The release of Brad’s book gives me a great opportunity to test out a new feature on my blog. While Twitter has Follow Friday, in which users recommend folks to follow on Twitter, I’d like to recommend one other blogger each week who is worth reading.

I have known Brad since last September, and it has been great to see how he thinks. Brad brings a down-to-earth analytical mind to his work. I appreciate the clarity he is able to bring to confusing and complex situations, and his ability to ask the right questions.

These strengths help him evaluate the data that comes his way and yields some interesting insights on his blog. He keeps his posts short and to the point, which I think suits his nature. They read like sociology-light, and so most readers can swing by to check out his latest poll analysis without spending the better part of the morning there.

If you have a little time on your hands, Brad has a great list of his best posts that will prove both informative reading and an excellent introduction to his book.

I remember the diversity group that the lone east Indian student started at my predominantly white high school in the Philly burbs: CAFE. It stood for Cultural Awareness For Everyone.

I was like, PHHHBBB! What’s there to know? I was shocked to see a friend of mine start attending the meetings, and just didn’t get it. I KNEW there were other cultures in the world. They just weren’t around me. What’s the big deal?

Thankfully I’ve left the foolishness of my youth behind, though I’m not always as proactive about correcting my diversity deficiency as I should.

A revelation came rocketing down on me while, if I may name drop a little bit since all Christian bloggers name drop—say if NT Wright sneezes on us or whatever, chatting with Christine Sine in New Haven, CT. I heard the words come out of my mouth, but didn’t realize how true and challenging they were until later that night.

While discussing the diversity of the Christian faith, I said, “All of my significant moments of spiritual growth resulted from interacting with a different Christian tradition.”

My trajectory is something like this:

Bored Catholic.

Jumpy Fundamentalist.

Saved but uptight evangelical.

Saved but relaxed evangelical.

Saved evangelical with spiritual gifts.

As I look back at my growth and how my life as a Christian changed, I can see that interactions with Christians from diverse denominations, backgrounds, and countries opened fresh experiences of God in my life.

Next week I’ll talk about why we need diversity and take a couple swings at what diversity can look like in our church today. If you want to take this a step further, check out my book Coffeehouse Theology, as I get into the place of Christian tradition and the global church in the development of our beliefs and practice.

We live in a celebrity culture. Celebrities provide foils and allow us to feel better about ourselves. We may bask in the glow of their achievements or console ourselves thinking that our flaws are less severe than what we learn about celebrities online or on the television.

The recent Jennifer Knapp flap illustrates our celebrity culture’s impact even in the Christian sphere. When a popular and beloved musician turned out to be something other than what we thought, many said they were disappointed in her. Some have felt let down by her. Knapp has dominated many conversations this week as we try to sort out what her homosexuality means for us.

And that is where things become tricky.

In all honesty, her homosexuality means nothing to you or me personally. Her Christian faith and personal choices, whatever we think of them, have no direct bearing on how we love God and love others. One musician’s choices and songs don’t change anything about God, and she only impacts us to the degree that we reflect upon her art and allow it to speak to us.

So what’s the big deal?

As I stated earlier in the week, Knapp provides a teachable moment for us to consider how we interact with homosexuals and to remember that homosexuals may be in our midst without our knowing. Should we choose to listen to her music, then we may have something else to chat about. However, discussing Knapp herself is really only a foil, a diversion from the conversations we need to have about ourselves and about God.

There isn’t too much redemption or edification going on when we argue about a celebrity that we’ll most likely never meet. It will be far more profitable to learn a little from Knapp and then move on to our own issues and the struggles of those around us.

The conversation about Knapp is mostly a diversion. What are the odds that those who criticize Knapp’s sexual choices are struggling with lust right now? What are the odds that bloggers such as myself have turned their critical words, originally directed at celebrities, onto their own friends and blog readers?

Celebrities give us cover from our real sin issues. Perhaps they’ll provide us a point of entry into the conversations that we need to have (as in the case of Knapp to a certain degree), but more likely than not, we need to quickly return to a discussion of our own desires, inconsistencies, and attempts to faithfully follow Jesus.

For a bit more on this, Lisa Delay did a great job the other day with her post.

Instead of homosexuals being “out there,” we’ve found they’re also among us.

When same sex marriage passed in Vermont a group of advocates chanted outside the tiny capital building in Montpelier: “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re married, get used to it!”

OK, so it was probably more of a taunt to their opponents, but I got a kick out of it. Blunt though it may be, it laid the cards on the table. With a law legitimizing same sex unions, those in opposition were faced with a choice of how to respond. Will they continue to fight it, or will they figure out a way to disagree and still move on with their lives?

