Condemning Silence

Listen to: I Agree with Marx

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

- Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

This is the somewhat famous quote that gave rise to the “religion is the opiate of the masses” phrase. I believe it is quite accurate. Religion is indeed the opium of the people. It is in fact the sigh of the oppressed creature. If we wish to realize true happiness, then we do indeed need to give up our reliance on the illusion that religion can be the source of our happiness.

Perhaps I ought to clarify what I mean by religion. I see religion as the organized traditions, rules, and beliefs centered around a deity. It contains a system of rewards and punishments which are meted out based on the followers adherence to the rules. It provides in return a sense of security, belonging, hope, and even superiority over those who don’t follow it.

I hate religion, even Christianity. It’s powerless to change my life. It is incapable of giving me peace in difficult times. It’s rules fail to provide security in an increasingly unstable world. It’s a complete waste of my time. A country club has fewer rules and requirements, and a lot more benefits than the average church.

I love Jesus though! He’s changing my life for the better every day. He gives me a reason to live. He’s my unchanging foundation when all hell comes crashing down. He’s my hope, my future, and my identity.

I dare say if Marx had ever been introduced to Jesus, instead of the religion built around His name, he would have written a different story!

If you believe otherwise, tell me about it! Let’s talk. What have we got to lose?

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls.

- Jesus

Andrew Trivette Random Ideas Bible study, marx, opiate of the masses, podcast, tradition

Listen to: That You May Fully Share Our Joy

1 We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy. 5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.1 John 1:1-5 NLT

I love how John starts out, you can almost feel the excitement in his words when he talks about the time he spent with Jesus.

He makes sure you understand that he’s not telling you about a great person he’s heard about, but someone he’s personally experienced. Rather than simply imparting knowledge, he’s pouring his heart out about his greatest love.

Then he goes on to say that he so desparately wants the reader to experience Jesus as well.
He’s not telling us about a great new self-help plan. He’s not telling us about the best lifestyle, or how to become successful, or find the perfect mate. No, he’s telling us about the one person who completely turned his life upside down. He’s not reminiscing about the time Jesus turned his life around, but about how Jesus is continually changing his life for the better. When we move from knowing about Jesus to experiencing Him, then our joy can be complete. Our fellowship(our having the most important thing in our life in common with each other) becomes the unbreakable, unexplainable bond, that binds us together.

I think this passage provides such a great example of how we are to tell others about Christ. We’re not giving them a formula, or imparting important information with them. We’re simply telling them how God has, and is, changing our lives. It’s not something we do, or get training for. “Witnessing” becomes a natural extension of who we are. When you’re excited about what God is doing in your life, you’re gonna talk about it. Nothing is going to stop you.

We see countless other examples of this throughout Scripture. When the prophet Jeremiah was going through his darkest hour, he toyed with idea of giving up, and remaining silent. But when it came down to it, here’s what he had to say:

“But if I say I’ll never mention the Lord or speak in his name, his word burns in my heart like a fire. It’s like a fire in my bones! I am worn out trying to hold it in! I can’t do it!” Jeremiah 20:9 NLT

When Peter and John were jailed by their religious leaders, and upon their release warned not to teach in the name of Jesus, here’s what they had to say:

But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. 20 For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. Acts 4:18-20 NKJV

John further emphasizes throughout the rest of the chapter, that God is perfect, that we should recognize that we are not, but that it shouldn’t hold us back from serving God with everything that we have. John levels the playing field for everyone of us, regardless of our state in life, our position, etc. We all sin, and we’re all capable of being forgiven. If John can put himself on the same “level” with his readers, then can we really use our position, education, or anything else to make an excuse not to serve Him with our entire life?

We can find so many excuses not to spend time in the presence of God, when it seems like we have our whole life ahead of us, with plenty of time to get our act together, then serve the Lord. In reality, there is no better time, no greater time in our life, in which we can give our lives, our time, and our passion to God.

Andrew Trivette Random Ideas Bible study, podcast

Listen to: Not Good Enough

How many times do we go through life settling for second best? There’s so much more to our life, our relationships, our jobs, our health, and our love for the Lord, than when we just go through the motions. We were created for so much more!

