The Effect of Wealth On the Human Soul— Part I.

“What is clear about rich people and their money— and becoming ever clearer— is how it changes them.  A body of quirky but persuasive research has sought to understand the effects of wealth and privilege on human behavior— and any future book about the nature of billionaires would do well to consult it.

One especially fertile source is the University of California at Berkeley psychology department lab overseen by a professor named Dacher Keltner.  In one study, Keltner and his colleague Paul Piff installed note takers and cameras at city street intersections with four-way Stop signs.  The people driving expensive cars were four times more likely to cut in front of other drivers than drivers of cheap cars.  The researchers then followed the drivers to the city’s crosswalks and positioned themselves as pedestrians, waiting to cross the street.  The drivers in the cheap cars all respected the pedestrians’ right of way.  The drivers in the expensive cars ignored the pedestrians 46.2 percent of the time— a finding that was replicated ...by another team of researchers in Manhattan, who found drivers of expensive cars were far more likely to double-park.

In yet another study, the Berkeley researchers invited a cross section of the population into their lab and marched them through a series of tasks.  Upon leaving the laboratory testing room, the subjects passed a big jar of candy.  The richer the person, the more likely he was to reach in and take candy from the jar— and ignore the big sign on the jar that said the candy was for the children who passed through the department.

Maybe my favorite study done by the Berkeley team rigged a game with cash prizes in favor of one of the players, and then showed how that person, as he grows richer, becomes more likely to cheat.  In his forthcoming book on power, Keltner contemplates his findings:

If I have $100,000.00 in my bank account, winning $50 alters my personal wealth in trivial fashion.  It just isn’t that big of a deal.  If I have $84 in my bank account, winning $50 not only changes my personal wealth significantly, it matters in terms of the quality of my life— the extra $50 determines what bill I might be able to pay, what I might put in my refrigerator at the end of the month, the kind of date I would go out on, or whether or not I could buy a beer for a friend.  The value of winning $50 is greater for the poor, and, by implication, the incentive for lying in our study greater.  Yet it was our wealthy participants who were far more likely to lie for the chance of winning fifty bucks.

There is plenty more like this to be found, if you look for it.  A team of researchers at the New York Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor.  Another study, by a coalition of non-profits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below 25 grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent.  A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: If you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s....  ‘As you move up the class ladder,’ says Keltner, ‘you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others.  Straightforward economic analyses have trouble making sense of this pattern of results.’”

I bet they do.  God, however, does not.  He said, “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into destruction.  For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” {1 Timothy 6:9-10b}.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Clash of Kingdoms.

Stirred by the fervor of their religious leaders’ hatred and envy, the crowd screams for Jesus’ death.  “Crucify, crucify!” {Matt. 27:23}.  It’s just one word in the Greek, like the football chants of a rabid fan-base: ‘D-fense, D-fense!’  It is pure mob mentality at this point.  As Matthew recorded, “When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd.  ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said.  ‘It is your responsibility!’”  And “all the people answered, ‘Let His blood be on us and on our children,’” vv. 24-25.  And it was.  One generation away, in 70 AD, the Day of Reckoning would come.

I was thinking about Jesus the other day, about the inevitability of Jesus’ death.  It was going to happen; it was bound to happen.  You can’t bring the Message He brought and live the Life He lived, you can’t teach the things He taught and so beautifully illustrate by your actions a Life of devotion to God, passion for God, and allegiance to His Kingdom in complete contradiction to the kingdoms of this Earth, to their gluttony and greed, their lust for Mammon and hunger for power, to the worship of oneself ...and not get killed sooner or later.  Jesus painted a very clear picture of the Kingdom of Grace, a Kingdom He tells Pilate is “not of this world.”  It is a Kingdom in which the world’s order of power, prominence, and possession is inverted, and replaced by justice, mercy, and humility {Mic. 6:8}.

