Checks You Can't Cash

Here's a list of 5 Things That Don't Deliver On What They Promise: 

1. Consumerism: We fill our heads with thoughts of, "How wonderful my life will be once I own that!" But all of us have experienced the reality of Buyer's Remorse. I am an expert at convincing myself of the necessity of material goods I covet. 

2. Pornography: Attractive, but also objectifying, dehumanizing, and addicting. A recent article in New York Magazine, discusses among other things, how men's appetite for sex with real women decrease after viewing porn.

3. Promiscuity: Despite what the latest pop song tells you, having multiple partners is not cool. STD's, emotional pain, and insecurity, form the tip of the iceberg of this destructive, but culturally acceptable practice.

4. Infidelity: There are three words for love in Hebrew: riyah: love between friends; ahavah: deeply committed love; dod: erotic, sexual love. Infidelity lives on the promise that dod love is enough to satisfy, but ultimately leaves us empty and longing for the substance of relationships that include all three types of love.

5. Lying: "Oh what a tangled web we weave!" Lying excels at getting us out of the frying pan and into the oven. In the end the freedom of truth trumps the convenience of a lie.

Reclaim Your World

The Bible starts with a poem,  where line after line, God rhythmically creates a good world, and sets human beings, both male and female, at the pinnacle of his efforts.

We were made to enjoy the good word and participate with God, and the rest of creation, as co-creators.

This concept of the world being an inherently good place, blurs the arbitrary line between the secular and the sacred. The spark of God is everywhere in creation, and at no time more potently in human form, than in Christ, who spent his life reclaiming creation; restoring people to full participation in the world; empowering people to be most who they were to be.

In this way beauty and truth are everywhere. This is why we are  awestruck by music we hear, or art we see, or incredible physical feats we witness. We are seeing the spark of God that indwells all creation:

Unfortunately, some Christians historically have swung the pendulum in the opposite direction, shunning the things of "this world" and have adopted more ascetic values. 

But such practices do not come from a balanced perspective on life. Paul ran into this in 1 Tim 4.4, and combats such thinking when he writes, "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected." 

This isn't to say we embrace everything. The world is full of truth and beauty, but it has also been marred by our inability to follow the plot. We have been unfaithful co-creators and have brought things into creation that do not bring life and completeness.

So we take very seriously the task to discern what is good and wholesome. We reclaim the things of our world that are beautiful and awe inspiring, as testimony to what the harmonious relationship between God and humanity is supposed to look like.