Understanding how the Lordship of Jesus Christ extends to all areas of life.
“Genius” is a new and chilling movie based on the life and tragic murder of John Lennon. The Producer of the Los Angeles-based film company, Ray Comfort, said, “It’s chilling because it reveals what people will do for money. There are ordinary people out there who would kill you. All they need is the right amount of money and the belief that they won’t get caught.”
Photo: Each of these people freely admitted that they would murder for money.
Comfort said, “Many think that John Lennon was a musical genius. His music has crossed cultures and even generations — the Beatles have sold more than 2,303,500,000 record albums, and in June of 2012 they hit number one on iTunes. They are as big now as they ever were and they’re half dead — with the tragic loss of Lennon and Harrison.”
Ken Mansfield, the former U.S. Manager for Apple Records said, “Genius will open your eyes.” Other reviewers have called it “fast-paced, thought-provoking and compelling.” It is being promoted as “33 minutes that will rock your soul.” Comfort’s last movie “180″ received more than 3.7 million views on YouTube and aired on television around the world. “Genius” has been released for free viewing onwww.GeniusTheMovie.com to coincide with the December 8th anniversary of the death of John Lennon.
Comfort added, “Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.’ That’s what John Lennon did. He pushed the musical envelope of creativity.”
The Genius trailer: youtu.be/ZW2lhWfa28g
Matisyahu
World-famous Reggae / Hip Hop artist, Matisyahu, shocked his fans recently by posting a picture of a freshly shaved version of himself on Twitter. Most people don’t make news when they shave, but this iconic pop star has become known for his close ties to Hasidic Judaism, and his traditional, almost Orthodox garb.
His explanation on his website said:
“No more Chassidic reggae superstar. Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey :to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality—not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity…to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.“
He told Rolling Stone magazine:
“The group I was heavily into said you can’t cut (your beard) even if you want to. Besides, it’s a representation of God’s mercy. If you cut that off, you’re like, cutting of God’s mercy. So I bought into that, for a long time…Then I realized that some of my ideas, at least for me at this at this point, were not true anymore. I think it’s a symbol, and symbols aren’t the thing itself. If I’m connecting with God internally, if I believe in my own goodness and God’s goodness, than that idea (not cutting his beard) just didn’t resonate with me anymore.”
In an interview with WNYC Radio, he said:
“What happened was that I recently realized that God’s mercy can’t possibly be connected to me shaving or not shaving. Over the last few weeks I went through a pretty major transformation, probably bigger than any in my life, due to several things, but a lot of revelations and a lot of realizations starting coming clear to me. The idea that God’s mercy is connected to whether or not I shave, is ludicrous. I need to just trust myself. If I’m deserving of God’s mercy, I’ll get it.”
From my point-of-view, I’m glad to hear that Matisyahu is wrestling and grappling with his faith. I think it is important for all of us to continue to grow, to reexamine, and to struggle. A faith that can’t handle such searching certainly is a crippled and impotent faith.
For me as a Christian, I feel that Mayisyahu is getting very close to the truth. He is sensing the inadequacy of law-keeping as a means to making you holy. He realizes that it is not his outward expressions of devotion or worship that makes him right with God, but rather his heart.
“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice,
And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)
“Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired;
My ears You have opened;
Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required.Then I said, “Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of me.I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your Law is within my heart.” (Psalm 40:6-8)
My hope for Matisyahu is that he will recognize the logical contradiction in his view of God. Indeed, if we can deserve God’s mercy, then it is no longer mercy. I hope he will discover, as did the radically Orthodox Jew, Saul of Tarsus (who became Paul the Apostle), about two thousand years ago:
“It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” (Romans 9:16)
We are unworthy on our best days, and unworthy on our worst. But thankfully, for our sakes, God has shown mercy on us, not because of our merit, but because of the sinless life of His son, Jesus Christ, and our trust in His payment for our sins. When Paul came to grips with this, he wrote:
“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (1 Timothy 1:15-17)
“For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:2-4)
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Israel Wayne is an author and conference speaker who works with Wisdom’s Gate Ministries.
