George Lippert

Darren Bell

Round three took place on a quiet Monday afternoon, as George worked at his computer in St. Louis and Darren nodded off at his workplace in Philly.  But just when things were starting to quiet down, my friend Jeff asked to read the conversation, and believing the conversation to be a part of an ‘all-in’ facebook thread, he intervened, and brought new life to the conversation.  You can read parts 1 and 2 here and here.

Jeff Campbell (JC):  This is Jeff Campbell. What an awesome go around. There’s a whole bunch of things I’d love to chime in on. But I think I’d like to muddy the waters in one quite specific way. I think this really applies to both of the positions I’ve seen lain out here.
The question (which I’ll admit is a wee bit loaded) for me is this:
In most of our relationships, we don’t wander around looking for propositionally sound logic. I don’t make any attempt to inductively or deductively prove my love for my wife.
Why does this appear to be our sole mode of discussion about God?
I’ll buy that some of this belongs– since George has never met my wife (Darren has) I might owe him some sort of scientific/mathematically sound argument to prove her existence.
I believe in Truth with a capital T but agnowledge I only percieve truth with a lower case t; I believe the whole thing is wonderously and glorioiusly subjective in this life…
Any thoughts?

Jeff Campbell

GL:  Hi Jeff,

Just to try a quick stab at this: as you say, if I (for some reason) decided to deny that your wife exists, it would not be enough for you to tell me that she exists because you love her. I would require SOME sort of scientific, objective proof. While I myself am content that the Bible’s claims are true, that Christianity is the one way to God, etc, I respect the doubts of those who require more concrete, measurable evidence. In the case of your wife, you could merely point at her and say, “there she is,” case closed. Making the case for Christian belief with those who do not immediately except the inerrency of the Bible (or my subjective experience of it), etc, is a very different prospect.

Fortunately, I think the truth of Christianity can indeed be shown (although not conclusively proven) by historical, psychological evidence. As you know, many skeptics have approached the historical record with intention to disprove Christianity only to become converts themselves.

Thus, I am reluctant to merely state “Christianity is true because this is how it subjectively effects me”. The Truth is not true because I believe it. It’s true even if no one believes it. That’s what makes it Truth. I respect the doubter and the true skeptic enough to deal with the issue on their terms.

At least, as much as possible.

DB:

I drove last night and thought to myself that there are more Christmas lights around where I’m from than in years past.  They look beautiful and they display brightly that the holiday season is upon us once again.  Yes, the Christmas spirit has come again and hope is rising.  Not hope in politics or vague change that never really shows up, but hope based on the idea that God will make all things right.   I like to think that this is the reason people put up all those bright and shiny crystals of the yuletide season – to demonstrate the hope that Christmas brought into the world (okay, maybe not the exact date) those many years ago.  This is what I love about the Christian faith too.  Not that someday I will get to go to heaven away from all the bad people.  I feel strongly at this point that this outlook is flawed in many ways, not the least of which being opposite of what Jesus exemplified.

But the thing that I love the most about faith in Christ is that God will eventually (and only He knows how and when) make all things in heaven and on earth right. This is what we can rightly place our hope in as we work to restore the world to how He created it by being the hands and the feet of Christ. And this makes me want to put up Christmas lights this year.

Who’s with me?

People and the way they connect and build one another up to become more like Christ.

This is the one reason why I love church.  Sure you have serving and teaching and organization and leadership and bearing one another’s burdens and music, and for some there might be other reasons why they love the church, but for me, that’s it.

Last night Carie and I finished another season connecting and building up (and being built up) a group of people who we have come to love as our family.  We mixed in there a few people who will be a part of our next season of community, and in the midst of all this, I’m reminded why I do what I do.  It will be another few weeks of awkward time getting to know a new group and having them get to know us.  No doubt there will be some lull in the conversation and an inability to decipher what someone is trying to say, but in the end, I’ll be back here in a year or two writing in this blog, on a natural high, telling you how I’ve come to love this new group of people.

We are expanding our influence, challenging one another to serve, love, and give more than we think, and moving to deeper levels of intimacy with the God who we serve and the Christ who makes it possible.

And in the process, we become different people

Now I’ve had a “Monopoly” phase, and I’m having a “Settlers of Catan” phase, and I’m beginning to see the differences.

I first saw the differences last week when I won a game of Catan and realized it wasn’t that gratifying.  Sure I was the first one to get 10 victory points (or 12 in Seafarers Catan), but it seemed so anticlimactic.  After all, in Monopoly, the winner not only wins, but squeezes the “game life” out of every other player.  In Catan, you cross a finish line, but you’re left with the feeling that if the game were one point longer, you would have lost.  There seems to be all this uncertainty.

Which is what I sometimes feel about being a follower of Christ.  Like most areas of my life, I’m looking to win somethng, or to be rewarded in some way because I’ve followed well, or unfortunately, I want to follow better than everyone else (mainly because of my competitive spirit).

Then I look at the life of Christ, and plainly see that winning and losing meant very little to Him.  Oh we like to take Paul’s words in our American culture and use them to fit into our nice Christian systems and world views, but it seems to me that Christ couldn’t have given a rip about winning, empire building, crushing the opposition of people who don’t believe (see Peter’s Ear incident) or even getting the right answers on a Bible test.  He lived.  He loved.  He brought justice.  And in the end, he was killed for it.  Which of course brought more love and more justice.

Sometimes I wonder if that is the kind of game I’m playing?

Marty and Carie celebrating the "best Christmas ever" at the TCA Facebook reunion!

So all December long I felt like such a scrooge. It wasn’t that I was mean to people, but I just didn’t feel like being in the “Christmas Spirit”.  Ya know, presents and singing and parties.  And I think part of the problem was that I couldn’t have any of those things.  Everytime I was invited to a party, it got cancelled.  Everytime I was supposed to give or get a present, there was too much ice or snow on the road to get to that place of exchange.

In the end, it was just me, my beautiful wife,and this year, I put away the TV during the week of Christmas (save for a few football games that made me jolly),and read through Scripture or books that focused on either the spiritual and/or leadership.

I didn’t really feel like Christmas as I had in years past.  Shopping and gifts and parties seemed more distant than I would have liked.  But the Christ part of Christmas was more evident than ever before.  This part had little to do with external lights as much it had to do with the light of the world.  And the only gift I could think about was the one God gave me when He sent His only son, Jesus Christ to save the sins of the world.

It was the greatest Christmas ever!