It is a Kingdom which neither cares for nor prioritizes the Profit Motive which makes our modern world ‘go round.’  The Bankers running our show on the national and international level would gouge out their eyes and rip the ears off their heads before they would consider expunging all debt every seven years, pressing the ‘reset’ button on economic relations, as God instructed His people Israel {cf. Deut. 15:1-11, which begins with, “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.”}.  That is a Message no one wants to listen to: “Where is the profit in that?  Where in the world will we make our money?”  I don’t know.  Try fleecing taxpayers for your ridiculous bonuses; it’s always worked before.

What is His Kingdom?  It is the piercing Light which clashes violently with the darkness of men’s deeds— both individually and corporately, systemically.  And let’s be honest: nobody wants to hear the Message of a Kingdom which demands every ounce of allegiance we possess.  No ‘king’ or ‘queen’ wants to hear that their kingdom, however large or small, is inconsequential to Eternity and will one Day be crushed by the “weight of glory.”  Nobody.

So Jesus goes to His death, hanging on our cross and suffering in our stead, with the courage and heroism only a perfect Man could display— the God-man, undivided deity and sinless humanity welded as One forevermore.  When the price of sin was paid and the ransom of mankind accomplished, He cried out, “It is finished ...forever!” {Jn. 19:30}.  Then, as Peter boldly declares over and over in the Book of Acts before the very people whom he once cowered from: “But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him” {2:24}.  Impossible indeed! ...for Death to hold the Author of Life!  In v. 32 he says, “God has raised this Jesus to Life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.”  A martus is a legal, historical “witness,” one who bears testimony in a judicial sense to people, places and things.  Peter’s conclusion?  “Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ”— Master and Messiah {v. 36}!  Amen and amen.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Creed.

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 we find what Paul describes as the earliest tradition common to all Christians.  En protos in v. 3 means ‘first in rank, order, influence and honor,’ above all else.  I.e, “I am delivering to you the traditions which were delivered to me by eyewitnesses, and these are:”

 I.  “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures....”  The prophet Isaiah said of Jesus, the Lamb of God, “He was pierced through for our transgressions [Every sin, literally, like a spear-thrust through the soul], He was crushed for our iniquities [The ‘grapes of God’s wrath’ poured out in full]; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” 53:5-6.  “Christ died for our sins as attested from Scripture” is both historical fact and the centrepiece of Salvation, for if our sins have not been paid for, expiated and expunged from every record human and divine, then we are still “dead in” them.  But the Victory was won in the Conquest of the Cross and Satan’s stranglehold on the souls of men was broken forever.

II. “That He was buried....”  Which is the sign that Jesus had died, truly and physically.  Paul doesn’t make a point of the empty tomb because by its very definition ‘resurrection’ meant a new body which left no corpse behind!  Unlike the Gospels, he doesn’t even mention it because eyewitness testimony is the strongest proof possible.  In Paul’s world, to say that someone was “buried” and “raised” three days later was to say unequivocally the tomb is empty!  Speaking of resurrection is enough to imply this and much, much more.

III. “That He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures....”  1000 years before the birth of Christ, David said to the Lord in Psalm 16, “My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because You will not abandon me to the Grave [to Sheol], nor will You let Your Holy One see decay,” vv. 9-10.  Jews living at the time of Jesus believed that the soul, the spirit, didn’t fully depart from the body til somewhere around the 3^rd day.

IV.     “And that He appeared to Peter [the fact that he uses the Aramaic form of Peter’s name, Cephas, points to an early Semitic source for the Creed], then to the Twelve [the official Apostles we know from the Gospels and the Acts].  After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”  That is, “some have fallen” into physical death.  It’s like Paul saying, “You want to check my facts?  Go to the sources themselves.  Twenty-five years after the Resurrection of the Son of God, most of them are still here.”  “Then he appeared to James [the half-brother of Jesus], then to all the Apostles...,” which clearly refers to a number larger than “the Twelve.”  This, I believe, is “the Seventy” sent out two by two in Luke 10:1.