Bob Dylan
Today is Bob Dylan‘s 70th birthday. The outspoken “prophet” of the turbulent 1960′s has never ceased to be an enigma to many of his friends, and adversaries.
During the “Jesus Movement” Dylan found his way into a California Vineyard church and began studying the Bible. Dylan attended a course held at the Vineyard School of Discipleship, which ran four days a week over the course of three months.
“At first I said, ‘There’s no way I can devote three months to this,’” Dylan would say in a 1980 interview. “‘I’ve got to be back on the road soon.’ But I was sleeping one day and I just sat up in bed at seven in the morning and I was compelled to get dressed and drive over to the Bible school.”
I remember growing up listening to Dylan’s gospel albums (yes, those black vinyl discs that look like frisbees), bank in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s. It’s amazing how bold and direct his message was. Especially now as we are swimming in Postmodern uncertainty, it is refreshing to hear a voice of clarity promoting moral absolutes. Dylan proclaimed:
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
I mean, think of what a radical thing it must have been for the hippie generation to hear their icon declaring:
I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb
By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I’ve been delivered
By His spirit I’ve been sealedI’ve been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
That’s telling it straighter than most preachers today! Dylan was booed by his fans and concert attendance dropped off dramatically. Dylan once lamented:
Years ago they … said I was a prophet. I used to say, “No I’m not a prophet” they say “Yes you are, you’re a prophet.” I said, “No it’s not me.” They used to say “You sure are a prophet.” They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, “Bob Dylan’s no prophet.” They just can’t handle it.
Somewhere in the mid-1980′s Dylan became disillusioned with at least institutional Christianity and distanced himself from public proclamations of faith. Regardless of Dylan’s own personal faith (or lack of it) today, he has left a body of work exploring the Christian faith that is well worth considering.
Don’t let me change my heart
Keep me set apart
From all the plans they do pursue
And I, I don’t mind the pain
Don’t mind the driving rain
I know I will sustain
’Cause I believe in you
Israel Wayne is an author and conference speaker who writes on cultural issues from a Biblical worldview.
Originally recorded by Depeche Mode and later by Johnny Cash and the anti-Christian icon, Marilyn Manson (among others), the song “Your Own Personal Jesus” has been ranked #368 in Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, and was voted as one of the “100 Greatest Songs Ever” in Q magazine.
I am posting the Johnny Cash version of the song, because I find the other video versions offensive.
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there
Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
Ill make you a believer
Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus…
Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
Ill make you a believer
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith
Each version of the song was recorded with a different intent depending on the artist. Depeche Mode intended it as a statement of how people are so co-dependent in their human relationships that they idolize each other to the point of worship and express undue adulation. Their version also is heavily laced with sexual innuendo. Marilyn Manson intended it as an irreverent mockery of Christians and their “need” for faith. Johnny Cash meant it sincerely, demonstrating the genuine need of every person to find forgiveness through Christ.
The song has been going through my head the past couple of days as I have been thinking about the state of the American evangelical church world. I think this song could very well be the theme song of contemporary Western Christianity. I’ve heard a zillion sermons that sound like they could have been lifted from this very rock tune.
“The Gospel” is presented in most preaching today as being all about the individual and their needs. You need a “personal savior” to help you to “Become A Better You” so that you can have “Your Best Life Now.” They say, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you life, so why don’t you take five minutes and ask Jesus to come into your heart and be your own personal savior? That’s all there is to it! Just believe (doesn’t matter much WHAT) and you will be saved.” Despite the fact that the Bible never uses this terminology or methodology, it has become the de facto method of evangelism in our day.
The “Personal Jesus” that is preached today is the “therapeutic, self-help Jesus who helps you to cope with life, and feel better about yourself.” I wish I could break this to you gently…but salvation is NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!!!
