Formal…but here to party…

Have you ever seen the episode of the Andy Griffith Show where Andy tries to turn Ernest T. Bass into a gentleman?  Really any of those “Pygmalion” or “My Fair Lady” type things will work.  But Andy Griffith is the best.  Take a look at a clip from the episode.  Go ahead…I’ll wait…

…Did you notice how Ernest looked in his suit?  He was stifled.  He was robotic.  Sure, if you had never seen him before you might not know what was wrong.  But five minutes with him and you’d realize that something wasn’t quite right.  There’s a wildness in his eyes.  There’s just something about him that screams, “I’m a wild person crammed into a suit.”  His behavior is changed, and his appearance is changed.  He is playing nice, but it only lasts so long before it begins to unravel.  Like they say, you can take the man out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the man.

Now, have you ever sat in a church service and wondered just what was so special about this “God” guy?  I mean, he seems respectable enough, but isn’t there something a bit odd about him?  He seems stifled.  He seems a bit robotic.  He seems a bit like a wild man who’s been stuffed into a suit.

Now, have you ever been to the ocean?

Have you ever seen a waterfall after a heavy rain?

Have you ever seen hundred-year-old trees snapped in half by the wind?

Have you ever seen acid-green moss shake a defiant fist in the air through decaying leaves and ice, screaming, “I am alive!  Life always wins!”?

Maybe the reason we grow disillusioned with church is that we make it too polite.  Now I don’t want to overstate this.  Just like with Ernest T. Bass, there are times when it is important to put on the suit and play nice.  And God does this well.  He meets us where we are, and for many of us, where we are is in a polite church service.  But I also don’t want to understate this.  We need a God that is real.  We need to be people who are real.  Jesus didn’t die to make us nice.  He died so that we can fully love.

Many of us are crying out that the Church has lost its power.  It has lost its strength and its influence.  It has lost its connection with our real lives.  It has lost its connection with Spirit.  What has replaced it has been political action groups, hateful televangelists, and stinking lying liars who vomit out the so-called “prosperity gospel.”  Many non-Christians look at the Church and say things like, “I like Jesus, but I don’t want anything to do with what you guys are doing.”  It seems fake.  It seems stifled.  It seems robotic.  It seems a bit like we’ve taken Jesus’ message and stuffed it into a container that doesn’t really work.

Maybe what we need is to let our God loosen his tie a bit.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love the Church.  What I don’t love is the way the Church has been corrupted.  I don’t say we should throw out Church.  We are called into relationship with God, but in the same breath we are called into relationship with each other.  That is what Church is about.  Francis Schaeffer says this,

“Therefore Christians in their relationships should be the most human people you will ever see.  This speaks for God in an age of inhumanity and impersonality and facelessness.  When people look at us their reaction should be, “These are human people”…If they cannot look upon us and say, “These are real people,” nothing else is enough.  Far too often young people become Christians and then search among the Church’s ranks for real people, and have a hard task finding them.”

So what does it mean to be “real”?  From the Christian perspective we have to look at what Jesus said.  And what Jesus said is telling.  The last thing he said to the apostles before ascending into heaven is a powerful clue as to what he thought it meant to be a fully realized human.  He said, “By this will all men know that you are mine, and that I was sent by the Father; if you have love for one another.” And likewise, when he was asked the most important law for humans to follow he summed it all up with “Love God, and love each other.”

Some of us see God as angry, powerful, and distant.  Some see him as an ooey gooey spirit that hasn’t got a personality, and is there when I want to be thankful, but doesn’t care when I want to be a bit shady.  Some see Jesus as a “warrior with a sword in hand and a tattoo down his leg.”  I tend to see Jesus as a subversive hippie prophet, teaching Love and “smash the state.”

Some like to think of Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt.  That says, “I’m formal, but I’m here to party.”

But maybe if we’re missing God in our real life, it’s because we’re looking for the wrong things.  Maybe we miss God because he’s got dirt under his nails.  Maybe we miss him because he’s sitting down and hugging the neck of someone we find repulsive.

