Series: Jim Tune

September 9, 2015

Christian Standard

Paralysis, Condescension, or Love?

By Jim Tune How do you view the world? Too often I think our churches tend to see the world only as a mess””caught up in mindless trivialization, bereft of moral values, anti-church, and anti-Christian. Indeed, it is common today for many churches to see the world as the enemy. Unfortunately, rather than feeling heartbroken about it, we feel smug and righteous as we gleefully witness its downfall. Godlessness is its own punishment! The world is only getting what it deserves! That”s what it gets for not listening to us! In this, our attitude is the antithesis of Jesus” attitude

September 2, 2015

Christian Standard

Emotional Stinginess

By Jim Tune The joke was funny. My sermon was good. But two rows of people, mostly from the same family, were unmoved. They were, in their own minds, punishing me for an unpopular decision. The method of punishment? Withholding encouragement. Withholding praise. Withholding kindness. Arms folded across their chests, their eyes betrayed what they were thinking: You will receive no love from us this day. Praise has never been my motivation for preaching. You can”t please everyone anyway. But most preachers can relate to the “deliberate withholding” scene I just described. Thomas Aquinas once submitted that to withhold a

August 26, 2015

Christian Standard

Behind My Back

By Jim Tune I wasn”t intending to eavesdrop. It just sort of happened. I had left the company of two close friends, but realized minutes later I had left a personal item behind. My friends were still talking when I returned, and they were talking about me. I wasn”t trying to eavesdrop, but I couldn”t keep from listening as they discussed a very personal decision I had shared with them earlier. There was nothing mean-spirited in anything they said. I made my presence known almost immediately. I had heard enough to feel a flash of betrayal and embarrassment. When I

August 19, 2015

Christian Standard

Contact

  By Jim Tune Gordon Allport was an American psychologist and early groups theorist with a knack for broadly conceptualizing important behavioral topics including religion and prejudice. Allport is said to have used the following conversation to show how group segregation leads to bad attitudes toward the other group. “See that man over there?” “Yes.” “Well, I hate him.” “But you don”t even know him.” “That”s why I hate him.” Allport believed that homogeneity is never harmless. He introduced contact theory as a way of bringing groups together in order to reduce prejudice. The idea is if separation of one

August 12, 2015

Christian Standard

Armed and Dangerous

By Jim Tune A few years ago, a Seeds of Compassion event in Seattle, Washington, was organized around the visit of the Dalai Lama. One of the highlights was a joint speech by the Dalai Lama and South African bishop Desmond Tutu. Both men have committed their lives to peace and nonviolence. Their humanitarian work has saved lives and made the world a safer place. Both men espouse the value of enemy love. Both are committed to the call to love their enemies just as they would love their friends. They have lived out this commitment in ways most of

August 5, 2015

Christian Standard

Stay

By Jim Tune The great myth of this generation is that you can love Jesus but not the church, that Christ can be separated from his bride. Having served the same congregation for 15 years, I have seen a lot of people come and go. Some leave other churches to come to ours, and some leave our church to attend another. Others leave church and the faith entirely, or think they can follow Jesus without assembling with his people. Some leave because they”re under the false impression that Jesus” people down the street would be better people to follow Jesus

July 29, 2015

Christian Standard

Plausible Deniability

By Jim Tune In the United Kingdom, members of Parliament have long been allowed to bill taxpayers for the expense of maintaining a second home because they are required to spend time in both London and their home districts. The office responsible for deciding what was reasonable approved nearly every request. Consequently British members of Parliament (MPs) treated it like a big blank check. And because their expenses were hidden from the public, MPs thought they had it made, until a newspaper printed a leaked copy of those expense claims in 2009. Not surprisingly, the MPs had behaved abominably. Many

July 22, 2015

Christian Standard

Sweet Sorrow

By Jim Tune One of my favorite books (and I like the movie, too) is the classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Czech writer Milan Kundera. In his book, the heroine, Teresa, struggles to be at peace with life when it”s not heavy, when it”s too much lightness, sunshine, and seemingly carefree””when it”s devoid of the anxieties that hint at darkness and mortality. She feels the constant need for gravitas, for some heaviness that says life is more than simply the present flourishing of health and comfort. For her, lightness equals superficiality. Most of us prefer sunshine over shadow,

July 15, 2015

Christian Standard

On Being Slow to Speak

By Jim Tune In her book Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou writes about a dinner party hosted in the home of a very rich and sophisticated friend during the author”s first trip to Senegal. As Angelou explored the ostentatious home and observed the elegant guests, she noted they were all carefully stepping around the beautiful, expensive rug in the middle of the floor to avoid dirtying it. She became outraged and appalled that her hostess would be so shallow as to value her things above her guest”s comfort. Finally Angelou decided to act; she stepped onto the rug and

July 8, 2015

Christian Standard

God Tastes Like Fire

By Jim Tune German Anabaptist teacher Hans Hut endured the heat of persecution when he refused to have his child baptized. He was arrested in 1527 during a meeting with other Anabaptist leaders in Augsburg, Germany. Hut was tortured horribly, and died of asphyxiation during a fire that consumed the Augsburg prison on December 6, 1527. The next day, the authorities sentenced his dead body to death and burned him. A man of deep convictions and reverence for God, Hut described the holiness of God: “God tastes like fire.” God appears as flame frequently in Scripture, consuming at one moment,