The focus of the gospel is not based in us, or anything related to our needs. It is about the Lord Jesus Christ receiving the reward of His suffering! It is about Him receiving the Bride that He bled and died to redeem. Yes, you are forgiven, yes, you get to go to heaven when you die, yes, you get to live a life of peace and joy. Yes, there are great rewards for forsaking your former love of sin and self and turning to Christ. But this is not all about you. It’s all about Jesus. Not your personal Jesus, but the Jesus of history and eternity who created everything that is FOR HIS PLEASURE and has redeemed a people to Himself. We need to start proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ, not on the psychological needs of fallen humans. The self-help gospel is an incomplete gospel. Jesus is the focus of the gospel, not us. I love how Paul Washer puts this:
Jesus didn’t die for your sins. He died for YOU. He didn’t want your sins. They were just what separated you from Him. He had to get rid of your sin so that He could have YOU! What he wanted was to have all of YOU, completely under His Lordship. What will your new life look like if you truly surrender to Christ? Check out this powerful message by Steve Lawson:
Don’t come to Jesus because you need help coping with your life. Come to Jesus because He is worthy to receive all of you, because He created you, and purchased you with His blood. He is worthy, that is why we love and serve Him.
Although it is never objectively accurate to say that a certain time period was “the good old days,” there are many positive values that our society has lost in the past 150 years. One of the most tragic of these losses was the disintegration of the family culture, and especially multi-generational connections and legacies.
Because many of us have never experienced the benefits of the family culture in our lifetimes, we may not even recognize our collective loss. Imagine with me, if you can, a culture where you are surrounded with people who know and love you. There are parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents and even on occasion great-grandparents. Living, working, playing and worshiping with these loved-ones creates a wonderful sense of security and stability. You know who you are, to a great extent, because of your relationships with those of your surrounding family. Family can serve as a fixed reference point, linking you to geography and to the past in a way that no other friendship or community can.
Allow me to outline some of the paradigm shifts that have occurred in American culture over the past 150 years, bringing about a disconnected and individualist society which has replaced the previous family-centered culture.
The Breakdown of the Family Culture
I would say that the breakdown of the family culture in America began largely after the Civil War in 1865. Over 620,000 American men died in a war that left virtually every family without a loved one. In the Reconstruction that followed the war, men often left their homes and began to work in factories, taking advantage of the new breakthroughs of invention and industry. Prior to the Civil War, the majority of Americans were agrarian and rural, and worked on family farms or in family-owned businesses.
The Industrial Revolution
At the turn of the 20th Century, it became clear that the machine was the way of the future. From Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, to Henry Ford’s automobile, from the steam engine to the success of the Wright Brothers’ flying machine, people were finding faster and more efficient ways to do everything, including get around.
Wise families started their own businesses and hired family members to keep their income “in house.” Around the turn of the 20th Century, many families became famous for developing financial systems that grew the family wealth exponentially. The Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Studebakers, and later the Kennedys, are all examples of family wealth. Whether you admire or disdain that kind of economic nepotism, you have to admit that they knew the collective potential of the family culture.
For most families, however, mass production and factory labor took at least one parent (usually the father) away from the home and children, and into the “workforce.”
Government Education
In 1840, Horace Mann had established the first state-funded, compulsory, government-controlled school in Massachusetts. This model spread around the country and before long, not only was the father removed from the home, but the children were as well. Instead of children working alongside their parents, receiving an education through family enterprise (and supplemented with either homeschooling or formal academics in a community-controlled “Common School”), students were now enrolled in “assembly-line” educational factories that utilized the Modernistic principles that were revolutionizing every other industry.
More important than the physical separation that occurred through mandatory governmental education was the emotional distance that was experienced as children embraced the culture of “social education.” Friendships through the “peer group” replaced the family as the child’s primary, foundational relationships.
Women’s Liberation
Eventually the 20thCentury “Feminist Movement” put mothers into the workplace as well, effectively removing the central hub of the family from the home. Mothers were convinced to leave the education of their children to trained and certified “experts.” With the additional tax burden placed on families because of state-funded schools, many families felt the need to have two incomes just to make ends meet. There is no way to estimate the effect that the so-called “Women’s Liberation” movement has had on the lives of millions of children. Children need both parents (ideally) to be emotionally and socially balanced, but they especially need the daily nurturing of their mothers.