Do I miss part of God because he’s sitting down with a conservative business man in a freshly pressed suit?

Do some miss part of God because he’s whispering their name from a moss covered tree in the middle of the woods?

Maybe if we miss him, we miss him because we keep reaching up trying to grasp someone who has come down here among us.  You find what you look for.  Seek and keep seeking and you will find.  But I guarantee you that what you find will surprise you.

2010
02/09
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let your light shine…

I wrote a while back about my entertainment center.  In that post I discussed the difficulty we have in defining reality.  The entertainment center idea is like this:

Sitting in my living room is an entertainment armoire.  It is golden pine.  It takes up a certain amount of space.  But wait.  It’s partially pine, but a lot of it is particle board.  On top of that, it has quite a bit of plastic, and metal screws.  On top of that, at the atomic level, it is mostly empty space.  At second thought, it’s a cabinet, so it is mostly empty space anyway.  And really, it’s not so much golden, as it is multiple shades of yellow.  There are also reds and browns.  And when you get right down to it, it’s only an entertainment armoire because I put a TV in it.  If I put it in my basement and filled it with junk it’d just be a storage cabinet.  And while we’re at it, this room is only my living room because it’s where I hang out and watch TV.  It could just as easily be a bedroom.   And it’s “my” because I signed some papers and send the bank some money every month.  It’s more like the bank owns it, and I’m renting to own.

What it boils down to is that we can all agree that there is something there.  It takes up a certain amount of space.  It has certain properties.  But when we really start to discuss exactly what is there, things get a little bit wonky.

Now, we all have a worldview.  Each of us live our life with certain presuppositions about what life is about, why we are here, and what we should do with ourselves.  Much like the entertainment center, we all seem to agree that there is something there, but we have a very difficult time discussing what exactly that thing is.  Some hold to the view that since we each have our own perspective, none of them is any more accurate than the next.  Others hold to the idea that their own perspective is the only possible solution to the question and that there is no truth at all in anything anyone else has to say.  And often the folks who say that no one’s perspective is any better than any other miss out on the fact that that in itself is a statement about reality that they think is more true than the view of those who disagree.

I know, right?  It’s all very confusing…

To the first group, the group who says no-one’s perspective is any truer than the next, I have to disagree.  When we talk about the entertainment center, we each offer certain unique perspectives.  However, some observations about the thing are closer to the reality (or the is-ness) of the thing than others.  If I called it a “storage cabinet” and put it in the basement and filled it with junk, then I would fail to notice the things that make it uniquely designed to be an entertainment center.  I would have to ignore the pocket doors, the pull-out swivel, the shelves for components, and the built-in power strip.  I would not be completely wrong to say that it is a cabinet made to hold stuff.  But I would have missed out on a fuller reality of what it was made to do.

I also have to part ways with the group who thinks there is no truth to be found outside of their own worldview.  We are all somewhere along a continuum with our interaction with reality.  All of us have some ways in which our view is distorted.  What we are to do is to claim truth when we find it.  All truth is God’s truth.  This is not to say that we get to pick and choose what we claim as truth, however.    2+2=4 no matter how we feel about it.  To put it into logic terms; A is A.  A is not non-A.  If there is a thesis, there is an antithesis.  If there is a yin, there is a yang.  But to claim that we understand the entire truth is also to miss the bigger picture.  If I refuse to acknowledge that the entertainment center can also be used as a storage chest, then I miss the fuller reality because I am dead-set on what I define the object to be.

The same goes for life.  Some perspectives on life are closer to the “is-ness” of what life is about than others.  Certain worldviews necessitate a leap of faith in order to not end in despair.  Some worldviews necessitate a closed mind and a barren heart in order to allow us to maintain our status quo (also a sort of leap of faith).

