rich’s blog

Christianity & Scrabble: 6.29.2008

 

Preface

Well friends…hi!  Let me start by saying I missed you guys!  I like you guys!  You are funny guys!  (Has anyone seen the three Amigos?  Okay.)  I missed you, I missed being here: but I want to thank you for any prayers you might have made this week, for both class and camp.  Both things were good.  

 

There were moments at camp when I didn’t know if i was “speaking with” high schoolers, or “preaching at” them, you know, but it was fun, and I didn’t get chased out of town, so that’s good. 

 

But I’m glad to be back.  

 

Tile One: Today

Well, today we’re again talking about something that our society universally cares about, something that Christianity has a lot to say about.  We’re looking at Scrabble. 

 

(Picture of Tiny Scrabble Lovers) 

 

Aren’t those people tiny!  But those tiny people care about Scrabble, just like all of us, and the people around us, care deeply about Scrabble.  Right? What a game; I mean you take letters, and make words, and connect them, and earn points so that you can win!  Whoever knows the most words wins!  

 

Scrabble, like a lot of other games or TV shows–Jeapordy, Are you smarter than a Millionaire.  (That’s not right.  5th Grader/so you want to be) Anyway.  Trivial Pursuit.  And we could deconstruct that, right?  A “trivial”–meaning without importance, meaningless–pursuit,  What else?  Crossword puzzles, Scattergories, Wise or Otherwise–there’s a lot, right? 

 

All these sorts of things disconnect information from application–they disconnect information from application. Do we follow? They take the purpose of knowing something, having knowledge, and disconnect the “knowing of a fact” from the using of that bit of knowledge in a way that is personal and constructive and wise. 

 

And as Marva Dawn points out in her book Unfettered Hope, we end up having to make up contexts for all the little bit of facts we know–games–that help us feel like we have accomplished something (“winning”) simply because we know a fact. 

 

Isn’t that insightful?  We have no other way to use all these little bits of information, so we make up games just so that we have a place to show it off.  And who among us hasn’t felt like a hero for being the only one who got a Jeopardy or trivial pursuit question right.  Who among us feels guilty–guilty–because we don’t remember the facts that were taught to us in 5th grade.  

 

We value being informed: we have whole stations devoted to “news” most of which, we don’t do a single thing about after hearing.   It’s just facts.  If we’re lucky, the “news” we’ve learned will come in handy when we’re watching something on the game-show channel. 

 

Have I revealed my cards?  We aren’t really talking about Scrabble today.  We’re talking about knowing things, about information, something our world is obsessed about, and is collecting and organizing at an incredible rate.  

 

Today we’re looking at what Christianity says about information, about knowing things.  I hope that at the end of the morning we want something more than information, and we want something more than just knowledge.  I hope we’ll long for wisdom, and we’ll long for transformation.  But we’ll see. 

 

First, though: let’s pray! 

 

Prayer:

Father, we’ve chosen against a thousand things to be here this morning; receive our choice to be here as an offering; bless us for it, bind us together for it, help us to be a blessing to the world you love.  Take the information I’ve brought together here as an offering, too: and take my voice if I should misguide us.  Father, make us like your Son, and well-up your Spirit within us and among us.  In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

Tile Two: Where we find ourselves. 

There is a generally unspoken belief that society holds, that we Christians hold, which is simply that the more you know, the better off you are.  Right?  The more you know, the better off you are.  This is as postmodern as it is modern, and I’m not out to tear it down.  It is important to be informed; we’ll talk about that in a minute.  But on this understanding rests much of what goes on in our world.  

 

When we say that we live in the information age, we aren’t messing around, right? I mean, if you give me 4 minutes and an internet connection, I can tell you about anything. I mean, we’ve got access to all the information we could ever want; thousands of years of information.  Don’t you feel powerful?  Don’t you feel strong?  

 

Here’s the problem.  Just because we know a lot or have access to a lot–it just doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.  In fact, it’s almost like the more bits of information we have access to, the lamer things are getting in the world around us.  That’s purely and entirely an impression I have, nothing more–but it does feel true.  

 

And I think that at least part of the problem is that this amassing of knowledge, the cataloguing of facts, has become an end in and of itself.  The gathering and sharing of information in our world today is an ends in and of itself; how you use the information, what you do with it is–if the question is even considered–way less important. (Unless, of of course, you’re using to it earn cash, like marketers do.) 

