too much by our stuff, houses, neighborhoods, and such.

This wasn't just advice of practical expedience for future pastors. For all of us, being so tied to what we own that we're not able to respond to what God may be calling us to do at any given time can destroy our eternal souls.

Jesus once told a man, "Follow Me." The man evidently was drawn to Jesus, but said in reply: "Lord, first let me go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59-60). What's interesting about this exchange is that we don't know if the man's father was dead, or even sick, yet. The man was tied to a place, to a way of life, maybe to his stuff, and so, asked if he could hold off following Jesus for a while.

The man was looking for the right time. But the right time to follow Jesus is now, no matter how inconvenient or hard as it can be to do so.

I do often wonder these days whether the times I've left one place to go to another was really done at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. (I'm serving the fourth church I've pastored in thirty-two years.)A recent unexpected encounter at the Cincinnati airport with members of the second church I served has only added to questioning my motives for moving to the next church.

For all my uncertainty on that score though, I am sure that the unwillingness to move when Jesus says, "Follow" is wrong and often prompted mostly by both our natural difficulty with change and our revulsion at the prospect of moving our stuff.** Sometimes, we have reason to wonder, I think, if we own our stuff or if our stuff owns us.

And that is precisely the issue Jesus confronts the disciples (both first- and twenty-first century varieties) with when He says: "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

There's nothing inherently wrong with wealth. Nothing intrinsically evil about stuff.

But they both present a strong challenge to our souls in that they can become the means by which we identify ourselves and the definition we put on what it means to live.

Possessions allow us to insulate ourselves from the realities that most people in the world for most of history have had to deal with, to, in a sense, become gods unto ourselves. All of our stuff makes it harder for the truth about human sin (our sin), our need of God, and our accountability to God and to our neighbor, to penetrate our minds, consciences, and wills.

Jesus once told a rich man who earnestly sought Jesus out that in order to be free--in order to grasp the outstretched hand of God that offers to change us from God's enemies to God's friends for eternity--he needed to sell all his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus.

Had Jesus been approached by a poor man, He likely wouldn't have given the same prescription. To be sure, Jesus still would have told the poor man to follow Him, whether that meant hitting the road or following Jesus right where he already lived. But, it's likely that the poor man would have other things of which his soul and his life would need divesting in order to allow him to take hold of Jesus.

But, as a member of the US middle class, I do stew about the power of stuff over my life and I stew about the power of materialism over our culture.

Materialism is a belief system, a religion that worships a false idol whose only desire is to appeal to our human egos and love of creature comforts.

As such, it drives a wedge between the God/Man Jesus Who came to save us from our sins--from our desire to "be like God" which materialism represents--and us, between life with God and us, between authenticity and us, and between eternity and us.

I think it's time for me to repent (again) of my materialism, to follow Jesus, and to clean out my closet for a trip to the local thrift store.

*I notice, with satisfaction, that Becker uses the Oxford comma.

**I wrote a song about the challenge of living with the possibility of God calling us away from places where we've grown comfortable and happy, especially with the friends we've made. It starts out:

Feeling fine
Drinking wine
Spending time with my friends
Love exchanged
Evil tamed
I thought it would never end
But when you're talking with the Holy Spirit
He may give you a call and you'd better hear it
Following Jesus is a Jenga game
He's going to tear down your bricks
You won't be the same

(c) 2016, Mark Daniels

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

When People Worship "Stuff"

When "stuff" is our god, the video above, shot at a Walmart where people were trying to take advantage of a cell phone sale, this is what "worship" looks like.

Worshiping false gods is inherently destructive of relationship. When we worship false gods--money, status, ourselves, dope, booze, or whatever, we destroy our relationships with God, others, and the people we were meant to be.

When the one true God of creation calls us, through Jesus Christ, to follow Him, it's a call to love the God we worship AND the neighbor God created. Move closer to Christ and you're less likely to dehumanize, take for granted, hurt, or gossip about the people you encounter.

But there's something more to getting straight about what or who will be the object of our worship.

