Plantinga Ch. 5: Vocation in the Kingdom of God

     One thing that really stuck out to me in this chapter was the quote:  "Jesus invited all of his followers, including any of us today who believe in him, to participate in the kingdom as its agents, witnesses, and models."  I find that we as believers tend to focus on our actions and things we can do and say to show Christ's love to others.  However, notice that it also says "witnesses."  Witness is defined as "someone who sees an event and reports what happens."  I think we tend to look past this part of our calling because we don't really see the benefit of it.  Let me try to explain the importance of it using my experience in Guatemala on a "vision" trip as a model.
     On our trip in 2009, our team was challenged to look for visions of God's kingdom in our mission work and every evening when we had our meetings and worship time, we would discuss what we saw and figure out ways that we could take this back to our home towns.  I didn't really think that I would be able to learn much from these people, after all, they had next to nothing, what could they possibly have to teach me?  The first day we visited El Boqueron prison in Guatemala--home of one of the two top gangs in Guatemala, the Mara Salvatrucha, more commonly known as MS-13.  The other gang is the 18th Street gang.  These two gangs have a long history of violence towards each other including a massive prison massacre which caused the splitting of them into two different prisons because of the danger imposed from them being near each other.  At this maximum security (a lot less "maximum than U.S. prisons) prison was one of the most notorious MS-13 leaders called "Psycho" and his buddy "Diabolico."  The day before we arrived, an article had come out in Guatemala papers talking about how awful these two men are and what they did and where they were currently residing.  This article basically condemned these two men and their families to death because the other gang now knew where these two big leaders were. 
     We gave up our passports and were frisked before going into a large room with the gang members and some of their families.  I remember smelling lots of pot (which made most of our team basically high, just from inhaling it secondhand) and urine; the place was filthy and most of the men didn't have shirts on and were covered all over their heads, necks, and chests with tattoos.  Since it was family day in the prison, we set up crafts for the kids and sang songs and had time to socialize with the gang members.  While we were doing this, my youth pastor and another pastor who was with us went into Psycho's cell (we learned later what really happened) where he told them his story.  Psycho told them how this article was a death wish for him and his family and told them how he had recently realized his need for something more and had come to accept Christ.  He provided oil for our pastors to anoint him with and they prayed for him.  This big, muscular, tattoo-covered, gang member was kneeling on the ground in his own prison cell bawling his eyes out was fasting and praying to God.  Psycho also told them about a vision he had about being the voice of God to his gang. 
     This is only one example of God's scandalous grace.  There are many more people we met who were "embracing the pain of their past to repair the next generation."  Shorty - a former gang member from the streets who is now a pastor, and Tita - a former gang member, drug addict, and victim of abuse who started a school in Guatemala's most notorious slum, La Limonada.  My point is, that in even the seemingly ugliest places and situations, we were able to see incredible visions of God's Kingdom in action.  Not only can we learn from their incredible stories and deep faith in God, but we can also let this be a reminder to keep our eyes and ears open to our current surroundings so that we can see God's Kingdom around us.  Also, may we contribute our own Kingdom visions-and passionately act on them.  Dream big!

Man or Rabbit

     In Man or Rabbit, Lewis discusses the question, "Can't you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?"  Lewis suggests that often what people really mean by this question is more like, "I don't care whether Christianity is in fact true or not.  All I'm interested in is leading a good life. I'm going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I find them helpful."  This is the approach that many take toward religion these days; they don't bother figuring out why something they believe in is true, they just believe in it because it is convenient for them.  Lewis says that our desire to "find out what reality is" is on of the things that "distinguishes man from animal.," and when man doesn't quench that desire, he is not being "fully human."
    This reminds me of what Francis Collins (geneticist who lead one of the groups in the Human Genome Project) warns against in his book The Language of God.  He says that we have to be careful in only letting God exist in the aspects of realities that science can't explain.  Lewis was mainly talking in his paper about non-Christians being guilty of choosing to remain ignorant of Christianity because they don't want to deal with the hard questions.  But I think Christians are also guilty of not knowing why they believe what they believe and letting God take over when we don't have the answers to the same hard questions.  We need to be careful of this ignorance as well.  Yes, God is the answer, but we need to go beyond that and figure out why we believe in Him.
     Lewis says that the man asking this question is not really asking if he can lead a good life without believing in Christianity, but instead "Mayn't I just avoid the issue, let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being 'good'?"  But how is a man to do good if he doesn't even know what good is?  For he cannot truly know what good is without investigating the possibilities-including Christian beliefs of good and evil.  Lewis says "He is like the man who won't look at his bank account because he's afraid of what he might find there."  This man is in the state of "dishonest error" and this dishonesty will "spread through all his thoughts and actions" and does not deserve God's grace.
     A good life will do us no good without Christ in our lives.  The man who remains ignorant and doesn't even bother to figure out anything about God is condemned to hell.  There's no nice way to put it.  This is a harsh reminder to us as Christians to reach out to our non-Christian friends and challenge them to find out for themselves what they believe to be true.  That is, if we want to see them in heaven.