 

Knowledge–knowing things–has been largely disconnected from the call to apply what we know well in our lives and the lives of others.  It’s been cut off from wisdom.  We are left informed, but not transformed, as someone I respect has shared.  What matters is knowing things, and we are asked to know more and more, because the world is stock-piling knowledge: but we aren’t asked very often to use it well. 

 

And we Christians are a little conflicted about this.  

 

Tile Three: Conflicted

We’re a little conflicted about this.  We care about wisdom; we do, don’t we? It’s something we as Christians treasure.  We have a whole genre in the Bible devoted to insightful axioms. By and large we don’t want to simply know facts, but know them so that we can do something them, right? At least most of the time. 

 

Although, I did find this in the church closet.  It’s a little Bible Trivia game.  Let’s play: 

 

(read card/picture: this was funny)

 

(I’ve got to be honest; this just does not seem like a fun game.  I’m sorry.)

 

It’s like someone shook their bibles over a basket, until little facts fell out of them (How many cubits was the Holy of Holies)–totally divorced from the narrative they are a part of, the story of God’s work in history–divorced, basically, from meaning, right? Just bits of facts, to memorize, and learn, and know.  Facts that are trivial.  Facts that are unimportant, meaningless.  

 

Carolyn grew up doing “Quizzing.”  Are you familiar with Bible Quizzing?  You’d memorize parts of the Bible, and go to churches around you, and you’re team would compete with the other team, to see who could answer more questions.  And if you answered more, you’d win.  Parent’s love this because they want their kids to know about the Bible, and that’s fine.  But how many pastors’ kids end up walking away from God, despite all the things they know. 

 

Bible Quizzing: you’d win if you answered the questions right.  And it is good to be informed, right? But, If “winning” in our faith means knowing the right facts, then I’m not playing.  Because the whole thing we’re doing really is, then, a game.  And games get put away when they’re over, because the facts don’t matter for “real life.”  But this is real life, life at its most real.  

 

Jesus had an awful lot to say to people who knew the right things, were very well informed, but that’s it.  In fact, it was sort of a hobby of his to point out how they knew a lot of things, and stopped right there. The Scribes & Pharisees, they’re called in Matthew: 

 

…Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for people to see…they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’

exalted. (Matt 23:1-7 TNIV)

 

And he goes on to say that these teachers of the law–scribes, some of our translations say–and the Pharisees are hypocrites, are blind guides, snakes, viper-babies, white-washed tombs! Prettily painted places where death was hidden! 

 

All because they knew good things–listen to them, Jesus tells his followers: their information isn’t bad–but they didn’t do what they know. Their knowledge doesn’t turn into a wise way of living before God, a way that attends to the things God cares about.  All their good information leaves them untransformed–as far as Jesus seems to be concerned, less than human. 

 

But I don’t want to be too harsh on facts–too harsh–information is important, knowledge is critical.  

 

Tile Four: God on Information

The passage that was read to us this morning from Ephesians points out that without information, we’re really up a creek.  I mean we need to know “truth” (which Christianity says is all wrapped up in the Bible, all wrapped up in Jesus) or else we will be “deceived with empty words.”  We’re supposed to find out the facts about “what is pleasing to the Lord.”  When Paul tells Timothy to “do the work of an Evangelist” and “teach sound doctrine” he’s not blowing smoke.  It’s important. 

 

But again, the point of knowing things isn’t to beat the other churches nearby at Bible Quiz Bowl! The point is to take what we know and “Be careful how we live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  

 

We do live in a world that we should expect to find out is antagonistic to the life of Jesus that we’re all trying to live.  The days are evil, because they are days that act like tides, which slowly wear away all our resolve to become like Jesus unless we work hard to apply what we have learned, to allow our information to lead us to transformed living, navigating life wisely instead of just living well-informed while the world sweeps us away. 

 

Right before the Ephesians 5 passage that was read to us, Paul says in 4:17 “Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds.”  We who are God’s people aren’t supposed to live like those who aren’t; with tons and tons of information that is simply and only information.  We aren’t supposed to live surrounding ourselves with piles of knowledge that we only use to play king of the mountain on.

 

Paul’s telling us, basically, that we are to be different, we who have joined our lives to Jesus’ own.  We are to be transformed.  

 

And remember who we’re supposed to be transformed into?  This was one of the very first things that we talked about when we began this series about things going on in the world.  We talked about how our Christian life has a goal, and the goal is to become like Jesus.   