What we have in vv. 3-7 is the reiteration of a Christian Creed which can be traced all the way back to the formative stages of the early Church.  Scholars of every color and hue— from the ultra-liberal to the overly-conservative— agree that this Creed can be dated to somewhere between three to eight years from the Crucifixion of Christ Jesus.  It is unparalleled in World History that legends of these kinds {as skeptics are so apt to claim} would rise up around the life of a humble Palestinian carpenter who had been crucified by the Romans as a condemned criminal, and be believed by multitudes who turned to Him as their Lord and Liege, their Savior and Sovereign.  A 19^th century historian by the name of Julius Muller challenged the scholars of his era to demonstrate anywhere in history where within thirty years {same amount of time which passed between Paul’s first letter to Corinth and the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ} a series of legends had accumulated around a historic figure and become firmly fixed in the set of beliefs surrounding them.

Muller’s challenge has never been met.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Of Faith Or Of the Law?

Paul say’s in Galatians 3:9, “So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith [Lit., ‘the believing one, the trusting one’],” v. 9.  The emphasis in v. 9 is on the fact that “those who have faith”— which is just another way of saying anyone in the Kingdom of God, everyone in the Father’s Family— are “blessed” with the salvation of their souls, just like Abraham, rather than those who depend on ‘good works,’ ritualistic righteousness, and meticulous rule-keeping, like the Judaizers.

Notice what he says next.  This is powerful stuff for those who refuse to acknowledge the difference between Law and Love as the motive behind the madness we call Apprenticeship to Jesus, between those who so desperately want to live out of duty {as well as imposing it on everyone else!} and those of us choosing to live out of desire.  This is directed at those who were mutilating not only the Gospel of Grace but the very souls of men and women by their demands of circumcision for salvation and obedience to the Law for intimacy with Abba.  So... legalists, fundamentalists, denominationalists, and modern-day Pharisees of whatever persuasion, listen up!  Here’s a challenge for you.

“All who rely on observing the Law are under a curse, for it is written [Quoting Deut. 27:26]: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law,’” v. 10.  Paul’s saying exactly the same thing he says in a number of other places: if you take one part of the Law you have to take the whole thing; if you keep one part of the Law as your standard for true holiness you must keep every aspect of the Law, all 613 or so commands.  Which is something only one Man in His-Story has ever been able to do.  I have yet to see any legalist, anywhere, meet this standard.  Not only this, in my 44 years of life-experience on this Earth, I have yet to see any Law-laden, rule-ridden control-freak or wannabe ‘cult leader’ actually meet the standard they so readily impose on others.  How ‘bout that for powerless and ineffective?

If it works so well, then why can’t you do it?  If this ‘system’ you’ve devised for the rest of us is healing hearts and restoring lives, if it’s forging men and women into passionate lovers of God and compassionate lovers of people, if it is transforming the wounded and the weary into stalwart Soldiers of the Faith, if it is molding the Children of God into the image of their Abba, if husbands are loving well their wives and wives are honoring their husbands with respect, if parents are tender yet firm, wise yet funny with their little ones, and those same children are not disrespectful and arrogant toward their parents, if friends and fellow-soldiers are asking forgiveness of each other, if fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, are seeking forgiveness as the ‘relational healer’ of their Stories, if courage and conviction surrounded by compassion are taking deep root in the souls of the Saints, then by all means keep it up.  But if not ...then maybe you better rethink this whole scheme you’re selling.  Maybe you better go back to Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and whosever’s Letter to the Hebrews and start over.  At Ground Zero.  On the solid ground of grace and love.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Fools Together For Jesus.

