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

Just some good music…enjoy…

M.Ward – 100 Million Years – Live

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago – Myspace Transmissions

Ray Lamontagne – Crazy – Gnarls Barkley Cover

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Jeanne, If You’re Ever in Portland – Live

Enjoy!

Love,

-Andy

There was a show in the 90’s called Full House.  Some of you probably remember the cheesy glory that was Full House.  Bob Saget, Dave Coulier, and John Stamos were the saccharine odd trio who somehow found a way to work together to raise three girls.  In one episode Uncle Jessie (played by Stamos) had to make a decision.  So, he got one of those old school balance scales.  He piled up red and black checkers in front of himself and settled into the decision making process.  Every pro was a black checker on one side.  Every con was a red checker on the other.  In the end, the decision was as simple as looking for which side of the scale was heavier.

Even if we have a real sense of the Grace of God, there is still somewhere in our collective psyche this image that God decides our fate in the same way as Uncle Jessie.  We maintain this notion, maybe just subconsciously; that there is a balance sheet somewhere and that when we die we’re going to sit through a film of our lives with God and St. Peter standing behind us saying, “tsk, tsk, tsk.”  In some cases it’s almost something we crave.   A friend once told me that he wanted to go to a church where the preacher stepped on his toes.  He wanted to leave knowing that he was doing wrong, and to be told what sins he was committing.  I can almost understand where he’s coming from.

There’s a beautiful freedom in the Gospel.  But there is also an incredibly frightening aspect of it as well.  When we realize that God has made the ultimate sacrifice for us, we then realize that we owe him everything we are.  If God is a ledger keeper, then we just need to be sure that there are more black checkers than red.  We don’t need to worry about our motives.  We don’t have to worry about our heart.  If God is a ledger keeper, then we just need to make sure that we come down on the “not-sin” side more often than not.  And we want to be sure that when we  do sin that we make up for it by feeling good and guilty.  Is this what God is about?  Is that really Good News?

To find out the reality of how God operates we need to look at what Jesus says of him.  Jesus tells a lot of stories.  People ask questions, and Jesus either answers with another question, or simply starts into a story that contains the answer.  When discussing God’s nature, and the nature of God’s love for us, Jesus tells stories of beloved things that are lost.  He tells of a woman who lost a coin and searched everywhere until she found it.  He tells of a shepherd who had 100 sheep.  One was missing, so he left the 99 and went to find the one.  He tells of a man who’s son said, “I wish you were dead”, took his inheritance and left.  After squandering his money this son saw the error of his ways and returned.  The father ran to him with open arms.  There was no need for explanation.  There was no need for guilt.  There was no need for these things because there was true repentance.  When the prodigal son realized what he had done, he soon discovered that the father’s lavish love was waiting for him the whole time.  He discovered that his punishment was self-chosen when he ran from the father.  And He discovered that the father did not require the penance he prepared for himself.  All that he needed to do was to repent, turn around, and walk back to the father (who was waiting for him all along).  When he did that, the father ran to meet him where he was and walked back with him.  Then he celebrated the return of his once lost son.

When my friend told me that he preferred a church where the preacher stepped on his toes and made him feel guilty I was forcibly reminded of a poem my Shel Silverstein.  The final lines of “The Quest of Gimmesome Roy” sum this up very well (I will edit it for the more sensitive reader):

“Well, that is that,” says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone,
Facing another thousand years of talking to God alone.
“It seems, Lord”, says Fats, “it’s always the same, old men or bright-eyed youth,
It’s always easier to sell them some [lies] than it is to give them the truth.”

Today at Grace Community Church and Grace Foothills (our “One church multiple congregations” church) the sermon was on 2 Corinthians 4:1-6. The verses are about spiritual blindness, and the illumination of the Spirit. The pastors saw fit to use a short video of the testimony of my wife and me. I will let the video speak for itself. I hope God uses it to touch your life.

Here is the link:   http://graceinfo.org/video-av/mills.html

The 1930’s radio show “The Shadow” began with the provocative question, “What evil lurks in the heart of men?”  And it immediately answered itself, “The Shadow knows!”  This flashed in my mind when I read a statement in my Logic textbook.  The Logic book said that Orthodox Christianity does not believe in the existence of evil in itself.  In other words, evil is not a creative force, but a corrupting force.  Evil is the absence of the Good thing that should be there.  Evil is not something that God created to balance out Good.  Evil is a corruption of Good.  Evil is the shadow cast when something stands between the action and it’s Goodness.  In other words, there is little to nothing that can be considered “sin” or “evil” or “wrong” in and of itself.  On the surface “killing” and “murder” look the same, but they are worlds apart when it comes to the heart motivations, and reasons.

One would be hard pressed to find anyone who wakes up in the morning and decides, “today I’m going to be as evil as I can possibly be.”  Sure, you may find plenty who rebel against a competing moral code.  Someone may say in so many words, “I’m going to go against the Christian morality.”  Or possibly someone may say, “I’m going to be intentionally evil by the standards of liberal intellectuals.”  However, people don’t generally decide, “Today I’m going to behave intentionally opposite of my own deeply held beliefs and morals.”  John Wilkes Booth didn’t think he was murdering the Great Emancipator.  He believed he was destroying a tyrant.  Adolph Hitler didn’t believe he was murdering masses of God’s children.  He believed he was creating a super race of humans and working toward the greater good.  Even when we know we are doing wrong we find some reason why in this circumstance our wrong is really the only possible way we could behave.  But, we do not commit real evils just for the sake of committing evils.