 

The information we have is supposed to lead us to be transformed into people and a church who become more and more like Jesus all the time.  The knowledge we have about, well anything, must be applied well, applied toward a changed life.  

 

And just like in a trivia game, if we don’t utilize the information we have in a way that helps position ourselves to be transformed, it is worthless.  And the church is really good at making highly informed followers of Jesus, whose lives don’t seem all that transformed.  

 

I don’t think that’s as true of Smoky Row; but we must always be careful of it, right?  In Christianity, if you die knowing the most, you don’t win double Jeopardy.  You don’t get pieces in your pie.  You know what happens?  You die knowing the most. Congratulations. 

 

Because Christianity isn’t focused on death; on winning, on finishing first: Christianity is focused on life, remember our virtue ethic? To become like Jesus?  We’ll be resurrected, we will. Death has died; Jesus killed it. And he killed it, raised by God, so that we can live rightly now with courage and strength and in the power of the church and the power of the Holy Spirit.  

 

Christianity says that Information, knowing things is so important: But it’s just not too important.  What’s more important is the change that happens in our souls:   It’s more important to be transformed than informed; or at least, if you’re just informed, your just informed.  Which isn’t the goal of our faith.  And just because you know a lot of things, doesn’t make us wise. 

 

We’re called to do more than know things; we’re called to apply them well.  We’re called to be transformed not informed–and transformed into Jesus, not anyone else.

 

But how do we move from information to transformation? Where can we go from just knowing something to living wisely with what we know? 

 

Tile Five: A Transformative Body

We could talk about a lot of things, ways to do this: but I want to just emphasize that we must depend on and help each other.  It’s one another–filled as we are with the Spirit of God–who help us to discern how to use all the information that comes our way.  There is no person of God without the people of God. You can’t read much in the New Testament without realizing that we all need each other if we individually or we our church is going to be anything like Jesus. 

 

That bit of Ephesians that I read, where Paul mentioned that we must no longer be “children tossed to and fro by all sorts of bad ideas”–(good advice, right?  I think of kids, you know, and Mom & Dad’s rule is: don’t eat dirt.  But a friend says, “Hey, eat this dirt.” And so we do.  Or I did.  Bad idea) 

 

That passage about not being tossed “to and fro” is right in the middle of a section all about the church; how we can’t go this life alone.  How really, it’s you all that help me to know what to do with all the information that comes my way.  It’s you all–in small group, in conversations, in our education times–that creatively help me to wisely use the knowledge I have so that I might become more like Jesus. 

 

And this means that we ask questions, like: “I don’t know what to do with this passage?”  It means we ask someone “How do you apply–insert quiz answer here–in your life?”   

 

And some of may not have the time or gumption to do that, some of us just are out practice, some of us desperately need to get with someone else, who acts with wisdom, and say, guide me through this moment or season if you can, because I am full of information, and have no idea how to be like Jesus in the situation that’s going on in my life. 

 

We need one another to use the information that we have well and wisely apply it. Because there are at least a couple of things that happen if we decide not to use information to help each other and ourselves become more like Jesus.  At least a couple of traps that can happen. 

 

Tile Six: Traps

The first and I think easiest trap that we fall into when we disconnect information from transformation is gossip.  

 

Tile Six: Traps-Gossip

What is gossip?  It’s bits of information (usually about someone, because those are the tastiest bits of info, right?) that are completely disconnected from any transformative action on the part of the sharer or hearer.  Information becomes just another commodity, something to trade and barter in, and we who gossip become dealers and users in information.  

 

And gossip is sneaky, right? One moment, you’re sharing a concern someone asked to share, so that another person can pray for them, act like Jesus for them in some practical way–and you yourself are encouraged to do the same, right?  

 

And then all of a sudden you’re talking about how they never get rid of those bags of coupons and local papers from their porch and it just looks so trashy–not that you’re judging them.  I don’t even know how we end up there!  You know!  This is part of why James can say that the tongue is a “restless evil, full of poison!”

 

In many ways, Gossip is totally informed by the world’s idea that knowing something makes you important.  That knowing something, being informed, automatically translates into the knower having some special value that the uninformed masses–or people in the row behind us in church–don’t know.  I mean, this is a pretty lame situation.  This is the six o’clock news: “keeping you informed.” 