The homosexuality debate among Christians is in a deadlock. I don’t think there’s anything new we can say. If you read enough comments and blog posts, you’ll find roughly three views. Christians who find homosexuality morally permissible, those who aren’t sure, and those who don’t.

The comment threads go on and on, but I don’t see an end to the debate in sight. I’ve written extensively on this topic both in the Coffeehouse Theology Contemporary Issues Guide and on this blog. As an exercise, I wrote up one post explaining the reasoning behind all three views on this topic. I feel like I understand where they’re all coming from, even if I have my own opinion on the matter.

I think we need to reframe this discussion. All three sides are just getting frustrated. It’s time to accept the fact that there will always be Christians who permit homosexuality, there will always be Chrisitians who aren’t sure, and there will always be Christians who do not permit it.

We’re here, we’re queer/unsure/straight, we’re Christians, get used to it.

That isn’t to say that we need to agree. No, that isn’t going to happen. We just need to ask the “Now what"?” question. If we can’t resolve this debate, are there some levels where we can at least have civil dialogue while holding to our different convictions?

And if some folks can’t imagine fraternizing with the other side in a dialogue that seeks to understand where that perspective is coming from, then perhaps the best move is disengagement. I’m all for dialoguing with perspectives different from my own—I benefit greatly from it. However, any debate on this topic has been played out, so why even bother to keep lobbing broad sides at one another?

There are consequences to pressing on with the debate. If we continue in this debate, I fear opponents of homosexuality will feel smug and self-righteous for their biblical purity, while those who support it will feel smug and self-righteous for their biblical progressiveness.

This is new, uncertain ground for many of us. So I advise caution as we move forward. However, it’s time to start asking the “now what?” question because the old debates aren’t moving us forward. Too much harm has been done in the name of “what’s right,” and people called to love God and to love others above all else cannot afford to let things continue in their present state.

If they’re not in our churches, they’re certainly reading the latest interview on Christianity Today with interest and  anticipating the anger and clamor that will follow.

Knapp is not an anomaly. She isn’t a lesbian who stumbled into the church one day. She is a follow of Jesus who has been wrestling with her faith in the midst of same sex attraction for quite some time. There surely are others who have experiences similar to her within our churches. Though she kept it bottled up during the initial success of her first two albums, she is now speaking freely about it. She shares:

“As a Christian, I’m doing that as best as I can. The heartbreaking thing to me is that we’re all hopelessly deceived if we don’t think that there are people within our churches, within our communities, who want to hold on to the person they love, whatever sex that may be, and hold on to their faith. It’s a hard notion. It will be a struggle for those who are in a spot that they have to choose between one or the other. The struggle I’ve been through—and I don’t know if I will ever be fully out of it—is feeling like I have to justify my faith or the decisions that I’ve made to choose to love who I choose to love.” -Jennifer Knapp in Christianity Today.

How will we respond? Will we rebuke her? Will we respond with compassion to her personally while still disagreeing with her choices? Will we rush to her defense?

Here’s my suggestion. Let’s take a moment to step back and consider that Knapp’s experience may be more common than some would like to admit. There are followers of Jesus today who aren’t sure what to make of their faith and their same sex attraction.

Knapp represents what Christians fear most today: Christian homosexuals who affirm Jesus and their same sex relationships.

I’m not too concerned about whether or not we agree with Knapp. That’s another discussion. We need to balance our commitment to scripture while extending patience and grace to those with whom we disagree.

The larger matter is that Knapp represents what is happening within our churches. Only these believers may not come out and talk openly about their sexual desires. Can we really blame them? However, they may remain in our midst under our radar, listening to our conversations about Knapp in the coming weeks.

What will they see? Will they see a Spirit-directed response? Will they see the grace and love of Jesus in the midst of discussing a controversial issue? Will they feel comfortable discussing their inner conflicts with us, or will we close off the church as a safe place for imperfect people to find the freedom of God’s Kingdom?

Whatever we believe or say about Jennifer Knapp, let’s resolve to make this a teachable moment. We don’t know what those around us are struggling with and we don’t know how a careless word said in the midst of Knapp’s coming out will impact these people who are loved by God.

For the most part, I agree with them on their theology and views on mission. I share some of their uneasiness about the Emergent branch of the broader emerging conversation, and I welcome their discussions about theology and practice.

However, my concern is that these posts have perpetuated one of the biggest weaknesses of emergent: we are defining ourselves by what we are not. Making grand “good-bye” announcements distinguishes them from others in the emergent camp publicly, setting up a new camp that is not emergent even if it has been shaped by it.