The experience of Christian Community, a loving-forgiving Family of Faith is not a luxury for the spiritually affluent, nor is it a panacea for the lonely and forlorn.  It is a necessity, and a divine intention, for every last Child of God.  A Family, a Tribe, is what Jesus formed with His band of misfits; it’s what Paul meant under the inspiration of the Spirit when He spoke of the Ekklesia— the assembly of those ‘called out’ from the world through faith in the Word— small Christian communities, Bands of Brothers {men and women alike} praying together, worshipping in the Word, healing and loving, forgiving and reconciling, supporting and sustaining one another, offering words of challenge and encouragement.

Author and psychologist Scott Peck say’s: “There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace— and ultimately no life— without community.”  {Different Drum, p. 233}  Which is another way of saying, without relationship and without transparency.  We need a Fellowship of friends and like-minded Disciples who get us ...who understand who we are and where we’re coming from.  “We need perspective on the present... so we pray together; we need an understanding of our story, so we share our lives with each other; we need a  clear vision of the Day of God, the Day when we will live happily ever-after, so we dream together.”

And ‘together’ we’ve been called to a life of counter-culturism: of simplicity and beauty, of purity in heart, of unwavering obedience to the Good News of Grace.  The truth is this will lead us exactly where it lead our Lord— to a hateful death at the hands of the world.  But the Cross always comes before the Crown.  Thus, all roads lead to Calvary, for we preach as ambassadors of the King: “Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” {1 Cor. 1:23-24}.

A conscious choice to simplify our lives and to purify our hearts, to live in obedience to the wisdom of the Word, looks like weakness in the eyes of the world because we no longer rely on our possessions and privileged positions for security.  You can expect derision, arrogance and outrage because “authentic discipleship”— as Brennan Manning has said— “is a life of sublime madness.”  Injury and insult are guaranteed to those who labor in the Conflict of Christ— 1 Thessalonians 3:4.

A believer living in the world but not of the world is a sign of contradiction to the compromises which surround us.  As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:10, “We are fools for Christ’s sake….”  To which I say: Better to be a fool for Jesus than a genius for Satan!  The foolishness of faith is the only hope we have of breaking free from the prison of The Matrix.  “The greatest threat to any system is the existence of fools who do not believe in” it, who refuse to accept it as the final reality.  “To repent and believe in a new reality— that is the essence of conversion.”  To repent of our fears and lack of real faith, to trust in the tenderness of God’s heart toward His Children, to accept that you are accepted, to believe that you are beloved, is the very heart of conversion.  And it is this we most desperately need today.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Calling of the Cross.

Looking closely at Paul’s letters brings something crucial about the world in which we live to the forefront our minds: hostility to the Cross characterizes the kosmos.  The Cross symbolizes the love poured out to secure our souls, then leads us by the light of faith to the Resurrection, the source of our Life and the place of our power {Rom. 6}.  For you and I, it is an utterly indispensable aspect of Jesus’ Finished Work.  In light of this, one can make any kind of ‘spiritual statement’ they want {no matter how ludicrous it may seem}, utter all manner of ‘religious rhetoric,’ but when you stand boldly for the Son of God and the sacrifice of the Cross, all the rage of nations will be turned against you.

Christian author Brennan Manning wrote: “Today the Christian community does not disturb the world….”  And this should disturb us.  “When our dogmatic beliefs and moral principles do not realize themselves in discipleship, then our holiness is an illusion.  And the world has no time for illusions.”  Why so little impact from a Body that seems so B.U.S.Y.?  Because “Christian piety has trivialized the passionate God of Golgotha.  Christian art has turned the unspeakable outrage of Calvary into dignified jewelry.  Christian worship has sentimentalized monstrous scandal into sacred pageant.  Organized religion has domesticated the Lord of Glory, turned Him into a tame theological symbol.  …Theological symbols do not sweat blood in the night.  In his landmark work, The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann writes: ‘We have made the bitterness of the Cross, the revelation of God in the Cross of Jesus Christ, tolerable to ourselves by learning to understand it as a theological necessity for the process of salvation.  As a result, the Cross loses its ...incomprehensible character.’”