While some point to the positive gains made through “equal rights” movements like Women’s Liberation, the “freeing” of women from their families has devastated the family culture. Women’s Liberation mainly “freed” women from their children and made them slaves to their jobs. It’s not merely a matter of men and women working a job outside of the home, it is a mindset-shift from parents being responsible for the care and nurturing of their own offspring, to an expectation that the government is supposed to provide for all of our needs from the cradle to the grave, and we all work to support an over-grown bureaucracy that seeks to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.
Mass-Transportation
More than any other factor, Mass Transportation destroyed the extended-family culture. As new economic opportunities beckoned, families uprooted from the old home-place and took off across the country. The railroad, and later the automobile and the airplane, gave people a new mobility that changed the landscape of America.
Since the telegraph, and eventually the telephone, allowed families to keep in touch over the miles, many families made the choice to exchange local relationships with their extended families for distance ones. This geographical distance removed economic interdependence, and thereby removed a primary reason for staying connected. Working together for a common goal is great cement to bond relationships.
The Loss of Folk Culture
America is a nation of immigrants. Groups of families have come to America from every nation around the globe. They bring with them their own beliefs, cuisine, dress, language, and religions (in other words…their own culture). America has become the great melting pot. The tension these families experience (which is really the same struggle that every newly-married couple faces) is how to keep their own unique identities while being absorbed into the greater whole. Many ethnic groups have fought tenaciously to keep their families together, in the face of what seems like a relentless and pervasive attempt to strip them of their distinctives. As each generation follows, less and less of the “old ways” are retained as the new generations become absorbed into the larger American culture. But what is the new American culture? It is no longer the “Folk Culture” of each of these unique groups, it is instead an emerging consumer culture of entertainment and merchandizing; in other words, a Popular Culture.
Mass Media and the Creation of a Mass Culture
With the advent of radio and eventually television, all Americans, regardless of their geography, had access to the same news and information. Mass media and standardized education helped to shape a general culture. Rather than localized, provincial folk or agrarian cultures, Americans were increasingly adopting the lifestyles of urban and suburban society. But regardless of whether you lived in the country or the city, you were watching the same televisions shows, hearing the same commercials and using the same textbooks as everyone else in America.
The Advent of Pop Culture
As corporate marketers learned how to tap the vast potential of various media channels, people were slowly morphed into consumers rather than self-sufficient producers. Mass retail distribution through superstores, who sell everything from groceries to household goods, placed all of these nationally- advertised products on shelves within a few miles of nearly every American citizen.
The differences between the previous era of “Folk Culture” and the new “Popular (Pop) Culture” are quite stark. In the Folk Culture of the mid-19th Century, for example, families who enjoyed music would create their own music by playing together on the front porch, many times with homemade instruments. Occasionally they would be joined by their neighbors, who were often extended relatives.
Contrast that with the teenager who now listens privately to his MP3 player, subtly shutting out the rest of the world around him. Folk Culture was all about accountability, community, resourcefulness and creativity. Pop Culture is all about liberation, autonomy, spending aimlessly and consumerism.
While some may seek to defend Pop Culture, and look for its virtues, it is clear that whenever you exchange one type of culture for another, certain things are gained, and others are lost.
Convenience is perhaps the chief gain of Pop Culture. You no longer have to work together as a family or a local community to grow, can and store your annual food supply. You just go to the national superstores down the road and buy your garlic from China and your grapes from Chile and your coffee from Colombia. This is a tremendous time-savings, and can certainly be understood as being a gain in many ways. But there is a great loss in this way of life as well.
We have become far more dependent on impersonal, non-relational industries to supply our every need, and far less on personal relationships, especially of those within our own extended family.