If life is the result of chance plus time, and all that is real is existential experience, then this worldview logically leads somewhere.  Is there any difference between cruelty and mercy?  Is there any reason, other than social norms, to love instead of hate?  Is there any objective reality to love or hate?  I would argue that to follow the logic of a “chance plus time” source of life leads directly to a meaningless existence.  This does not mean that anyone who holds this view is leading a meaningless life.  This is not to imply that the atheist is any more “evil” than the Christian.  I do say this to say that there is a break-down in the logic of this worldview if at any point the one who holds to it begins to hold certain values above others.  If at any point this person begins to love, fights for justice, or values mercy, then they have taken a leap of blind faith.  The actions are good, and I believe they are based on an intuitive knowledge that there is an objective “right and wrong”, but the actions constitute a break down of the logic of the worldview.

So, how about my own worldview?  How does this apply to me as a Christian?  Obviously I believe that it is in Jesus that we find the ultimate truth of all of reality.  As Christians we can debate about how God created the world, but we agree that God did it.  We can debate how God created humanity, but we agree that God did it.  We can debate what it means to be made in the image of God, but we agree that we are made in God’s image.

The story of Christianity is one of Love overflowing into Love.  The Christian worldview states that God is three-in-one.  There was a relationship of Love from all eternity that exploded into the Universe we see here as an outpouring of that Love.  For love to be love it must be free to take it or leave it.  So we have the choice.  Every one of us in one way or another reject it every chance we get.  So God had a plan in place from the beginning to offer the solution.  And the solution is to offer us a part in a new-perfected heavens and earth.  And we still have the choice to keep on living in the self-centered way we so often choose (a way whose trajectory into eternity is damnation).

So, if we believe that we are created in God’s image.  If we believe that love is better than hate.  If we believe that mercy is better than condemnation.  If we believe that helping is better than hurting.  Where does our logic break down?  See, I believe that these things are true.  I believe that it is closer to the reality of the “is-ness” of life to say that we should love each other.  But often I take a backward leap of faith and I don’t do it.  I act in small selfish ways.  I take the resources I’ve been blessed with and I squander them and refuse to share with people around me who are hurting.  I believe that it is my job to help bring heaven to earth, but then I ignore all the hells on earth (and all too often I help create them).

So I encourage anyone who believes in the chance plus time version of life to continue to look at the logic of the position, but to continue to make that leap of faith to work towards love and justice.  Even if you don’t believe in God, when you work for love, you are working for God.  And I encourage Christians to follow the logic of your faith.  If we believe what we claim to believe then it will change the way we act towards those around us.  Christianity can’t just be a social club for people who “get it.”  If the Gospel is good news, then it has to be good news for everyone.  It should be good news to the person you’ve been hateful to that you are being changed by the Spirit.  It should be good news to the downtrodden, the poor, the orphans, the immigrants, that you are being made new.

If Christianity is just about you getting right with God, then you are missing the point.  Re-birth is the starting line, not the finish  line.  Let your light shine.

2010
02/03
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Prodigal Christianity…

I’ve been co-leading a class on Tim Keller’s book The Prodigal God.  He explained something I had never considered before.  When we hear the word “prodigal” we think of it as “wayward.”  The word has the connotation of wild and reckless behavior.  And in a sense that is true.  But what Keller points out is that the actual definition of the word is “recklessly spendthrift.”  The sense here is of pursuing your goal with reckless abandon.

So, in the story of the Prodigal Son we are not looking at a wayward son who runs off and then is welcomed back.  I mean we are, but that isn’t all we see.  We actually see three examples of a prodigal nature.  All three of the main characters of Jesus’ story are prodigal in their own way.  Prodigality is, like most things, not a matter of being the wrong way to be.  It’s a matter of being prodigal in the proper way.  The issue is not even that their ultimate goal is wrong.  What is wrong with both sons is that their prodigal nature leads them to miss out on their goal.