I get the substance of it, but I question the form. Why make a public exit? By drawing such lines in the sand back in the day the emerging/Emergent crowd made it much more difficult to find allies and common ground. The same may be happening today.

Where I’m Coming From

Back in 2004 and 2005 theology was something that I had to pick apart and deconstruct, pointing out its flaws. While I began to accumulate new perspectives and learned exciting new takes on theology and mission, there still existed this side of me that was grounded in the negative—though I would have asserted that I was a humble Christian committed to relearning things.

I wasn’t a theologically flat-footed, contextually obtuse, missionally obsolete conservative evangelical anymore. I was emergent, which meant a lot of things, but in many ways thrived on not being those things. The protest side of Emergent is the one critique that D. A. Carson nailed, even if the rest of his book was fit for rabbit litter.

My problem was I gained my energy from what I was not, rather than what I was. I needed to figure out where I wanted to be rather than where I didn’t want to be.

When I DIDN’T Come Out

In May of 2007 I wrote a blog post that I decided I shouldn’t share. I wrote it because I felt like I couldn’t invest very much into Emergent any more, even if I was profoundly shaped by it and the broader emerging church. I wrote a few hundred words sharing my grievances.

But I never posted it. Looking back, I’m very glad I sat on that one.

Over the following months and years I made some changes. I started listening to different people, reading some different books, and interacting on some different blogs. However, I kept following some of the same blogs and kept many of the same formative books on my shelves. The difference was one of focus: I needed to move on to think a little differently and to practice a little differently than where I sensed the bulk of the emergent crowd seemed to be.

I don’t think announcing my grievances would have helped things all that much back then. I still interacted with a broad group of folks—some I agreed with and others I didn’t. Perhaps I’d challenge someone with a blog comment if I disagreed, but if that person wasn’t receptive or became too combative I dropped that person from my blog reader list or whatever we used before Twitter to keep in touch.

Defining Ourselves by What We Are Not

Now that many of the rank and file who have benefited from the deconstruction and perspectives of the Emergent conversation have begun deconstructing Emergent itself, setting themselves apart from something, and moving on with their lives to something else. Does any of this sound familiar?

One of my greatest regrets from my early years of emergence was writing a letter to a friend about the problems at our church and cutting myself off from him and our church. I’d give anything to take that letter back, even if I still believe everything I wrote. Thankfully God’s grace can bridge the gaps we make.

I understand that some public figures no longer want to be associated with the Emergent movement. They have other projects to be associated with now. However, I’m not sure the majority of the “Good-bye” posts are beneficial for ourselves or for the body of Christ. Do we need to once again set ourselves apart from another group?

Hope for the Conversation

After I tucked away my e-mail about leaving emergent in 2007, I became acquainted with Steve Knight at the Emergent Village blog and Tripp Fuller of the Homebrewed Christianity Podcast. Even though I didn’t think my views were necessarily in the Emergent mainstream, Steve welcomed me to guest post on the Emergent Village blog. Tripp invited me on to his podcast where we chatted for hours about theology and practice long after the podcast stopped recording.

I have since benefited from their tweets, comments, posts, and podcasts.

If I’d gone ahead with that blog post back in 2007, those conversations and relationships may not have happened. While I have since stopped following certain philosophers and theologians that may or may not be at the core of Emergent, I don’t feel a need to say, “Good-Bye” to it because there are friends I could lose, perspectives that I need, and conversations that I enjoy.

So I encourage everyone to debate with charity and to offer up critiques when necessary. Post your misgivings about new books that come out—hopefully I’ll have another one for everyone to take a crack at before too long. I am all for a robust debate and questioning of theology and practice.

However, I’m not so sure saying, “Good-Bye” is the best way forward for most of us. We may find that by defining ourselves by what we are not, we end up cutting ourselves off from what we could become.

The debate about the Tim Tebow commercial set to air during the Super Bowl has been completely off base if you ask me. Boo hoo, the Super Bowl has an advertisement for something that may be vaguely political instead of beer bottles with helmets, women being sexually harassed by men, and retro hippie commercials with new soda cans.

I think I’ll get over that.

The Tebow story is a very inspiring and good story. It’s a story that should be shared. I’m glad that Tebow and his mother are sharing it. However, the way it’s been done reveals something very troubling about the priorities of Christians, how we deal with problems in our society, and how Christians today think of allocating resources.

I’m not going to argue against abortion being a serious issue for us to deal with today. There are poor pregnant women who can’t afford to support a child and then there are wealthy women who don’t want to have a child, and we need to talk about real solutions that will help women who may feel like they don’t have many options at this time in their lives while saving the unborn. Yes, we should stop abortion.