So much of Pop Culture disconnects us from relationships. We turn on and tune out. Television, the Internet and much of the entertainment industry is created to make us passive consumers, silently absorbing hours upon hours of often meaningless “information” that is usually an end in and of itself, rather than an equipping means to some greater goal or purpose.
Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Pirelli in Toronto, Canada
Multicultural?
We hear a lot about Multiculturalism these days, especially in government schools, but personally I observe very little of it. I think a lot of people, particularly those in political power (regardless of party affiliation), are afraid of a truly multicultural society. A truly multicultural society cannot be easily controlled and manipulated. Therefore mandatory “group-think” has been the goal of many top-heavy governments over the past 100 years.
If you don’t have distinct differences in cultures, within your nation, then you are a monolithic culture, not a true multi-culture. The only way to truly preserve a culture (which is the accumulative sum of the beliefs and values of a people-group, externally expressed through their Art, Music, Literature, Food, Dress, Religious Practices, etc.), is to maintain an interconnectedness (which usually includes a certain level of interdependence) and to maintain a mechanism for passing on the shared beliefs, values and customs of that culture.
Homeschooling is the premiere way for any kind of Folk Culture to preserve its own unique identity while slowly embracing the universal, enduring values of the larger whole of the country. Regardless of your religion or other cultural values, you cannot expect the children who are born a generation or two after you to embrace your values if they are cut off from their familial roots. I believe the castration of unique family heritages and values is being systematically carried out through standardized, compulsory education, and is reinforced at nearly every point through Pop Culture’s homogenized worldview.
This worldview is that we are all expected to accept that we are merely workers and consumers in the greater society and that we must trust the experts (and those in control of the government), to lead us, teach us, and direct our futures.
What’s The Big Deal?
To some, none of this is important. If the values of the current popular trends have already become your own, then who cares about all of this cultural distinctiveness and familial identity? Who cares about the Family Culture, and being connected to the generations who precede and follow you? Who cares about ensuring mechanisms of restraint, accountability, responsibility and obligation within the larger family context? Who cares about passing on values from your children to their children and to generations who have never been born?
If these values are not important to you, then rest assured that your task is easy. All you need to do is nothing in order to ensure that your children will embrace whatever cultural trends happen to be hip at the moment. If you want your children to grow up to love only themselves, think only of themselves, see no obligation to their parents or grandparents, make all of their major life choices with no regard for how it impacts their extended families, or to be simply users and consumers rather than creative producers and artisans; then your task is very easy indeed. Just do absolutely nothing. Send your children to any local government school, let them grow up with their little brains saturated in television and multimedia and never, ever, encourage them to build, read books, dream, play outside, have discussions with their gray-headed relatives or to see themselves as part of a family unit. I promise you that you will be successful in raising one more Pop Culture deadhead.
Our Mission…Should We Choose To Accept It
It takes work to pass on family values. It takes work to maintain family relationships. It takes work to think in terms of a multi-generational vision. For me, the work is worth it.
I don’t want to merely curse the darkness. We can’t turn back the clock and become Amish (although I’m sure I’d enjoy that…about 60% of the time!). Perhaps we can find creative ways to use technology and communication tools to keep us together, rather than splitting us apart.
Maybe we can find ways to live in this 21st Century without being absorbed in the Narcissism of it all. Perhaps we can keep the positive and enduring values of the generations past, while enjoying the comforts and conveniences of our modern age. The one thing I can assure you of, however, is that strong family bonds and the transmission of the right kinds of values never happen by accident. It takes intentionality, focus, planning and a lot of hard work. Let’s learn from the lessons of the past, and seek to shine a light for future generations.
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Israel Wayne (www.IsraelWayne.com) was home educated and currently serves as Marketing Director for the national publication Home School Digest. He is the author of the book, Homeschooling From A Biblical Worldview, published by Wisdom’s Gate. Israel and his wife, Brook, (also a homeschool graduate) homeschool their children in Michigan. Write to: Wisdom’s Gate, P.O. Box 374, Covert, MI 49043. www.WisdomsGate.org
