When it rains...

I have run into more than my fair share of people lately talking about how they have a hard time with Christianity. I'm not kidding - 4 separate incidents in a couple weeks. I don't know if they've found any kind of spirituality to replace it as much as they have just rejected it. And, I get tired of people just complaining about something and not doing anything about it; it seems like there are a million people who talk about how not to live for every one person who actually attempts to live right.

But, I get even more tired of people talking about hypocritical Christians and having evidence to back it up. I have to admit as a follower of Jesus, I know what they're talking about. There are times that I have hoped to pull off an air of holiness so that others would see me as better than them. And I grieve those times and wish that I had represented Jesus better. I wish I could just be truthful, let Jesus love me, and love others like he tells us to.

Why in God's name?

I've heard people ask before why God decided to create human beings. Was he lonely? I've heard this question answered a couple different ways. Most Christians would say that God did not create us because he was lonely; that would imply that God is incomplete without us. The same people might say that the most selfless thing a perfect being could do would be to create other beings to enjoy his presence. I heard someone respond to that by saying, "Doesn't that make God really narcissistic?" Yeah, it sure sounds that way, but the God I know really is more giving than greedy.

I tend to think the truth is almost simpler. I think God created us because it's just who he is. He exists in relationship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he created us because he just loves relationships. Love loves to have an object to love. I prefer to think that God created us out of his incredible grace and has endeavored to love us and redeem us to himself because it is just his nature to love.

Systemic is a nasty word

I say relationships are important like it's some new thing - like I came up with it. But, if you really take a look around you and think, you will realize that everyone and everything exists in relationship. It's the idea of systems - an object is defined by its surroundings. Everything is always in a context. The idea is so pervasive in nature, it almost disappears.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is it doesn't really matter. Nothing apart from relationship matters. If you discover some profound truth about life, then what does it matter if there is no one to share it with?

There was this systems theorist (his name was Ludwig von Bertalanffy) who was attempting to nail down a unifying theory for all of nature. Now, that's a job, but I think he was onto something. I don't know if he ever could have explained everything, but relationships just are. We can't escape them. I think its that way because that's who God is - relationship - and the nature we experience flows from his nature.

The truth

I still haven't found anyone who doesn't need relationship. I keep looking because I just keep thinking (and some people keep saying) that the fact that we need love is just part of the truth - that it's just part of who we are, but I just keep coming back to the fact that all of us are looking for love in all the wrong places.

I know it sounds kind of cheesy sometimes, but I keep being reminded of it and I keep seeing it, even in my own life. I want to be liked and the search for significance in all of us becomes one big quest for people to tell you you're important, when it's God we are looking for to tell us we matter.

Looking for this?

I'm serious - we are all busy trying to figure out how we can be worth something. I swear - just about everything we do is a way to make us feel like we matter - to make people take us seriously and have people pay attention to us. If you think about the things we strive for - success, good looks, possessions, popularity, righteousness - they are things that allow us to compare ourselves to others and come out on top.

What makes me either the same as you or different from you is that I believe that what we are looking for is the love that comes from God the Father. When he loves you and you know it, you don't care as much what other people think about you. You do things because of who you are, rather than because of who you're not. You're not trying to make up for something. You're just being who you are because you know that since He loves you, you must not be that bad.

The Big Picture

Man, we talk a lot. I love philosophy and talking about what truth is and all that pretentious garbage, but sometimes I get tired of arguing and speculating and I want to live something. That's why I'm thankful for relationships. I had one of my teachers remind me just the other day that men have a deep longing to belong. He's right and that plays itself out in all sorts of ways in all of our lives, but none of us is exempt- we are all desperate to be known and loved. It's who we are.

That God is about relationship is the main message of Scripture. God created us for relationship with him, we messed that up, and he is bent on mending on the tear.

I get so busy babbling and studying and trying to mine golden nuggets of truth, I lose sight of what is really important - loving and being loved. It's the big picture - if we don't experience true love, then we are missing something and we flail, trying to figure out what's wrong. When we do experience true love, we spend all our time trying to have it more and share it with others.

Horticulture

When we think about church growth, we usually think about adding more people. We see these mega-churches that have thousands of people walking through their doors each week and we are sure that growth is possible. We just aren't that sure how to do it.