We can choose to go through our jobs, and exist, or we can give it our very best, and become the best in our fields.

We can choose to focus on ourselves, or live to pour our love, our time, and our support into others, and as a result reap rich, meaningful relationships with our families and colleagues.

We can choose to show up to a church service, or we can daily seek and rely on the Lord for our hope, and our joy.

I choose my life’s path, my happiness, and my legacy. I do a disservice to those around me, if I tear down instead of build up. I do myself a disservice if I work half-heartedly at the “less important” things that I’ve committed to. We weren’t created to be second rate. Scripture tells us time and again that we were created to be successful, in everything. God didn’t create failures.

Where does our power to choose come from? When I look at my life, I realize that I don’t have the power to choose the best way, and stick to it. I’m fickle, weak, and just ignorant enough to keep trying to do it on my own anyway. I’ve never had any success in life that didn’t come after I turned that matter over to the Lord, and relied on His help. My job, my sanity, my health, my mental capacity, my relationships, all rise and fall based on how much I rely on the Lord. When I don’t, simply put, it sucks to be me! But when I put the Lord first, the whole world looks like a list of opportunites, just waiting to be explored.

So what’s stopping you from taking your life to the next level?

Andrew Trivette Random Ideas challenge, podcast

Listen to: Let’s Just Cut the Crap!

I’m sick of traditions. I’m tired of the rituals, the denominational doctrines, and the self-righteous attitudes of Christians, particularly here in the Bible Belt. It’s powerless, worthless, and condemning.

It seems like everywhere I look there is such an apathy, no one wants to speak out, or stand up for anything for fear of looking weird or fanatical. Christians that just want to fit in, and live peacefully, and comfortably. But we were created for so much more! Our traditions, “the way we’ve always done it”, imposes a purposeless, lifeless, burden on those who need God’s love.

We see in Matthew 11, Jesus offering the Jewish people relief from the traditions and doctrines of the Pharisees. Starting in verse 28 He says:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

A while back I ran across the song by Matthew West called ‘The Motions’. In it he says, “I don’t want go through the motions, I don’t want to go one more day, without your all consuming passion inside of me, I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, What if I had given everything, instead of going through the motions?”. Those words and that challenge has stayed with me for months. There is so much more to our relationship with Jesus Christ than just going through the motions.

Church isn’t a country club where we go to hang out with people we know, then pay our “dues”, and go home. It’s a place where we go to encourage and help each other in our walk with the Lord. And yet so many times we put on that plastic smile, and tell everyone that everything is great in our life, when in fact it’s not.

Instead the church body needlessly lives in private pain, and private struggles thinking we’re the only ones going through it. I’ve seen this more times than I can count, and it makes me sick. We will never have true fellowship, until we, you and I, let down the walls that surround us.

In place of vulnerability and healing, we settle for a complacent selfish doctrine, a doctrine of “Bless me God!” I get so tired of hearing people constantly touting how God will bless us. If we fast, if we have enough faith, if we speak it out, if we can find a scripture to claim, if we tithe, if we pray, if we serve, God will bless us. And while this is true, the focus is oftentimes wrong. We don’t tithe, fast, pray, serve, or believe, just because God will bless us, but rather we do these things out of obedience, and enjoy the blessings as something more along the lines of a fringe benefit! We weren’t created to live out our lives asking God to bless us in our endeavors. We were created to serve God and fulfill His purpose for us. That’s the only place that real fulfillment comes. It won’t come from jobs, money, marriage, power, or even speaking in tongues, answered prayers, or healing. True fulfillment in life will only come from obeying God out of our love for Him.

Luke 10:17-20  The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” 18 He said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, don’t rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

In this passage Jesus tells His disciples that while they could indeed cast out demons, and perform miracles, that their focus was in the wrong place. So many times we are reminded throughout Scripture that our actions are always judged by the intents of our heart.

