…I find out today that a very dear friend has been admitted to the hospital today. His cancer that spread from his prostate to his bones is now entering the liver, and he’s in a lot of pain, so they are trying to fight the pain so they can do some tests. He is facing down a terrible challenge in his life (understatement) and yet, as I and a few other friends visited with him, it became clear that he was (in his words) “not afraid to die, but afraid of the process”.

He was thinking, even in his pained state, how he could be a blessing to other people in his situation, how to share with them that there is hope, and more, for those who trust in Christ. His love for God and his reliance on Jesus was almost painfully evident in every word and gesture.

In short, his situation is a lot worse than mine, and his outlook is way more positive.

Today, this song is for Jim Fitz!

You can listen here.

Even When You Seem So Far Away
©2011 Peter J. Hamm. All rights reserved.

Have mercy on me, O Lord
‘Cause I can barely stand, O Lord
My bones are shaking,deliver me
Deliver me from this fear, O Lord

Even when You seem so far away
I will follow, follow
Even when Your bright light seems to fade
I surrender, surrender

The Law, though, the “rules”, the “commandments” are really great things. I’ve been trying to think of a way to say this this week. But Matt Chandler is so much smarter than me, and I found out this morning that he already made the point better than I ever could. So take 6 minutes and check this out… How the Law leads to Joy!

Where do I start?

I love Jesus and, I’m sorry, but I hate this video. Yes, I know it is a piece of poetic art, but it is misguided.

This video has been floating around facebook and the internet the past few days, and it is filled with so much wrong-headed thinking and bad logic that I felt I just had to say something, for anybody who cares to engage.

I truly do understand when people buckle against the kind or religion that is stark raving legalism, but to lump all religion in with legalism and all legalism in with religion is just reactionary. Much of proper and what James (in the Bible) would call “true religion” does not produce legalism. Much of it produces people who are generous, giving, kind to the poor, even selfless. To put all religion in the same category as legalism seems to me to be… well… legalistic, and incorrect. Jesus was opposed to the ways that the religious establishment of his day added to and twisted the religion of their ancestors, no doubt, but not only did he not hate that religion, but he apparently practiced it well. (You will say he broke the Sabbath. In point of fact, he did not. For instance, telling a man to stand up and walk was not a violation of the Sabbath, but was, rather, a violation of rules that had been added by men who used religion for power, not for spiritual purposes, and that kind of religion is detestable, for sure.)

Our friend starts this “diatribe” with a lie, plain and simple. “What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?” Well, then you’d be telling a lie, since Jesus says he came to seek and save the lost, and also not only mentions that he didn’t come to abolish one single shred of the ancient law, but rather, to fulfill it. Did he change some things (like declaring all foods “clean”)? For sure, but he also raised the bar on some of the Law. No longer was murder a violation of the commandment. Now, even hatred is going too far.

“If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars?” Look into history a little more, and it becomes obvious that these “wars” that are being referred to were started by rulers who used and abused religions and religious traditions to further their own agendas, much like the Pharisees abused and twisted what had been excellent and godly religious traditions. Many of the “religious” of those days understood the errors of these ways, in fact. “Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?” In fact, religions and religious have done and continue to do amazing things for the poor, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. The Catholic Church, a huge “religion”, often leads the way in this area throughout the world, and many relief organizations are run by people who would, themselves, qualify themselves as “religious” Christ-followers. Many of those organizations, like Compassion and World Vision and others, are funded by people who give out of “religious” fervor.

A little later our friend says “Now, I ain’t judgin’…” Uh, yeah… he is… and badly, based on bad information, bad assumptions and what appears to be a lot of bad anger, but I think he’s only doing it because it makes for a provocative piece to get attention. Great motives. Bad execution.

The second half of this is a great exposition of Grace and what Christ does, but for me, the whole point is weakened by the vitriol against all religion that keeps seeping in, and people I know and love are applauding this thinking without thinking critically.