Let me say that I don't think church growth is just adding more people or more dollars or more programs. I think it's actually helping people to grow, who will help other people grow. When Jesus talked about growth - in the kingdom and in people - he talked a lot about plants. Plants must be healthy in order to grow, and must be growing in order to produce fruit. We don't just need to look good - we need to actually help people to transform and grow. The church will naturally grow that way.

A healthy church is one in which there are people rooted and growing. We do not need to try to bring more people in with our music, tvs, events, or marketing schemes. We need to give people a place they can grow.

Centered

I am drawn to people who are centered - people who can be themselves no matter what, and can handle very emotional and stressful situations because they know who they are and what they're doing. This often seems like an idea reserved for Eastern religions and philosophies - you know, enlightenment, or the Buddhist monk who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War.

This idea pops up in psychology, too, in Maslow's self-actualized individual, and in Bowen's differentiation of self. It's the ability to be yourself and be purposeful despite massive opposition and/or pain. It's the highest form of being.

I have a feeling Jesus was just this type of centered. He was able to be exactly himself even when he was hated. He stood next to the most powerful and influential people of his day and was able to speak the truth. And he did not exercise his power in a dominating way. He endured torturous suffering when he could have chosen to retaliate. I'm drawn to Jesus because he's centered.

Where spirit meets body

Sometimes we think of spirituality as other-worldly. We think the people who are the most spiritual are the ones who walk around with their heads in the clouds, talking about stuff that no normal person can understand, using words that make them sound really transcendent.

Actually, I think the most spiritual people are the ones who are down-to-earth, easy to talk to, and make the world a better place. If we think about Jesus, this makes sense. That was kind of the point of the incarnation - to bring God to man and to show us how we are really supposed to live as human beings in the world. Ray Anderson says that, "the Spirit of God became domesticated and fully compatible with humanity in Jesus. As a result, the Holy Spirit that comes to us comes already clothed in humanity, conformed to the human spirit in such a way that the effect of the Spirit on and through our lives is not merely supernatural but natural."

I like that because that means that we can be normal people - in fact, even better - human beings than we were before - not just aloof, above-it-all weirdos.

Working too hard?

We spend a lot of time trying to make the gospel relevant to our culture. We come up with catchy slogans and fancy advertisements that supposedly attract people to God, but I just keep thinking we ought to let God speak for himself. It didn't seem like Jesus was much of a public relations rep for the Father. He didn't have that many cool catch phrases. I mean, I don't even think he would've been called "hip" in his day. It seems like he was just kind of normal: "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2).

Jesus was, though, the "radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Hebrews 1:3). I just keep thinking that if God really did create us for relationship for himself, then he is automatically relevant to us as people. I believe that Jesus speaks right to our needs as human beings, and that he meets us where we are. Jesus went right to where there were people who needed him. And the funny thing was, they didn't run away because he was so "holy". There must have been something about Jesus that made them feel comfortable - that drew them to him. He must have been attractive just because of who he was.

The One

I get really disappointed sometimes because I don’t hear very much about Jesus in evangelical circles. We talk about what we should and shouldn’t do, but we don’t talk that much about Jesus. I believe that growing in faith means getting to know Jesus better. I think if that happens, the rest takes care of itself. I don’t mean to say that we should not try to be good people, but I think when we focus so much on rooting out sin and doing good, we lose our focus on Jesus.

Jesus is the one who roots out sin and does good through us. Paul talks in Galatians about how he died and Christ lives in him. I think if that happens, we will do the right things. We focus so much on what we should be doing, we forget that Christ has done it, is still doing it, and will do it through us if we let him. Jesus is the one who changes us. We do not need more education or tips on how to live the Christian life. We need Jesus.

What God thinks

One of the reasons that the gospel doesn’t make sense to us is that we have to accept the fact that we might be wrong about ourselves. The fact that God loves us despite our frailty and despite our self-hatred is difficult to grasp. It goes against everything we know. We love others because they’re cute and nice. God loves us because he is love.

So, we might have to accept that what others say about us is wrong. We might even have to admit that what we say about ourselves is wrong, even though we profess to know ourselves quite well. God has the final say about who we are and how much value we have.