Sadly, the Tim Tebow commercial reveals that Christians are making several key oversights when it comes to saving lives today.

Our Priorities

The Super Bowl commercial is generally aimed at affluent Americans, though perhaps some poor folks may be watching as well. However, by and large, if you figure out the demographics that most advertisers are aiming for, you can guess that the Tebow commercial aims to convince middle to upper middle class voters (those relatively well off) that they should not have abortions or support legislation that permits abortion.

Whether this is an intended oversight or not, the message is particularly striking at a time when charities such as World Vision are in an all-out struggle to save lives down in Haiti. In addition, by tossing so much money at a particular demographic, the poor are not made into the kind of priority spoken of in passages such as Luke 4:18-21 or Matthew 11:2-6. Success in the Kingdom of God is synonymous with declaring the Good News to and ministering among the poor.

Ministry in Society

This ad also shows that overall Christians have chosen to speak to our culture on a large platform in an impersonal and hands off manner. Rather than taking the personally costly road of directly helping the women considering an abortion, it’s much easier to write a check, let someone preach the message, and then throw our hands up in despair when no one listens.

The ministry of Jesus was incarnational and costly. In Philippians 2 Paul speaks of Jesus who emptied himself and took on the form of a servant. A Super Bowl commercial is a big platform that does not require us to empty anything other than a bank account.

Allocating Our Resources

Lastly, the Tebow commercial brings up a matter of stewardship. The organizers of this commercial no doubt wanted to save lives, and for that I commend them. However, is this the best we can do with the resources at hand?

Three million dollars were tossed into an ad campaign that will most likely only harden support either for or against abortion without changing many minds or saving many lives. We can debate that, but hear me out: there are children in Haiti who need basic food and water to survive, tribes in Africa who needs wells, and malnourished children all over the world who could benefit greatly by a three million dollar investment.

If we only want to talk about ending abortion, then I’d ask whether this money would be better spent by creating medical clinics for financially struggling mothers. There are a lot of clinics I know of who would love a little bit of that money to purchase an ultrasound machine or to add a few doctors to their staff. Since health care in America isn’t quite as important as funding a war to drop bombs on terrorists hanging out in caves, I think that’s the least we could do.

A bunch of right-wing Christians opening medical clinics so that the poor can have health care may just shock enough “godless liberals” with our love and generosity that they’ll want to find out about Jesus for themselves.

Grace on Game Day

I want to make clear that I’m not necessarily mad at Tebow or Focus on the Family. I’m sad. This is a terrible opportunity to waste. It’s sad to think that three million dollars could be spent for the sake of thirty seconds of air time while there are so many pressing problems among the poor in America, Haiti, and around the world.

I’m also sad that there isn’t a more robust debate about the message of Jesus and it relates to the way we allocate our resources. Instead, we hear about whether we should be tolerant or intolerant of the political end of this message. To be frank, I don’t care about that in the least.

The Tebow commercial reveals that we have some priorities out of line, and I don’t give myself a free pass on this by any means. It’s a constant struggle to keep my priorities in line. As we watch the Tebow commercial I suggest we stop to think about how we use our resources, how we minister to others, and how we can strive to imitate the costly, personal ministry of Christ.

There’s a group in the world today that naturally gravitates to poor countries. They offer hope and answers to the people in this forgotten lands.

Many of the leaders of this group have left behind lucrative careers and significant family wealth, convincing new members that they are genuine and committed to their cause to the end. Should any of their leaders fall, authority is shared by many, enabling them to continue their work and to multiply rapidly.

Let’s review: they work on the margins, they offer hope and answers, they made sacrifices for their beliefs, they share authority, and they multiply through small cells. The people I’m referring to are terrorists/Islamic militants.

In one example of this at work, former CIA agent Michael Scheuer comments, “Unfortunately, in the Islamist military organizations, their leaders are actually on the battlefield. There are people who have given up livelihood such as a surgeon in terms of Zawahiri, a very prominent family in Egypt, the son of a multibillionaire in Osama bin Laden. So, what happens is the person you’re talking to is very attractive by his own system and not very attracted by yours.”

The trouble is that the methods of the terrorists resemble the way of Jesus on several counts. If you’re familiar with the New Testament, it should come to mind that Jesus’ mission revolved around proclaiming good news to the poor, he offered new life and hope, he called his followers to make serious sacrifices by taking up their crosses, he decentralized leadership by calling the greatest to be servants, and his followers spread rapidly through a series of small churches.

Of course there are some exceptions and differences that we could argue over—I’m especially expecting pushback over the leadership point—but for the most part there are some striking similarities that we should not ignore. In a sense, the terrorists are operating in ways similar to the Kingdom of God.