You see, cell phones and other stuff eventually die.

God is immortal and in Christ, He has conquered sin and death for us in order to give us a life that is the opposite of the frenzy you see here.

Let Christ be your God!

Are You Watching the Olympics?

I'm not.

To tell you the truth, I lost interest in the Olympics back around the time of the first "Dream Team." It was then that the Olympics gave up all pretense of being for "amateurs."

I know that there were paid athletes even then. Still, there was some hint of amateurism. Occasionally, true amateurs would perform well in an Olympic event. And amateurism was helf up as an ideal.

But now everything about the Olympics, from the opening ceremonies to the sponsorships and beyond have been "monetized." I just can't get into it.

My wife has said that she would be watching the Olympics this year were it not for there being in China. She, like me, abhors the Chinese government's abysmal human rights record, among other objectionable things.

Are you watching the Olympics?

Are my wife and I simply being contrarians?

What makes you watch if you do? What stops you from watching if you don't?

I'll be interested in your comments.

About the American Dream

[This is a column I wrote about seven years ago. It seems relevant today.]

Recently, my daughter's German pen pal, a fifteen year old named Sarah, wrote to her with an interesting question. "What," she asked, "is the American Dream?"

My daughter asked me to answer that question from my perspective. Here's part of what I wrote:

"Sarah: Today, when people talk about 'the American Dream,' it seems that they have the idea only of making lots of money and having possessions. But that isn't how I remember hearing the phrase used when I was growing up.

"I've done a little research recently, learning that the phrase was first used in the early part of the twentieth century. To the originator of the phrase and to me, the American Dream means two things. First, it means the dream of being free: free to worship as one wishes, free to speak one's mind and to effect what happens in government, free to choose the career path that seems best for us, free to get an education, free to marry who we wish to marry, and so on.

"But a second part of the American Dream is that our freedom is to be kept in tension with the responsibility that each of us bears to treat our neighbor with respect and consideration.

"Freedom within a community of caring. That's the American Dream.

"It's definitely true that the United States is flawed and there have been terrible things that have been done in this country. Slavery and the continued discrimination that African-Americans face here today is wrong. The mistreatment of Native Americans is a horrible blot on our country's history. During the Second World War, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps for no reason, even as many of their sons were fighting and dying in the war. We are horribly materialistic and our wealth seems to make us insensitive to the needs of the poor within our own country and in the rest of the world. We've desecrated the environment.

"But when we're at our best, it's when we're living out the American Dream. We're letting each other enjoy the freedom this country was founded to bring and we're caring for each other.

"I think that the American Dream is best summarized by the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Written by Emma Lazarus, it says nothing about money or possessions:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips, 'Give me your tired, your poor,
'Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
'The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
'Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
'I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"

Obviously, Sarah's question was important to me. I'd very much like to see an end brought to our materialistic interpretation of the American Dream. I'd like to see it replaced by the dream of a society--and a world--in which every person is free to be all that God made them to be and where every person is committed to helping others fulfill that same destiny.

There is so much more to being human than how much stuff we possess. Time and again, I hear the penetrating question of Jesus Christ, "What does it profit them if they gain the whole, but lose...themselves?" We can have fat wallets and empty lives.

Through my forty-six years [now fifty-three!] on this planet, I've come to believe that the only way we can have a society characterized by freedom within a community of caring is if all of us turn to Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh. Jesus gives us the right relationships with God and neighbor we all need just to live good lives on this earth, not to mention in eternity.

But, lest you think I feel bleak, know this: I wake up with enthusiasm each morning because I can't wait to share Jesus Christ with more people. Jesus can change this world one person at a time! And I'm out to let everybody know that.

I'm not perfect. Far from it! But when I turn my life to Jesus Christ, I find that He gives me the confidence and security I need to be who God made me to be. He also gives me the confidence and security to let others be who God made them to be.

The surest route to the real American Dream--freedom in a community of caring--is through Jesus Christ. I hope you'll join me in following Him.