So what is holding us back from following Christ with reckless abandon? That isn’t something that I can answer for anyone, except myself. But it is a question that each one of us must face honestly. Is it our dreams, our fears, our greed, or our selfishness? There is nothing holding us back, except ourselves.

We must come to a place where each one of us truly grasps how wildly God loves us, and how desparately He wants to be the center focus of our lives. When you see yourself the way God sees you, it completely changes everything you thought you knew, and every limitation that you have believed about yourself shows itself as nothing more than blatant lies from the devil.

I wrote a short blog post a while back where I talked about what the Lord has been teaching me about who I am, and I want to repost a small part of it, because I think it applies here.

Everyone has an opinion about who I am. Some think of me as a scientist, some as a horticulturalist, some as a “tech guy”, some as just an all around geek. Some think I’m really quiet, some think I talk to much, some think I’m anti-social, some think I’m really friendly. Some think I’m abrasive, some think I’m caring. Everyone has an opinion about who I am.

So who am I?

I’m a child of God. Period. What I can accomplish, how far I can go, who I can touch, what defines my success and failures all revolve around one factor. What does God say I can do? If He tells me I can do it, hell itself can’t stop me. If He tells me I can’t, there’s no point in trying. I am only as smart and capable as God says I am able to be.

Not much of a limit, huh?

Why does this matter? It matters because I see people day after day living in a box of their own construction, defining their own limits, or worse living within the limits their friends and families impose on them. Every day these people limit their creativity, their talents, and their personalities to fit within their notions of what they can do.

What a shame!

You don’t speak in public because you are scared of what people will think. You don’t cry, share, hurt, or love, because no one expects you to. You live in a defeat of your own making, because you don’t really believe that through God, you really can do all things.

There is no better time than now to take a risk, and tell your friends and co-workers about how the Lord is transforming your life. Remember, it’s not the pastor or missionaries job to tell the world about Jesus. It’s your’s, and it’s mine. God never intended for his offer of life to be distributed only by those with a seminary degree, and knowledge of the Greek or Hebrew. Throughout Scripture He tells us that He desired every person to be his witnesses. This is true even in the Old Testament. He told Moses in Exodus 19, starting in verse 3:

Moses went up to God, and Yahweh called to him out of the mountain, saying, “This is what you shall tell the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: 4 ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice, and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession from among all peoples; for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.’

Here He is not just talking to the priests, but to the entire nation, that He wanted them to be a kingdom of priests to the rest of the world. If that is the call that He gave to the Jewish people, then how much more is our responsibility, now that the veil is torn and each one of us have a direct relationship with God?

It boggles my mind how those who claim to love the Lord, care so little about those around them that are literally dying for the hope we claim to have. And for some it is not only a lack of concern but an outright judgement of unbelievers for making sinful choices. As if they ought to know better! Is it so difficult to realize that the only reason that people turn to drugs, sex, money, and power, is that they are searching for the joy and peace that only God offers? The joy we claim to have.

I remember several times during college when I would go to Chi Alpha straight from work, where I worked with several non-believers. And as I would be enjoying the worship and the Word, experiencing the incredible goodness of God, I’d be reduced to tears, as I was reminded that the joy that I was experiencing was a joy that my colleagues had never experienced, and would have given anything to have, if they only knew that it was real.

To sum it all up, the status quo for Christians is just not good enough, it’s not what God had in mind for his sons and daughters. But rather than just look at the problem, it is up to each and every one of us to search our soul before God, and see what He call us to do to change the status quo in our lives.

You see, I’m not just here to complain about the things in church that I don’t like, or promote my particular opinions about how we ought to behave. Rather, I want you to grasp just how intensely important it is to put ourselves aside, and seek with reckless abandon the purpose and identity that God has for each of us. Because once you grasp that, and understand just how passionately God loves you, no one on earth will be able to shut you up. It will be in the words of Jeremiah, as a fire shut up in your bones that you cannot contain it, and like Peter, you can’t help but speak of the things which you have seen and heard. and like John you’ll want everyone to know about your encounter with the Christ, so that their joy may be full, and your fellowship complete.

Andrew Trivette Random Ideas Bible study, podcast, tradition