The Will To Do More

This past weekend I was reading an opinion column in the newspaper from a woman in California who was laying out all the government programs they had taken advantage of over their lifetimes.  This was in response to the current political uproar over the 47% who don't pay taxes in the US and those who "drain" our economy. I am not interested in discussing the political aspects of the article or even about US tax code and those who pay vs those who don't pay but there were a few thoughts that came to mind as I was reading this article.

First, I immediately recalled the movie Cinderella Man, the story that takes place during the great depression in which much of the country is stuggling to find any kind of work.  A man who is a boxer goes out every day in hopes to be picked for a shipyard job in which he even disguises and injury just for the cash in order to provide for his family. One scene in particular really sat with me as he eventually goes to the government office to obtain pay from the government and it is the most painful and embarassing part of his journey. The idea that he had to take money and couldn't earn it caused him deep shame. The movie is about overcoming hardships and this boxers unheard of journey towards the top of his game and the success that came with it. When times were good for this man he gave the money he took back. Who does that today?

Second, I also recall one of the presidents of the United States in a speach to the country he was charged with governing made the statement. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." This is a bold statement, one in which inspired many to go where we had never gone before, accomplish things we never thought possible. This idea was rooted in the idea that humanity wanted to improve, wanted to do better, wanted to provide and work for a living. I'm not so sure that statement would go over well in our current time.

Is the will to do more dead? Has our desire to better ourselves and better our communities and nation dead? I hope not, but evidence that a shift continues to take place in our country seems to be very much a reality.

Head vs Heart

The other day I was sitting in a marketing presentation in which the people in the audience were told that they had done a great job of presenting their product using rational, logical approach to the sales of the product. What they encouraged us to do was to also engage the heart of the people listening to the presentation, tell stories that move people that make people want to buy, that reinforce all the logical, rational facts. This is actually really good advice and I think that engaging both the head and the heart is a good approach.

This got me thinking about the church in our culture and some of the church's recent history as well as my own experience in church's all around Denver. I don't want anyone to think I am equating the gospel or God's church as a product to be sold, however churches, in my experience, tend to choose one or the other in engaging the people in the pews/chairs. People seem to be drawn to one or the other of these options.  There are people that really want to engage with the head using logic, reason, experience as the way they make decisions, move forward. If I'm honest I lean this way. There are also people who tend to lean more on the heart or emotion to make decisions. Their decisions come from the soul or spirit or an inner voice that moves them.

There are many churches in the U.S. and when you visit, you can usually tell if they are trying to persuade you or moved you based on your head or your heart. Now in my experience even the ones trying to convince people using reason and logic often fall very short of doing this based on the idea that they usually are aiming at the lowest common denominator. I find that in the suburbs of where I live most places are usually trying to convince you based on your heart and quite frankly I think this is a result of what most mass media has tried to do for years. When you watch TV you can see that most commercials are not trying to convince you to buy their product based on how awesome their product is even if they believe it is. Advertisers will try to get to your heart and make you want something so bad you have to go and get it. Church has joined this arms race for your attention and tried to play the same game is is losing badly. This is why we see stupid products from christian culture all trying to compete or play off of a popular item.  For example, you will see a t-shirt with a Sprite logo but instead it says Spirit.  Nice eh!

The question is, how should the church be engaging people?  Should we be using the head, the heart or some combination of both?  It's my submission to you that it's both. We should not leave reason, logic, intelligence for emotion and intuition nor should we just base our faith on reason and ignore the real created emotion that lives in us. I wish more churches would engage both aspects of the head and the heart although I do lean more towards the head.

A letter to America

I had an idea the other day to write a book that was modeled something like Paul's letters to the Corinthians and address it to America.  It's not a bad idea really but I'm not sure I could really pull it off.  I began to think about all the issues American culture and life bring to the table and I began to think about the volumes of work a letter like this would require. Paul's letter was addressed to the church in Corinth and unfortunately there isn't really a church of America, in fact if we just counted the catholic and protestant churches we could write over 300 letters to just the denominations that exist in America; quite a task to say the least. So where to start, if Paul were to address a letter to the church in America, where would he start, what would he see as the main issues?

Please send me your feedback, I would love to hear what you think Paul would say to us.