Jesus hated hypocrisy. He did not hate religion, in fact, he practiced his own religion, Judaism, right to the very last, celebrating the Passover feast with his Apostles as his last act before being arrested and killed for our sins. We probably need to remember that very “religious people” came together in councils and meetings over the centuries and chose the books that we call our Bible, and those same religious people continue to be the ones who translate it into the vernacular that you now use in a book or on your phone or your tablet or computer.

The fact is, it’s currently trendy to hate religion but love Jesus, and many well-meaning Christ-followers take this tack because it allows them, they think, to connect better with the people they feel they need to reach with the Gospel. In short, the strategy works, so it must be right… right? In fact, doing a wrong thing (like not thinking about what you’re saying when you lump all religion in the same category as all “negative” legalism) is always wrong. Do the right thing, say the right thing… and God will, in fact, honor it.

Religions does not always equal legalism, and legalism is not necessarily always religion. Characturing people in this way leads to the same kind of misunderstandings that the hero of our video is trying to fight against.

I love Jesus, in my own faltering way… and I love and am thankful for the religions and religious traditions of my Christian tradition.

Update: I have removed a few comments. Sorry, but my blog isn’t the place to bash religion. You are welcome to start your own.

So I’ve been trying to figure out for weeks what is bothering me about Tim Tebow. Some Christians have started holding him up as a shining example of how to live the Christian life in your daily life and work. Some non-Christians think he’s a religious fanatic blowhard and wish he would shut up about Jesus and start talking about football. (Even though I share Tebow’s Christian faith, I fall into the latter camp. I admit it, he reminds me of a time when born-again Christians were thought of as people with no feet on the ground, only their heads in the skies, and I don’t like to go back there, because there was a lot of junk from that era in my own life that I don’t miss. He sometimes makes it sound like the only thing people of the Christian Faith ever do sounds like religious drivel. Sorry, Tim, if you ever read this.)

In the middle of all this, the media decides how to portray him… we decide who he is based on that… and any trace of the real Good News about who Jesus is and what he came to do is lost behind a big lie. It’s the same lie many of us who call ourselves Christian tell ourselves at funerals when we say that the departed is with God because of their exemplary life.

No, I don’t think Tebow is a liar, but many of us “regular” people are, unfortunately, hearing what we want to hear. And what we are hearing is that somebody who follows Christ has some weird superpower to live a life beyond reproach, a life that is filled with a kind of perfection that is, in the end… not an example to follow, but a de-motivator to the folks who feel like they’ve already blown it, who have already made enough mistakes that there’s really no way that the “god” that they identify with what they are making of a guy like Tim Tebow wants anything to do with them.

And on the other hand, when some well-meaning folks lift up his life as an example, they make it seem like a big guy who throws a ball and bumps into other big guys is somehow doing something more spiritual than the regular guy who volunteers at the local Food Bank or a missionary or someone who gives their life to charity work or maybe the regular unknown guy who works hard at his job, does honest work, loves his family, practices generosity and love, and flies beneath the radar because the only people he shares his faith with are his neighbors, not millions of TV watchers.

And none of that is even close to the Good News. In fact, it’s not even the Good News that Tebow believes, in reality. Some day, Tebow might to slip and fall. I hope he doesn’t pull a Roethlisberger or a Michael Vick, but chances are that he’s going to fail, at least in some eyes, and there will be a contingent of people who get their theology more from YouTube and Facebook and the Internet than from Scripture and from Christ who will say, “See, it can’t be done after all.” And in a sense… that is the truth. But sadly, some will give up even the attempt, based on their own shallow pop-culture theology. And that is very sad. Because this fact that we can’t live a life is pleasing to God is the beginning of the end of despair.

The Christian Life as you may think it exists is indeed impossible. It can’t be lived. Perfection can’t be obtained. Uprightness will never be earned, and there is no hope for you to live the way you imagine you should. (And no, Tim Tebow can’t do that either, even with his superpowers.) That, by the way… IS the good news.