There’s this Brennan Manning book where he’s talking about this very idea and he quotes a line from the movie Apocalypse Now: “The only real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others, even freedom from the opinion of yourself.” The apostle Paul takes hold of the same idea in 1 Corinthians 4:3-4: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” The truth that we grasp at as Christians is that because of Jesus, we are judged worthy. God has the final say on our worth and because he is love, we can trust his say and not anyone else’s – not even our own.

People of Love

It seems that what God tells us to do is to love each other. That is the mark of a Christian and that is Jesus’ command to us. The sign of a healthy church is one that lives in community and is united. The problem is that to do that, we have to be willing to give up more than one day a week. John says, in 1 John 3:16-18, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Laying down your life for other people takes a lot of time. You could help people in need all day long. Actually acting in love rather than just saying it is much more involved. The early church members in Acts apparently met together daily. They were in constant community and sold their possessions to provide for one another.

Our commitment to each other seems to be something we do on a convenient basis. We often treat our church membership as we do a country club membership or some other community activity. We are involved in our work, our family, our hobbies and our commitment to the church is something lumped on top of that. Now, I’m not saying we should all quit our jobs and go to church all day, but I think we could start honoring the commitments we’ve made to be people of love everywhere– at our jobs, in our families, and in our other activities.

Offending the right people

I read this morning in some article that one of the biggest problems evangelical theology is facing today is pluralism – the view that there is not just one way to God or salvation, but many. Biblical theology flies in the face of anyone who says that there are many gods or that there are many ways to God. It’s almost like many people view Christians as elitist because we say that Jesus is the only way to God.

Now I believe that Jesus is the only way to God, but if we’re not careful, we start to think that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18) because God is elitist, too. We might start thinking that God only wants to save certain people and not others, but I believe what 1 Peter 3:9 says, that God is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” It’s true that God will not save us if we do not repent, but the “offense of the cross,” that Paul talks about in Galatians 5:11 is that Jesus died for everyone. The people who are offended by that are those that believe that they have done something to deserve God’s favor. There is nothing any of us have done to deserve God’s love. We only receive it when we admit we are powerless to save ourselves. The cross is offensive to those who are elitist – those who think they should be saved and others should be condemned. Jesus is the only way, but what Jesus did, he did for all. The cross is offensive because God’s love is so ridiculously big and grace is for all.

Joy

Sometimes I can’t tell by looking at Christians whether God wants us to be happy or miserable. I think God wants us to have good lives. There is quite a bit in the Bible about suffering, but Jesus does say that he came that we may have life and have it to the full. The thing is, I don’t think that means that we are always going to be happy.

But, I don’t think people are after perpetual pleasure. I think people naturally understand that in order for life to be fulfilling, we have to do some suffering. It’s the suffering that makes the overcoming so satisfying. It’s when people don’t think there will be an end to the suffering, or there is no way to deal with the suffering that they get discouraged and depressed. That’s when people start looking to keep themselves happy whatever it takes.

I’m a Christian because I think God has the answers to the big questions. I think Jesus speaks to the human condition. The problem is that we often think that God is only concerned with our eternal souls. We are so concerned with whether or not we are going to go to heaven in the future, we forget that God wants us to live full lives and help others live full lives now. I don’t think God wants us to be happy all the time. Happiness is overrated. And I don’t think that God will take away suffering because he knows what suffering produces. I do think that he wants us to love our lives and that comes through struggle.

Spirituality

I don’t think our spirituality is safe from our humanness. Yes, we are very human in every pursuit. There is always a voice in our heads that is evaluating, comparing, and judging others. It’s that voice that often convinces us that we can be “better” than other people and by “better,” I mean more “spiritual.”

Grace is the great leveling force, though. God does not offer grace based on who deserves it. That’s kind of the point of grace.

There is this song by Sufjan Stevens about John Wayne Gacy, Jr., Chicago’s infamous serial killer. Sufjan describes in intense detail Gacy’s horrific acts, and despite its subject matter, it is quite a pretty song. The best part, though, is the final lines: “In my best behavior, I am really just like him/look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.”

