Friends, Love, Deeds, and Country

Tim McGraw's song "Find Out Who Your Friends Are" sends a powerful message about loving one another in friendship. This is the chorus:

"You find out who your friends are

Somebody's gonna drop everything

Run out and crank up their car

Hit the gas, get there fast

Never stop and think 'what's in it for me' or 'it's way too far'

They just show on up with their big ol' heart

You find out who your friends are."

In this song, we find the culture, namely the country music culture, appreciating one of the "biggest picture" kinds of things with Christianity. I heard this song on the radio and immediately thought of this project. "Here is someone who gets it." I thought to myself, "Someone who understands that even in the context of culture without Christianity that we are called to love each other. Sometimes Christians and non-believers fall into the tricky trap of making love an emotion or feeling. While I think that there is an emotional aspect and all that jazz, I think that love without deeds is ungrounded and should probably fall under the category of like or lust. Like in James 2, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2:14-17) I think that the same applies to love. Telling someone you love them is great, but showing them is even better. Think again with me about the Tim McGraw song listed above. What are the depictions of friends in this song? Someone who is "going to drop everything/ run out and crank up their car..." The true friends that Mr. McGraw is trying to get at is that true friends are invested in their relationship enough that they value the other person more than themselves. Many times in my personal experience, I have had friends that were both more invested in the friendship than I was and less invested. I can tell you that when the scales are unbalanced, the relationships are strained. I think that the main problems with people in our culture today is the individualistic, dog-eat-dog mindset of "getting on top." Everything is about self-promotion. We don't count on each other to lift us up, but rather, we count on ourselves because everyone else is busy doing the same thing. 

What would the world look like if we cared for each other first? Isn't that what God has been asking all along? I think that is what Tim McGraw is asking in that song. Why aren't we trying to be friends like that instead of just expecting to have friends like that? 

I think that the interaction between culture and Christianity is parallel on this issue. I think we are striving to get to that point but we have given up. What would our world look like if we hadn't given up already?

RESPECT - Find Out What It Means to Me

"My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?" James 2:1-4 (NIV)

This week, I have really been inspired to figure out how to make community service a bigger part of my daily and weekly life. After leading an SBC to Houston last week, I have had time to reflect on what that means to me.  Living and serving for a week unveiled my deep-seated discontent with the way that I live my life here on the ACU campus. We had our eyes pealed for one week of things that God would do in our lives and He did. Why not live like that now that we are back? 

So with this inspiration in my heart, I decided to go and serve Breakfast on Beech St. because we had worked with "the homeless" in Houston at an organization that is called Crossroads. So, in the dark hours of what seemed to be the night, I, feeling very persecuted, got up and went to help cook breakfast for these people that I could touch for God. It was great, but I noticed a problem in my heart. Referring back to the scripture, I was discriminating against them in my heart. I wasn't treating them like friends; I was treating them like they were homeless. I would like to propose a paradigm shift in that the people we were serving are not "the homeless" but people, in a homeless condition. Some of these people showed me that with the economy, almost anyone could be homeless in the blink of an eye. Our culture would like us to believe that these are all poor, bad, terrible, dangerous people that are not worth being treated like humans. They are NOT bad people overall. Overall, they are people with lives and families and should be respected as such. 

I think that James was trying to say this in the passage above. He was emphasizing that people are people and believers are believers. We need to love all those around us actively. This isn't something that just happens; each of us has to actively pursue this goal, every minute, every day. That is my new calling for myself.

Casting Out Filth

Continuing on with our discovery of counter-cultural passages in James, I want to focus on James 1:19-21: 

"My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for a man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you."

The first thing I wish to point out is that he calls his readers "dear." To me, this implies that the author is well acquainted with the fellowship of believers to which he writes and cares for them. These are no flippant instructions or doctrines, these are "Hints for Happy [Righteous] Living."  But the culturally different piece comes next. "EVERYONE should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." When I look around my life, society, people, even people I look up to immensely, struggle with this. For instance, even my preacher at church during a sermon will stop and speak firmly to the audiovisual people to "Get to the next slide, please;" or  "Let's move a little bit faster, guys." He stops his sermon almost every week to correct them in a harsh tone. Then he goes back to his preacher voice and everything is "happy love Jesus" again. I think about this in my own life and how this story is reflected. Often times, I am the one that judges my friends problems and tells them what to do. I see that while advice can be good, it is burdensome if it comes when you do not ask, if no one is in real danger. I have taken steps to improve this. 

The next part of the scripture is about "casting out evil/filth." I think that to many non-believers, this is kind of assumed that it is how Christians should act, but don't, so it's a reason to dismiss them. I wish this weren't true, but I can't deny it. There are two things that I think we should do. First, I think that we should try harder to live sinless lives, always reaching toward righteousness, and believe that we can get there. Second, I think that we need to be open about our faults so that we may be encouraged to do something about them. 

This is the question I would like to leave you with, "What would the world look like if we lived a James 1:19-21 style life?" If you can't see the goal, you can get there. Visualize what it could be like; believe that we, someday, can get there if we try.