Somebody else did it for you. Even died in your place.

I hope that some folks will sit down and think about it, maybe re-engage with what Jesus actually said he came to do; to call sinners to repentance, to lay down his life for the lost, to rise up again so that we might be friends with God and not enemies, not to call perfect people to try in vain to live perfect lives.

There’s a story Jesus tells in the Bible about two men who go to the temple one day. One stands up and says “Oh, thank you God that I live such a righteous life, that I’m not like that horrible sinner over there.” The horrible sinner bows his head and says a prayer that has become embedded in some of our Eastern Christian cultures, and a prayer that I’ve actually learned to practice throughout my day. “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus says that that second man is the one who left in right standing with God.

That is the Good News. Sorry for my faltering way of expressing it… Matt Chandler does it better here.

I have an adorable wife…
I have an awesome son…
My doctor says I’m in great health… (and honestly, I feel like it)
God has provided everything I need…
Did I mention my marvelous wife and  incredible son…?

…heading into 2012 very thankful…

It was cool…

And then the very last song was just me playing guitar and my son Charles singing “Silent Night”… and the coolness exploded into one of the coolest memories I will ever have in my life… Wish I had pictures, but at least I’ll have a recording (soon).

Pay attention… the truly great moments in life happen suddenly and take you by surprise.

Bruce Cockburn "Christmas

By far, the best Christmas CD ever is Bruce Cockburn’s “Christmas”. You’ll feel like you’ve gone around the world and experienced Christmas in a lot of places, like France, Spain, among the Huron Indians, and even in a brothel perhaps (seriously…). None better. In fact, this one is SO good that all the rest of the ones on this list are tied for a distant 10th place. Yeah… it’s that good…

This very obscure and rare CD, “Your King Has Come” is also amazing in some of the same ways that Bruce’s is. Some new songs, some totally bizarre arrangements of old favorites, and some very recognizable. It’s pretty rare, so grab one while you still can find it.

Chris Tomlin’s “Glory in the Highest” is an amazingly worshipful Christmas music experience. I’ve used almost all of these songs the past two years in leading Christmas Eve worship services. You get that “Christmas Spirit” feeling and real worship (even just listening if you can believe it) all in one. As far as I can tell, this CD wasn’t a huge hit. I can NOT understand why.

More of a “Winter” album than a Christmas one, Sting’s “If On A Winter’s Night” really makes you feel like sitting around the stereo with hot chocolate after a long day walking in the cold. Even though it’s not “religious” per se, a lot of the “real Christmas” makes it’s way in. My son and I LOVE “Soul Cake” and how many other rock stars record albums on a classical music label? I can only think of maybe one.

There’s the “City On a Hill: It’s Christmas Time”. A lot of CCM artists coming together to make a really sweet album of Christmas music that, again, can often be used in worship services.

What are you waiting for… go listen to some Christmas music!

“How to feel like you’re flying”

1. Get a bag with no holes
2. Blow up the bag with your mouth so its fat.
3. Then put it on your feet.
4. Put it on for 1 min.
5. Then it feels like you’re flying.

Wow.

Charles Isaac Hamm

Life is very very good… And so is God. And so is Charles, for that matter.

Anyway… Charles is sitting on the couch across the room from me with the songbook from this awesome Yolanda Adams CD in his hands, just listening, and singing along a bit, reading along.

First… I love that he loves music like that, and I love that of all our music we have, much of the stuff he likes best is Black Gospel, since he is African-American after all. And I love that he’s diggin’ on music that reminds you of how much God adores us!

But also… I love that when you are young your parents pray that someday you will have a child just like you… and I’m here to tell you that it happens even if you adopt a child and even if he isn’t the same color as you! And this is, yes, a very good thing…

Life is pretty stinkin’ good sometimes…