If we take all sin and suffering out of the Bible we are left with four chapters.  We have the first two chapters of Genesis, and the last two chapters of Revelation.  We are left with a book that starts with a garden with no suffering, and ends with a city filled with God’s light.  This is ultimately what every one of us is after.  We may not really know it, but every time we work to end suffering in the world or in our own lives it is because we have a deep seated sense that things aren’t meant to be this way.  Somewhere in our bones we realize that life is not meant to be about suffering and pain.  So we pursue ways to end that suffering in the most prodigal way we know how.  Each example in the parable Jesus tells represent one of the ways in which we do this.

The first example in Jesus’ story is the example we are familiar with.  The youngest son goes to the father and says, “give me all that is mine.”  This is shocking to the consciousness of first century Palestine.  He is basically saying to the father, “I wish you were dead.”  He is recklessly casting aside any love for the father, any love for his brother, and any love for his community.  All he wants to do is to get out and party.  He takes the ostrich approach to pain.  He buries his head in the sand.  He stays numb.  He buys friends.  He sits in front of the television.  He goes out to clubs.  He does anything he can to avoid any real questions about his life and where he fits in the world around him.

The elder brother is the opposite, but the result is exactly the same.  The elder brother follows all the rules.  And he follows them with a reckless abandon as well.  He is so committed to following the rules that he won’t have anything to do with anyone who doesn’t.  It would have been his responsibility to go out looking for his younger brother when he took off.  But he didn’t.  He was all about keeping up the status quo.  He wanted the father’s things as much as the younger brother.  He was just placing his bets that the best way to get those things was to play nice and follow the rules.  So he was furious when the father gave the younger brother his inheritance.  And he was even more furious when the father accepted the younger brother back as a son.  The elder brother also wanted to avoid opening his heart to those around him.  The younger brother built a wall of licentiousness around his heart.  The elder brother built a wall of laws around his.

So we are left with the third way.  The Gospel is always the third way.  The father is prodigal in his love for both sons.  But unlike the sons he recklessly casts aside his own status and self-interest in order to pursue the love of his children.  When the younger son says, “I wish you were dead…give me what is mine.”  He does not run him out of town or have him stoned to death as the Law would have prescribed for such a thing.  He makes the sacrifice himself.  He sells off part of his land.  He gives up a portion of his wealth so that the youngest son can have what he asks for.  And when the elder son refuses to come in to the celebration of his brother’s return the father does not force him to do anything.  He takes the public humiliation, and he leaves the party so that he can beg his son to come in.  And when the elder son is berating him for his prodigal love of the youngest son the fathers reply is this.  He says, “All that I have is yours, and has always been yours.  All I have ever asked of you is for you to love me, and love your brother.”

Many of us hear this story from the perspective of one son or the other.  We might be younger brother types who focus on Jesus’ teaching that the elder brother is equally wrong if not more-so.  We might be elder brother types who focus on the fact that Jesus gives a very clear example of what happens when the younger brother gets exactly what he wants.  But either way, if we read this story and find ourselves saying, “Yeah!  That’s right!  You tell ‘em Jesus!”  Then we are missing the point completely.  The point of the story is to understand the prodigal love of the father.  If we can find ourselves beginning to read this story and feel our heart break for both of the brothers, then we are starting to get it.  And if we can look at those around us, especially those who are the opposite from us, and not be angry, but be heartbroken for the ways in which they are broken, we are starting to get it.  And if we can truly want what is best for those around us no matter what the cost is for us, then we are finally beginning to see with the Father’s prodigal eyes.

2010
01/29
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a thank-you note…

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  And for both of the people who have ever read this blog, that statement is no surprise.  I am the master of the obvious.

So, in the space between my last post and this one life has taken some strange twists and turns.  The most major twist is the subject of this post.  My mother died two weeks ago today.