July 1, 2015

Christian Standard

You Will Receive Power

By Jim Tune Luke ends his Gospel with the promise of power from on high (Luke 24:49)””a promise quickly fulfilled with an exclamation mark in the book of Acts, as the Spirit descends on Jesus” disciples at Pentecost. Mark”s Gospel, at least in its longer form, ends with a dramatic promise of signs, of poison swallowed without harm, of snake handling and tongue speaking. So you could be forgiven for harboring expectations of dramatic spiritual ecstasies when the resurrected Christ, invested with all heavenly and earthly authority, promises his presence to the end of the age. Yet the charge Jesus

June 24, 2015

Christian Standard

Life on the Periphery

By Jim Tune It”s no longer 1910 or the age of men. And if there once was a Christian age, it has come and gone. As recently as 1967, one might have argued that Canada was a Christian country. July 1, 1967 marked Canada”s centennial birthday celebration. Thousands gathered in Ottawa, the nation”s capital, for the festivities. The celebration began with a prayer service, which was carried on national television and was a centerpiece of the day”s events. The crowd waited expectantly as dignitaries arrived for the service, including all the main political leaders of the day: the prime minister

June 17, 2015

Christian Standard

On Dancing Well

By Jim Tune Reflecting on her years in the grip of alcohol addiction, author Glennon Doyle Melton said that when she finally got sober, she dreaded weddings. She would try to look busy, reapply lip gloss, and make numerous unnecessary trips to the ladies” room in order to avoid the dance floor. The dance floor, sober, was a terrifying place to be avoided at all costs. During her drinking days, Melton was the first and last one on the dance floor. That changed during her first years of sobriety. In a post on her popular Momastery.com blog, she comments wryly,

June 10, 2015

Christian Standard

A Righteous Crowd?

By Jim Tune My father was a wise man. He was respected in the community, known for integrity, humor, and wisdom. I had the great fortune to be raised by a deeply principled man. Among the important things my dad taught me was this jewel of counterintuitive wisdom: “Beware of running with the crowd.” It was a warning to be suspicious of the crowd, not to trust the crowd, to resist falling in line with the majority too readily. In the Gospels the word crowd is frequently used pejoratively, so much so that nearly every time we see the word,

June 3, 2015

Christian Standard

Father Life

By Jim Tune I once heard a preacher tell of a tormented young woman who attended his church. He described her as being broken in ways so shattering he doubted she”d ever get all of those broken parts fixed. Her father had abandoned the family when she was a young girl. Her longing for a father grew so intense that when other dads in the neighborhood mowed their lawns, she grabbed her rag doll and walked next to them, back and forth, while they cut the grass. She remembered being hopeful every time she heard a lawn mower start because

May 27, 2015

Christian Standard

Silence and Socializing

By Jim Tune Susan Cain, in her best-selling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can”t Stop Talking, says at least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who generally prefer listening to speaking, who innovate and create but dislike self-promoting, and who favor working on their own over working in teams. Cain argues that we undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. There is a certain inner work we can do only by ourselves, alone, in silence. Meister Eckhart helps us understand that when he asserts, “Nothing

May 20, 2015

Christian Standard

The Myth of the Supreme Leader

By Jim Tune In 2007 a Southern California woman named Jacqueline Gagne claimed she made 16 holes in one””10 of them in less than a four-month period. A statistician determined the odds of that occurring to be 12 septillion to 1. As far-fetched as that sounds, Gagne holds nothing on Kim Jong-il, the former “Supreme Leader” of North Korea. During his reign as the unchallenged leader of the secretive nation, Kim, according to official North Korean state media reports, routinely shot three or four holes in one per round of golf. But Kim”s greatest feat occurred the very first day

May 13, 2015

Christian Standard

Tables of Grace

By Jim Tune God has a thing for tables, and many of us can understand why. The Scriptures are full of stories of people meeting around tables and of relationships being formed and strengthened in that space. We resonate with these experiences. In my own life, the best moments with family have taken place around the kitchen table, visiting or enjoying a meal. The table is a place where we can be fully present with one another and develop deeper community. The psalmist connected God with the table in a familiar passage: “You prepare a table before me in the

May 6, 2015

Christian Standard

In All Things Love

By Jim Tune There”s a scene in Mark Twain”s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I will never forget. Huck Finn has helped hide Miss Watson”s runaway slave, Jim. But Huck was sure he was committing a grave sin in helping the fugitive. Huck had learned in Sunday school, “People that acts as I”d been acting . . . goes to everlasting fire.” Eventually Huck writes a note to Miss Watson as an act of repentance. Desperate to save his soul, he tells her where to find her runaway slave. Huck prays the “sinner”s prayer” and “gets saved.” Even though he

April 29, 2015

Christian Standard

Human

By Jim Tune In C.S. Lewis”s book The Magician”s Nephew, readers meet an unsavory character named Uncle Andrew, who consistently displays an arrogance that causes him to distance himself from others, view them with contempt, and attempt to use them for his own purposes. Near the end of the book, when Uncle Andrew encounters things he can”t fathom or explain (like talking animals) he descends into insanity. Aslan and the other animals are speaking to him in plain English, but he can”t understand a word. All he hears are roars and growls, and he is terrified. Finally, he loses his

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