I suppose the question now is how the Kingdom of God, one established by self-sacrificing love, can counter those who are fueled by fear and hate.

Our situation speaks to not only an identity crisis, but a legitimacy crisis. Are we truly making ourselves and the Gospel we preach more legitimate by leeching on to celebrities?

You can probably guess what my answer is going to be…

When Jesus said that all authority on heaven and earth have been given to him, he was locating the source of influence and power in the world in himself. A crucified Messiah who overcame the world through his death and resurrection leads us down a path that helps us fulfill the Beatitudes today: blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the meek.

In such a Savior and in such actions are where we find our identity and legitimacy.

The Messiah did not establish his Kingdom by fighting for influence on the top. He did not recruit “role models” to his cause. He initiated a mustard-seed style Kingdom that makes a mockery of our celebrities and politicians.

How can Christians find legitimacy and influence in the world today?

To quote a wise man: Sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, start following Jesus, and claim your treasure in heaven. To be perfectly blunt: we need to lose.

We can’t beat the world at its game because Jesus never intended to play that game. The more I consider what it looks like to follow Jesus, to pick up my own cross, and to die to myself so he can live in me, the more I’m beginning to realize that Jesus peals away all that we value so that we can trust in him more perfectly.

What do we want more than Jesus?

Judging by the way some Christians fawn over supposedly Christian celebrities as their standard bearers and fight for political power and influence, I think we can ID a few things pretty easily. However, bloggers such as myself treasure influence and readership, theologians crave being right, and the list goes on because we all have our idols to identify.

Once we identify those things that we want, disciples of Jesus need to give them up. Stop worrying about them. Stop fighting for them. Lose.

It is only in losing the fading things of this world that we experience not only the intimacy of Christ, but are enabled to speak to our world with true influence and power: the influence and power of Christ. We can’t speak with the authority and power of Christ fighting for influence, recognition, and power at the top. 

Paul reminds us that we are seated with Christ in heavenly places—not earthly places. Let us throw aside all that we crave, all that overshadows Christ so that we can claim our true identity and influence as loving servants of God’s Kingdom who are poor, meek, and peaceful.

It doesn’t have to do with Sarah Palin the author.

I don’t begrudge Sarah Palin writing a best-selling book. Good for her. I hope it pays the college bills for her kids and helps her grandkid. I know I was really excited about the release of my book, and I’m sure Sarah Palin is too.

It doesn’t have to do with Sarah Palin the politician.

Folks who drink up politics will certainly find it an interesting read, and I have no issue with the book as a political work. Does Palin want to lambaste the McCain campaign staff? Go for it. Does she want to raise her profile before running for President in 2012? Huckabee may not be happy about that, but don’t worry about me.

Go for it Sarah. I have no qualms with that. It’s a free country made up of mavericky, real Americans who will love her book. Some don’t think she should run for public office, but I’m not going to debate that because I know as little about politics as she knows about the Sunnis and Shiites.

We should be concerned because Sarah Palin knows her only shot in an election is mobilizing the conservative evangelical base. If we think Christianity has been overly-politicized now, we should shudder at the thought of what Palin can do.

In addition, as Palin stakes her claim as a “Christian” politician, Christianity and evangelicals in particular will continue to be painted as right-wing political affinity groups. Lost in the mix is the Gospel, Jesus, and the Great Commission. Will those on the left, who need to hear the Gospel, believe that Jesus comes with a Palin 2012 bumper sticker?

Read Palin’s book. Campaign for her. Vote for her. That’s fine with me.

But we should be concerned that the effectiveness of the Gospel message will be blunted because it is being associated with the Republican party, and Palin may need to do that all the more to solidify her place. Christians may play right into this by holding her up as a model Christian, a standard bearer for evangelicals.

Let’s remember that some could hold up President Obama up as an ideal Christian as well. For those on the right, such a notion should help communicate the polarizing effect of upholding Palin as an evangelical leader.

A Suggested Way Forward

Whatever we think of Palin, Obama, and their Christian beliefs, let’s resolve to carefully select spokesmen and spokeswomen who aren’t politically polarizing and who are best known for their faithfulness to Jesus, the Messiah and Prince of Peace. We could pick those who have passed from this world or we could pick those still among us.

We could talk about Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wendell Berry, C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham, or any other model Christian who has a solid record of preaching the Gospel, serving others, and gracefully representing the cause of Christ. Christians cannot afford to let a politician represent us because politicians have to take sides. For those called to reach the whole world with the Gospel, that is a mistake we cannot afford to make.