Barney Wiget's Blog, page 21

A Kingdom Needs a Constitution

All social and governmental entities require a document that communicates the fundamental principles around which they choose to govern themselves. The revolutionaries of the New World knew they needed a way to articulate their vision for their embryonic society, some purposes and parameters for how they and their descendants were to live together. Every commonwealth needs a constitution of one form or another. The Christian commonwealth is no exception.

Jesus explains more directly in this Sermon than in any other place in our New Testament the principles fundamental to our conduct before God and our potential contribution to the world. His Constitution is aimed way too high for humans living by purely human means. I’ll say again that the Sermon on the Mount can only be lived in the power of the Savior on the Mount. While the drafters of our U.S. Constitution could offer Americans no special power to practice the principles prescribed therein, the inwardly governed citizens of Jesus’ commonwealth are empowered to lean into its prescriptions for liberty and justice for all.

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This is an excerpt of the book on the Sermon on the Mount that I’m finishing for publication. Please share.

Good News to Broken Weeds and Burned Out Wicks

I wrote this in 2015. With all the Broken Weeds and Burned Out Wicks these days I thought I’d repost it.

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One of my favorite things is to preach good news about Jesus on the street. Frankly, I’m not super good at it. I’m not trying to be humble, I just know that there are others better suited for this particular task. Nevertheless, I love doing it because it feels so right to bring hope to hopeless places.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Tenderloin is the most hope-deprived neighborhood in San Francisco. It’s kind of the last stop for people who’ve passed through all the less degraded places in the City. Most everyone here sleeps in doorways, in overcrowded shelters, or SROs (single room occupancy) slum hotels. Hope moved out of these streets of addicts, alcoholics, dealers, and mentally disabled long ago.

These are not necessarily people whose dreams have shattered. Most of them came into this unkind world with no dreams to begin with. Sometimes; after hearing their lifelong…

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No Shortage of Seed to Sow

The Spirit is anything but stingy with solicitations. His mailbag overflows as he distributes clues of the Father’s love, whose default is to include rather than exclude people from his family.

Jesus overpaid for as many orphans as would come home with him. And he doesn’t care which orphanage in which he finds them! Conveying a welcome as wide as his should be our ambition.

I’d like to think that if I were sharing my faith with Rahab, instead of merely identifying what was wrong with her ideas, I would celebrate what was true in her theology and build on that. I would acknowledge that the Spirit had been to Jericho sprinkling divine realities ahead of me and then hopefully collaborate with him to beckon her and her townspeople toward Jesus.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends, which can be purchased on Amazon. Half of the profits go to YWAM San Francisco

Who’s Willing?

“In the districts of Rueben there was much searching of heart. Why did you stay among the campfires to hear the whistling for the flocks? … Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan. And Dan, why did he linger by the ships? Asher remained on the coast and stayed in his coves.” Judges 5:15-18

This passage is an excerpt of a ballad written by a legendary leader, general, poet, and composer named Deborah. In her time it was quite atypical for a woman to do what she did, yet under Deborah’s leadership Israel had defeated their enemies.

Her song was unique in that it included a rebuke to those who didn’t show up, people she had expected to fight next to her but didn’t. Those should-have-been warriors were those for whom the bell tolled and who didn’t answer the call. They stayed among the campfires to hear the whistling among the flocks or lingered by their ships, and languished in their safe coves.

In her lyrics she identified those among whom there was “much searching of heart.” Normally, to search one’s heart is a good thing, but to coin a phrase, “too much of a good thing.” Meditation and introspection are both biblically mandated practices, but when rightly employed they should lead us to go do something. But these people were meditative yet not active. We should search our hearts but as a means to an end, not the end.

Yet, let’s scroll to the top of her song where Deborah began by praising those who ventured beyond the safety of the campfires and coves, and showed up:

“When the princes in Israel take the lead, when the people willingly offer themselves – praise the Lord!” (5:2) And then later she sang, “My heart is with Israel’s princes, with the willing volunteers among the people. Praise the Lord!” (5:9)

They are the ones who, though they might not have made the world a much better place, at least they showed up. They may not have won many skirmishes in the cosmic battle, but they were able to say that they “willing,” and didn’t spend all their time lounging comfortably by the campfires, searching my heart while others strapped on their swords and went to war with the evil one in order to free his slaves.