So, how does this apply in real life?  I mean, it’s well and good to realize that evil is a shadow version of good, but what do I do with that?  The answer is twofold.  Forgiveness and watchfulness.  The Bible teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  C.S. Lewis aptly points out that when we love ourselves it does not mean that we feel warm and fuzzy towards ourselves.  We don’t always like ourselves or our actions.  We truly desire correction and discipline.  But with others we tend to favor condemnation and punishment.  If we are going to love others the way we love ourselves, then we are to give them the same benefit of the doubt that we give ourselves.  We are to forgive.

Forgiveness does not mean that we shield anyone from the consequences of their actions.  This does not mean that we allow a non-repentant person to continue to behave in a way that is destructive to those around him.  But forgiveness does mean that we avoid viewing that person as “evil.”  It means that we look at our neighbor who is behaving in an evil way as exactly the same type of broken person as we are.  We do our best to consider how we might act in that person’s circumstances.  We do not condecend.  We realize that it is only God’s Grace that keeps us free from that sin, and only God’s Grace that keeps others free from our own sin.

The other aspect is watchfulness.  When we realize that even the ones who have done the most heinous actions were behaving in ways that they believed to be just and moral (or at least excusable), we can start to look at our own motivations a bit more closely.  We can be more aware when we are making excuses.  We can be more aware of our own hidden motivations that turn our Good into Evil.  We can, with the help of the Spirit, begin to discern exactly what it is that is turning our righteousness into filthy rags.

“The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” – Proverbs 20:5

I have been having some conversations on this subject with some friends recently.  After revisiting this post from last year, it seems like now  might be a good time to re-post it.  I hope you enjoy the re-runs.

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This guy makes some pretty crazy claims. He says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” I have to admit, I have a hard time with this one. I really don’t like being told what to do. And I really hate being told that there is only one way I can go. That basically makes me want to say, “Okay, fine. I didn’t want to go to the Father anyway!”

That was my attitude for the longest time. Even after coming back to Christianity after a very long absence, I still struggle with this claim of exclusivity. How can it possibly be that God is going to punish a person for not choosing to walk down the path of Jesus? Especially when the moral code of most religions teach the same basic things. When you look at it, the basic tenets of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Sufism, Wicca, (etc…ad nauseum…) are basically the same. Love each other. Love God. Do good things. Don’t do bad things.

But still we’re left with this claim of exclusivity. So what do you do with it? Christianity does have the same basic moral code as the other religions, but it also has more. Jesus doesn’t claim to have spoken with God. He says he is God. He does not claim to have discovered a Way. He says he is the Way. He does not claim to point others to Truth and Life. He says he is Truth and Life. This is not something that is easy to swallow.

This weekend a visiting pastor, Mark Whipple, was discussing this verse, and he showed a clip from Forrest Gump. He showed the scene in Vietnam in which Forrest is looking for his friend Bubba. He keeps running in to find Bubba, and in the process keeps seeing people who are injured, and have no hope. He grabs them up and carries them out of the woods to safety. Mark said this is a better representation of Jesus as the Way. Finally it clicked in my head.

I have spent my entire life reading that verse with the attitude of “many paths, one way.” But it is not like that at all. Religion is a path to walk. It is something that we do of our own power. It is a series of hoops to jump through. What Jesus offers is totally different. It is like trying to drive a car to the moon. There are some roads that take you into valleys which are farther from the moon. There are some roads that take you up on mountain tops for a better view of the moon. But Jesus says He’s the space shuttle! It is not a claim that He is a better kind of road that we can scurry about on. It is a claim that what we need is not a road at all. If we stay on any road, we are ultimately driving in circles. It is a complete shift in transportation.

To put it another way, we are like a person who has been in a wreck. There are so many onlookers telling us different directions to the hospital. We are still lying there bleeding, and everyone is telling us that if we just follow their particular set of instructions, then we could get ourselves up and get to the hospital. Then comes the ambulance driver. He does not deny that these directions might get us to the hospital. But He also knows that in our condition, we have no hope of ever being able to follow them perfectly enough to get us where we need to go. So, He lifts us on His shoulders, cleans our wounds, and follows the directions perfectly for us. Our job is to stop fighting and trying to get there on our own, and just let Him save us.

If Jesus is just another path to walk down, then He is nothing. A path is something that is beneath us. It is something that we can choose out of our own power. And if ours is the True path, and everyone else’s is wrong, then we can be proud of how smart we are, and feel sorry for how stupid they are. Or worse, we can drag people kicking and screaming toward our path, and kill them if they refuse to walk it with us. Jesus is not just another path. He is not a set of rules to follow to achieve perfection. Jesus is the rescuing hero. He comes along side of anyone on any path who is willing to let Him, and He takes them with Him and says, “There, weren’t you tired trying to do this all alone?” And takes them Home.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

When the shades get thrown back
I don’t want to be a shadow…

Though all I’ve ever known has been
the sneaky gray creature,
the darkness cast when that light
shines on my ego.

When the shades get thrown back
I don’t want to be a shadow…

Still, what I see when I look at me
Is a once longer shadow…
But it’s getting nearer to noon,

And when the shades get thrown back
I don’t want to be a shadow…

So we chisel and file,
And I crawl
Inch
by
mile…
While I shudder and cry,
While I watch it all die…
But it’s nothing to grieve
What was “me” wasn’t Me,

And when the shades get thrown back
I will not be a shadow!