View it as a theological relic, and the Cross will never disturb your comfortable religiosity.  Yet the Savior of our souls and Lover of our lives demands nothing less than the placing of all our arrogance and ego on the Cross.  This is the heart of submission and surrender.

There’s an entire ‘complex’ of churches today which attempt to eliminate the risk and inherent danger of following Jesus {a prospect which we all know, if we’re even remotely honest with Scripture, can end badly}.  “We cushion the risk and remove the danger of discipleship by drawing up a list of moral rules to give us a sense of security rather than the insecurity of living each moment by faith in Him.  To live the Adventure of Faith is to walk in the Way we were saved— 2 Corinthians 5:7.  The Word of the Cross, the power and wisdom of Jesus Christ crucified, is conspicuous by its absence.  If we were to live a life in imitation of His,” what would it look like, what would be our witness to the world?

“If indeed we lived a life in imitation of His, our witness would be irresistible.  If we dared to live beyond our self-concern, if we refused to shrink from being vulnerable, if we took nothing but a compassionate attitude toward the world, if we were a counterculture to our nation’s lunatic lust for pride of place, power, and possession, if we preferred to be faithful rather than successful, the walls of indifference to Jesus Christ would crumble.  A handful of us could be ignored by society, but hundreds, thousands, millions of such servants would overwhelm the world.  Christians filled with the authenticity, commitment, and generosity of Jesus would be the most spectacular sign in the history of the human race.  The call of Jesus is revolutionary.  If we implemented it, we would change the world in a few months.”  {The Signature of Jesus, pp. 36-37, 45-46}

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Faithfulness, Courage, and the Readiness To Risk Failure.

It is a timeless and beautiful thing to recognize the possibility of living in this world soberly, seriously, honestly, and at the same time joyfully: faithful in a faithless age.  This is the sentence spoken by our lives, the message proclaimed by our walk in the world: that it’s possible to make a radical choice to trust, and in spite of our sins, stains, evil and arrogance, to sustain it through the details of daily life for Jesus Christ our King and His eternal Kingdom.

As author Brennan Manning has said in his chapter entitled ‘The Victorious Limp’ {The Ragamuffin Gospel}— to live in “faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on” Christ Jesus, “the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.

 I.  The courage to risk everything …to lay it all on the line for the Cause of our King.  Faithfulness to Jesus Christ means we stand with Him— no matter what {Jn. 21:20-22}; “that we are formed and informed” by the wisdom of “His Word;” that we offer Life and not death to the hearts of those around us.

II. The willingness to keep growing.  “Unfaithfulness is a refusal to become, a rejection of grace, and the” unwillingness to be oneself— to be precisely who the Father destined us to be.  The great Gen. Douglas MacArthur once composed a prayer which read:

Youth is not a period of time.  It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort.  A man doesn’t grow old because he has lived a certain number of years.  A man grows old when he deserts his ideal.  The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.  Preoccupations, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward Earth and turn us into dust before death.  You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God.  If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man’s soul.  {Italics Mine}

III. The readiness to risk failure.  “Many of us are haunted by our failure to have done with our lives what we longed to” do.  The disparity between our ideals and our existence, the specter of sins long past, the aching awareness that I don’t live what I claim to believe, and the relentless pressure of cosmic conformity reinforce a sense of existential shame: I am a failure.  “This is the cross we never expected, and the one we find hardest to bear.”

Would it shock you, would it surprise you to know that in all the glory of His grace and magnificence of His mercy your Abba expects more failure from you than you expect from yourself… and loves you— unerringly and unendingly— regardless?

The lone believer wandering the world’s wastelands who sees her life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure and relationship has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid who hide behind the Law and never find out who they are at all.  “Winston Churchill said it well: ‘Success is never final; failure is never fatal; it is courage that counts.’”  It is courage that counts.  Amen and amen.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously