Duck Dynasty Christians

Stuck in a hotel, I flipped through the cable channels, disgusted with everything I saw.  Accidentally, I assure you, I ran into Duck Dynasty and thought, "Well, I might as well watch for a moment to see what all the fundamentalist buzz is about this show and what is making Wal-Mart rich by marketing stuff with the show's characters on it."

It was the episode about the main guy shooting squirrel for his wife. I did not enjoy it. Granted, I prefer Mozart's Requiem to the sound of a duck call and eating at the Cheesecake Factory to a picnic with fresh rodent, but my objections to Duck Dynasty goes much deeper. I hate to judge anything by one partial viewing but..... just watch this.

Duck Dynasty Promo on Youtube

Yes, these fundamental ZZ top look-alikes (I am sure that is a way overdone comparison by now)  are bizarrely amusing, with their red-necked love affair with everything that makes me cringe. Being raised almost a vegetarian, I want to dry heave thinking about the entree du jour being fried squirrel brains.

Are we so desperate to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian that we will utterly cave and go to the opposite of the culture into backwoodsman crude? Why is it that we will put up with sarcastic women and men bragging that they don't take showers because they pray before dinner? 

Christians this is how the non-Christians want to paint you out as--backwoodsman less respected than the Bigfoot hunters. This is not a compliment. A&E are mocking Christians, folks and making a lot of money off Christians supporting this program.

Sometimes Christians can be incredibly gullible. Somebody is fooling us. I don't buy these Duck Dynasty guys. This is about making money. They may be Christians, but I don't believe this is anything but pure entertainment. If you watch it, watch Duck Dynasty for fun, but not to jump onto the bandwagon that these guys are being a great witness for the gospel to the world.

Why I Need the Crucifix

If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.

2 Corinthians 1:6, 7

I need the crucifix. 

The cross is a wonderful symbol of the resurrection, but my life right now needs a crucifix. 

Let me begin with this: Most of my life I have felt close to Christ. My relationship with Him has been one of great joy. 

But, there is a problem with this. I was brought up in a world that implied that if I loved Jesus that I would be happy. That after Christ came into my heart, I would have that romantic spirituality of feeling Jesus near-- I would feel safe, cozy and warm and cheerful.  

That leaves one with the perspective that if you don't feel Christ near, something is wrong. If your life faces serious challenges, that you somehow failed Christ or that His favor has been withdrawn from you. There is Christian judgement for imperfect lives. Subconsciously I will assume, they treat you  as if you slipped up and sinned somewhere.

I can hear many of you denying this.

But despite the denial, Christians may not explicitly teach that we should always have a smile and be happy, that is how Christians behave. Believers do feel abandon by God when their lives fall apart. 

It seems a natural question, "Where are you God?" in painful crisis and that question would not be there if we assumed suffering was a part of Christianity. If we truly believed that we are to take up our crosses and follow Him, we wouldn't be asking Christ why we have a cross? Suffering is a part of the program.

In Sunday mass, I looked up at the Crucifix hanging in front-- upon Jesus suffering and a revelation swept me. Not a new revelation, but something so clear it illuminated my basic understanding of God.

Jesus paid it all. But what does that mean?

Jesus did not suffer so that we may not suffer. 

Because the Beloved chose to sin, Jesus stretched out his hands to absorb the blows of the evil of the cosmos  not so that we can avoid pain. For His beloved, He opened  Himself up to the deepest sufferings of mankind so that we can see how love behaves.  

Love suffers for the Beloved.  

Jesus was not obedient in all things, even unto death so that we may do what we want to do. 

He was obedient to His Father even to the agony in the garden that led to the agony of the cross so that we may live in obedience to the Father.

I need to keep the crucifix near me at all times, to find comfort and strength not just from seeing His sacrifice for me, but to remind me to humbly bow before Him and endure the crosses I have been given when I am being obedient to Him. 

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. Rom. 8: 18 

For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. 2 Cor. 1: 5 

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death. Phil. 3: 10

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. Col. 1: 24

But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. I Pet. 4: 13

Now, I do not ask, "Why am I having to go through this? Where are you Lord?" But I look up to Christ and unite with His sufferings.

Love suffers. Love suffers for the Beloved. The crucifix speaks to me that I am part of that love. 

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Apprentices For the Lord

Be Apprentices For God!

Leonardo da Vinci showed so much artistic talent as a child that he was enrolled in Italy's finest art school. Once there, instead of being given a brush and told to express himself, he was given a grinder. For several years he was grinding pigments and mixing paint for the more advanced students. It was a slow and tedious method of study as an apprentice. But it was give the most talented students patience, wisdom, technique before giving the student the freedom to wield the brush. 

Da Vinci learned how to properly clean up, how to store paint and stretch and prepare the canvas with glues and gessoes, sand them and let them cure for years. Then when he was ready, he could then copy. For years, Da Vinci copied the masters unable to express himself. Then when he was a master apprentice and knew the painting techniques of his teachers, he was allowed to fill in portions of the teacher's painting carefully following the teacher's style. 

Sometimes painting students would wait ten or fifteen years before they would be allowed to paint what they wanted to, with their own style. 

Young men and women who aspire to be great singers are cautioned to take care of their voice and not sing while young. If they are serious vocal students, they will learn to speak properly so that they won't damage their voices. They will study Italian, French and German. Then when they are between sixteen and eighteen they can begin voice lessons--usually solfeggio (sight reading) and lots and lots of gentle vocal warm ups. 

Even the greatest singers of all time spend a great deal of their practice in silly sounding warm ups. Then they can go onstage and wow the audience with sustained beauty for hours.

Same thing with sports. You practice and learn the game for many years before you perform publicly or with success. 

So then, if in every aspect of our lives we realize that to be good at something we need to patiently and with dedicated discipline hone our God-given talents, why is it in the realm of religion and spirituality this lesson is ignored? Why is it we encourage anyone, even those who are the newest to faith, to get up and give their theological discourse to others? 

I think we as Christians make a very big mistake in doing this. As St. Paul writes in the 12th chapter  of his first letter to the Corinthians,  not all are called to be apostles or teachers. Some Christians are to remain silent until someone asks them why they are Christians (as St. Peter exhorts in I Peter 3:15): "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."

When a Christian is feeding solely on milk perhaps the church should not allow them to give their public discourse on the meat. They have not yet learned to digest the meat! 

I don't think we are doing our young people or our new Christian converts any favor by putting them out there in public as authorities on the gospel or on theological matters. We need to be discerning.  Our youth should be, absolutely, involved in spreading the gospel but they also need to be first... for many years... grinding the pigments... learning the languages... disciplining themselves, learning to fear the Lord in humble submission before they believe they can speak for God and have any spiritual authority. 

I am aware of the fact that Jesus was twelve when he took on the pharisees in the temple and how Timothy was a very young man when he was appointed bishop. But remember that Jesus didn't start His ministry until He was thirty and that Timothy had known the gospel since he was a boy. Timothy wasn't a new Christian. 

The most talented and gifted new Christians need time to develop their spiritual walk. We need more apprentices for Christ who are willing to walk humbly, obediently before they try and teach others the deeper mysteries of salvation.

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME

Jeremiah didn’t sign up to be a prophet of God like the prophet Isaiah did. This was not a “here am I, send me” situation since God called Jeremiah to be His witness from the womb. Jeremiah didn’t have a choice, he had to obey God. Now he was commanded to prophesy very bad news. The besieged holy city of Jerusalem must surrender to the Chaldeans and serve Nebuchadnezzar for seventy years. Israel was to voluntarily give themselves up to slavery. 

(Imagine American Christians being told that by a prophet of God today!) 

The weeping Jeremiah gave the message and what was the outcome of such courageous obedience? Jeremiah was thrown in prison. 

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mt. Moriah. Can you imagine? For three days, three agonizing days Abraham prepared for this journey of personal horror. 

Imagine the sweat streaming down the old man’s brow and his arm muscles trembling as he split the wood for the sacrifice his son would be slaughtered and burnt upon? The terrifying heartbreak at each step  to the top of the mount of Moriah he ascended with his two servants and his son. The sun was blistering down upon them. This excruciating work of struggling up a mountain, so that at the end of the journey of being obedient to God, you would be destroying your entire life. You would be killing your only son. 

As Christ wiped the blood for His forehead and stood bravely and resolutely in the garden that night, He didn’t simply walk to the Cross and die. 

Crucifixion was the end of the journey of obedience to His Father. But until the Cross, He endured an eternity of humiliation and cruelty in those few hours.

He was tortured with all the fury that hell was allowed. Every evil force was unleashed upon the kind Savior as he made his way up the to top of Scull hill. He walked a thousand miles on the Via Dolorosa with unimaginable grief and the weight of all the sins of mankind upon His spirit. 

Like with Jeremiah, and Abraham and many other great men of God, it was not merely the end of the story that was seeming failure and heartbreak. Knowing the end, one was called to persevere under the most trying and difficult circumstanced to get to the painful end. 

Has Christ called you to a personal crucifixion of your deepest desires? When you really look at what you want in your life and realize that your goals are not in line with who God is calling you to be, you may make that ultimate sacrifice and die to self and hand the end over to God. But often, if we decide to follow Christ and give up our all to follow Him in obedience, we see the end of our earthly lives and know that it is not what we chose. We then are tempted to expect God to make the journey to His purpose easy. 

“I sure didn’t want to become a priest and live a life of celibacy, but if that’s what God’s asking me to do, then He better give me a lot of perks along the way... for my sacrifice.” 

Or: “Since I gave up my career in law to follow Christ (if God truly asked the person to give it up) then I better be rich doing something else. I better get a great life for my sacrifice.”

We all are tempted to think such things. But even Job, after God took everything from him and restored it later, would never stop grieving for his children. He carried pain with him. He would not have chosen the end of his life even with the reward.

Jesus didn’t call us to sacrifice and promise the road of obedience to that sacrifice would be easy. He has called us to take up our cross daily. Each day will have its fill of troubles even when we are obedient.... especially because we are obedient. 

Walking in obedience to God when you understand the pain of the self-sacrificing finish is impossible for the human. It demands the miraculous grace to walk the day to day journey to that end.

Do not add to the burdens of life by believing if God loved you He would make your life comfortable and easy. Take courage by the saints of the old and new Testaments. Persist in sacrificial obedience to Christ even when the Christian road is full of thorns and stumbling blocks. 

Each tear, each bruise, each stumble we are uniting in the sufferings of Christ and coming closer to Him. He is there with kindness and mercy carrying our cross with us. The richness of suffering will bear thirty fold in its fruits.