 

Honestly, brothers & sisters, “brethren,” there are things that I just don’t need to know about.  Knowing them is unhelpful to me, and burdens me instead of positioning me to become more like Jesus, positioning me to live more wisely, or care more deeply and practically for another person.  And I don’t believe I’m the only one this is true for. 

 

But this whole idea that because we know something, we’re somehow important–in a lot of ways it’s baby steps to idolatry, which is a second sort of trap:

 

Tile Six: Traps-Gossip & Idolotry Baby Steps

This is sneaky, and subtle, but whenever we begin to value ourselves and feel important because of something that is other than the love God has for us, we are setting ourselves up to honor that thing–even if it’s just bits of information–more than we honor God.  We slowly begin to replace the importance and value that God’s love stuffs into us with the high that comes from knowing something we haven’t been given permission to know.  

 

And we slowly begin to pursue information for information’s sake only, as an end in and of itself.  We slowly begin to want to know more things because it makes us feel special, makes us feel important, included, valuable, and somehow wise–even when we know that in order to apply this information well, we’ll have to play games with it.   

 

If it’s Christian or Bible facts, disconnected from transformation, we’ll build board games.  If its someone else’s almost-secret, that we shouldn’t know, we’ll hope for a different sort of game, where we can trade the information we’ve got for the information someone else has, and see how large our collection of cards has become.  

 

(Or even worse, when the game of gossipy information-trading is over, we just throw the cards away, because the high we get from the trade fades so quickly, and we’re so used to playing, that we barely notice the way we use the bits of facts for our own purposes, chew them like gum for momentary pleasure, and then throw them away.)  

 

These are just two of the traps, the pits that we can fall into when it comes to disconnecting the information we have from our goal of living transformed lives, lives like Jesus’ own with others who are look like Jesus. 

 

Tile Seven: Conclusion

What do you know?  If you can read or have someone read to you, you can know anything. The world’s alive with knowledge & fact.  You can beat everybody at Bible Trivia, and that’s not bad: but I don’t know how much God cares about what we know.  

 

I do know that “all that matters is new creation”  that being transformed is what’s important.  Are you?  Are we–because if there is anything we do as a community, as Smoky Row Brethren Church–at the least we should be helping one another become more like Jesus, help our church to be the body of Jesus it’s supposed to be, as each of us work together for one another’s good. 

 

Christianity doesn’t dismiss the glut of information that continues to grow all the time.  But it does say that information is nothing more than a starting place. Truth is critical, knowledge is important; but knowledge isn’t power, truth doesn’t matter all that much if we just recite it occasionally.  Our faith demands that we do things with whatever it is we know right now, demands that we “live up to what we’ve already attained,” and go beyond it into what Jesus attained for us, his own life flowing through all of ours. 

 

After a song and a prayer we’ll chat in this room; we’ll go to Christian Education times, we’ll hear the radios on our cars, or listen to pod-casts, or read books–maybe even our Bibles! Miraculous!  And all day long we’ll be informed and inform others, trading bits of information and slices of knowledge, whether or not we want to.  I pray we can step back for at least a moment and notice this. 

 

But what will become of us?  What will we do with all our great knowledge, our collected information?  Pay attention today; notice how much you are being told and how much you are telling.  Notice your knowing.  

 

I worry for us sometimes.  We know so much.  And it’s not bad; but it’s not enough.  We can keep quizzing, keep playing Bible trivia if we want; but will we stop there?  Will we make up games–moments where we trade information like cards, or opportunities to recite the Bible facts we’ve learned–so that we can feel important, or special?  

 

Or will we pursue becoming like the one who’s brought us together this morning?  

 

Will we live wisely with all our knowledge?  

 

Will we be people who are not just well-informed, but well-transformed, people being renewed in the image of the one who brought us together, transformed through the power of God and one another’s efforts. 

 

These are the questions we’re ending with today.  And as with the end of every message, there’s the unspoken question:  We’ve been informed a bit; given some facts.  Will we do anything with them? 

 

Prayer:

Lord; all truth is your truth.  You are the holder of knowledge; but more than this, the Bible emphasizes over and over that you are wise.  Make us wise too; help us to be people who sift through all the information that comes our way, and who do what we can to apply it well.  Help us to be people who guide one another, counsel one another, encourage one another that we might look more like you.  Keep us from gossip, keep us from idolatry, keep us from hoarding information for it’s own sake.  Please use your wisdom to guide our lives, and help us to be people who do the same, that we all might look more like your son a day, or week, or year form now, than we do this morning.  It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray.  Amen.