I conclude with my favorite line in Deborah’s song, one that I might someday learn to sing repeatedly:

“March on, my soul; be strong!” (Judges 5:21)

The Stubborn Lover

Most Bible students are quite familiar with the Greek terms in the New Testament for love. The most prominent of them is “agape,” which denotes unconditional self-giving. It’s this kind of love that God displays to us, deposits in us, and demands of us. It’s the ultimate unselfishness, the deepest regard for another, even when the lover receives no reciprocation of his love in return. It’s the riskiest of loves, the one that “lays down its life for its friends.”

There’s another term for love used a bunch in the Old Testament – “Hesed.” (The “h” has that guttural sound that you make when you’re getting ready to spit. You should practice saying it only when alone and with a tissue in hand.) Pronunciation aside, “hesed” is God’s stubborn, relentless, unrestrained, and insistent love. Hesed is when you refuse to give up loving, even when you have every reason to. That’s the way God loves. When he’s rejected, when his proposal is refused, when his overtures are all rebuffed; he keeps on “hesed-ing” and “agape-ing!”

He’s a stubborn lover!

Smoke in God’s Nose

Read this condensed and updated version of something I posted in December of 2016.

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 They say to each other, ‘Don’t come too close or you will defile me! I am holier than you!’ These people are a stench in my nostrils, an acrid smell that never goes away.Isaiah 65:5

There’s a stench in the air. It’s the pungent smell of arrogance. I smell it in both American culture and the culture of the Church. It has trickled down from above, not from a heavenly above, but from the heads of churches and of state. Our country, our church, our ideology, our politics is better than yours! In fact, I’m better than you!

The Left is smarter than the Right and the Right is more moral than the Left. Social media and talk radio self-proclaimed pundits bolster their frail egos by preaching to the converted with bluster and conceit. Don’t forget folks, we’re better than them! If they disagree with us and our…

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Live While Alive

God doesn’t usually hand out due dates and deadlines. He doesn’t tell us how much time we have to finish our work here on his earth. I guess he expects us to live responsibly, sensibly, and obediently all the time. We don’t know when our final performance review is scheduled, so if we’re wise we make every effort to stay on task.

Someday the Teacher will say, “Time’s up. Turn in your project, as is.”

David Brainerd wrote in his journal, “Oh, that I might never loiter on my heavenly journey!”

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Originally published in my book: The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway, which may be purchased on Amazon.

The Narcissist vs The Poor in Spirit

The narcissist has no redemptive influence on a culture that is already obsessed with itself. He can’t fit others into his heart because it’s already full of himself. He has fabricated his own role in life to write, produce, direct, and star in his own autobiographical docudrama. He only reaches out to others when he needs “extras” to make him look good by appearing in the background and reading the lines he gives them.

On the other hand, those who concede their deficiency tend to be the best consensus-builders. They know what they’re made of and treat others with humility. Like all good servants, willing to subordinate their own desires, they devote themselves to making other people successful. Rather than disadvantage the community to advantage themselves, the poor in spirit are willing to disadvantage themselves in order to advantage others.

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An excerpt from the book on the Sermon on the Mount I hope to publish in the near future. If this speaks to you, please share it.

Evangelism: Activity or Lifestyle?

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“Let’s be friends,” says the Creator, “and let’s go out together and make some more friends!”

Now, doesn’t that sound a little more appealing than: “Let’s go evangelize Africa!” or “We’re going out witnessing on Friday night. Everybody come!”?

For one thing, “Go evangelize” sounds more like an activity than a lifestyle. Not to mention it gives the impression that it’s something we do to people rather than for them. If we don’t like it done to us you can take it to the bank that they won’t appreciate it being done to them.

At the same time that God befriends us he invites us into his quest for more friends. He bids us to love people for Jesus. We’re his welcoming committee not so much recruiters for the Church. The similarity between inviting people into friendship and recruiting them for membership is paper-thin.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab:…

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Calling Out Some “Prophets” (Part 1 of 2)

Out of all the disappointing things said and done by so-called Christians in the last year, it’s the false prophecies that Donald Trump would surely win a 2nd term that makes me the saddest. Not to mention that those lovers of all things prophetic, or should I say, anything that sounds “spiritual” who swallowed the bait, hook, line, and SICKER?

Please give this a quick listen. AFTER listening, I’d love to hear what you have to say. (Keep in mind, I will address the apologies some of these “prophets” have posted in Part 2.)