About 7 years ago a doctor told her that she had cancer.  Doctors have a way of saying the most vulgar things.  They say phrases like, “It is as we feared.”  Or they say, “It’s not what we were hoping for.”  In this case the doctor used the swear-word, “Ocular Melanoma”.  The doctor said that if it spread past her eye that she would have no more than 6 months to live.  Again…that was 7 years ago.  The cancer spread to her lungs, her liver, and her brain.  But she had 7 good years.  I never saw my mother “dying.”  She lived every day of her life.  And up until the last couple of weeks she was able to do whatever she wanted to.

We prayed for miracles.  We prayed for healing.  And we saw it.  We saw it for 7 years.  The thing I never considered until recently was the fact that miracles aren’t permanent.  And I think that’s why so many people don’t believe that miracles have happened when they do.  We expect miracles to be permanent.  We want healing that doesn’t end up with us just getting sick again.  But miracles aren’t just magic tricks from a god in a box.  Miracles are always referred to as “signs.”  They point us to something else.  People who are healed…even people who are raised from the dead…they get sick and they die.  The miracle is not about that person in that situation.  The miracle is about a God who is making all things new.  It is a glimpse at a future in which the God who created the universe will wipe every tear away, and there will be no more suffering, or pain, or death.

So I can say that my mother was healed miraculously for 7 years.  And I can say that on January 5, 2o1o at 10:15 in the evening, while family and friends gathered around her singing “Blessed Assurance”, she was healed permanently.  The God of the universe reached down and scooped her up in his arms.  He wiped her tears away and said, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

In the weeks leading up to her passing there were a lot of beautiful conversations.  Hard, painful conversations, but beautiful as well.  All of us will one day face the end of our days on earth.  I hope that all of us can live a life with as much purpose, and die a death with as much meaning as Wanda Mills.  She is not here, but she is not gone.

It is easy to give in to the sadness and the rage.  We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.  But like Job, we can sit in the ashes of our life when things look the most dark and say, “I will put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, I will not speak again.”  A friend once said he was jealous of atheists because as a believer in God we have to see meaning in everything.  And I agree with him sometimes, but not this time.  I love it that I don’t have to be happy about things that happen like this.  But I also trust that there is a God who set the Earth on its foundations.  Who dug the oceans and filled them with water.  Who hung the stars in the sky.  Who set the planets spinning in their orbits.  Who orders all of existence so that even the bad things fit into the plan.  And who put skin on.  Who became flesh and blood so that he could scream along side of us in our pain.  A God who can look at us no matter what sort of suffering we are in and say, “me too.”  And who lived a perfect life, and died the death we deserved.  And who now holds the keys to death and hell.

I am eternally grateful for a God who will say, “[I] will wipe every tear from [your] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away…Look! I am making everything new!”

2010
01/20
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donald miller…

So, yesterday I met my second favorite, non-dead author.  Donald Miller somehow miraculously came to my church.  He was amazing.  He sawed a woman in half.  He levitated an antelope.

Okay…he didn’t do those things.  But he did inspire me to start writing more.  I’ve been conspicuously absent from this blog for a while.  I’ve been working on seminary.  I’ve been workining on one book.  And now I’ve started a second.  Who needs free time anyway?  But I’m inspired nonetheless.

So, I met Mr. Miller after his presentation.  He signed my book.  Here is what I wrote to him this morning after making a complete goon of myself:

“I saw you last night at Grace Community Church.  You were encouraging and inspiring.  I met you backstage.  You smiled warmly.  You were kind and gracious.  I wanted to tell you that after reading your books I feel like you are my family.  I wanted to tell you that hearing you speak and reading your words feels like wraping myself in a warm blanket, straight from the dryer, made of 100% “me-too-i-know-how-you-feel.”

But all of that felt melodramatic.  It stuck in my throat.

So I mumbled, “I really appreciate you” and then I ran away.

But I do.  I really appreciate you.”

I realized that this is how I speak to everyone.  I have so much to say, and it comes out all “ummm’s”.  So please pray that God either fixes me, or just lets me write.

Thanks.

Love,

-Andy

2009
10/21
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