We get to thinking sometimes that there are things of which we’re not capable. Among them are usually rape, murder, and child abuse. It’s usually people that have done those things that we compare ourselves to and start feeling good about where we are. But realizing that we are just as guilty as killers if we are spiteful or prideful is the first step to true spirituality. It is the first step to realizing who we are and who God is. We are sinners and the more fully we understand our own brokenness, the more we will understand the depth of the grace God offers us.

The truth about you

Boy, we Christians are really bent on separating ourselves from the world and in the process, separating ourselves from the truth. Did you ever notice that there’s all this stuff you can’t do while you’re at church? You can’t cuss, you can’t smoke, and when you roll into the parking lot, you have to turn down your music. Even if that’s all stuff you do normally, it’s not kosher at church. And it’s not all that kosher to talk about all the other times you’ve sinned, either.

There’s something wrong when we can be ourselves in other places, but we get tense when we go to church. In trying to be so Christian, we forget about the importance of truth. Christians seem real big on truth – about doctrine, about God – until you start talking about the truth about yourself. You can’t tell the truth about some of the stuff you’ve done because at the very least you’ll make people feel uncomfortable. Or you might “make people stumble” or “ruin your testimony.” We forget that we have ruined our testimony by being phony.

Now, I’m not saying that we should all run around church trying to be provocative or doing things just because we can. “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” (1 Cor. 10:23) But I am saying that church should be a place where people can be honest. We wonder how we can produce transformation, but we require that people are already transformed when they get to us.

The truth is important. Let’s be people of the truth.

Other gods

I believe in the God who reveals himself in Jesus. I know this doesn’t sound like some great revelation, but it kind of is to me. It sounds like a rather “orthodox” thing to believe, but to me it’s revolutionary because I think Jesus is different than the God a lot of people believe in and the God I have believed in for a long time.

There are a couple of other gods people believe in that aren’t like Jesus. One of these gods is more like karma. A lot of people live like there is some temperamental force beyond the universe that only deals in punishments and rewards, kind of like your 5th grade teacher. If you appease that god, then you will receive glory. If you don’t, you won’t. I don’t believe in that god because I believe in a God that offers mercy. What about justice, you say? I’m counting on Jesus.

Another god that people believe in is more like superstition. They believe that if they say “the Lord’s name in vain,” bad things will happen to them and that if they pray the right prayer with just the right amount of gusto, they will receive what they ask for. I don’t believe in that god, either. That god doesn’t have a personality. He is just a machine that receives input and offers output. I believe in a God that is a personality and that personality is revealed in Jesus.

Notice I don’t say that those other gods don’t exist. I think they do and that there are people who put their faith in them. But, I don’t want to put my faith in them anymore because they don’t do anything for me. I’m putting my faith in the God revealed in Scripture, the God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God I believe cares about me and has come in Jesus Christ to reconcile me to himself and who is interested in changing the world for the better.

To be

The two hardest things to be are to be yourself and to be in the moment. We’re usually trying to be who we think other people want us to be or who we think we ought to be. We spend the rest of our time hoping or worrying for something in the future or regretting something in the past. There are not a lot of times when we just are.

Sometimes we render God as someone who confirms these thoughts. We think that God wants us to be different than we are, so we spend all of our time trying to be who we think he wants us to be and looking forward to when we will arrive there. Then, we think God is focused on our sin, so we spend a lot of time trying to explain the past. What we forget is that God loves us right now, as we are. God is not focused on who we are not, but on who we are.

It is his Presence that reminds us of the truth about ourselves – that we are people in process. In his Presence, He can be God and we can be us – flawed, broken, fragile humans. He is interested in changing us, but into who we really are, not who we’re not. The way that happens is by us being exactly ourselves right now. We will not be changed if we are always trying to change ourselves or pretending we’re someone we’re not. And God cannot change us if we will not just rest in his presence in this moment and let him do the work. The goal is to be yourself right now, which is what God wants of you. He wants all of you exactly as you are and he will fashion you into what you were created to be: yourself.

Good people, too

I think we limit the kind of Christianity we try to promote sometimes, and in doing so, we limit our view of God. The brand of Christianity we try to live sometimes is one that exists for its own sake. We try to spread the influence of Christianity, convert droves of unknowing heathens, and try to make them into what we think good Christians should be. All the while, the world doesn’t benefit much from our goodness. They mostly see that we like to succeed in our own arena and to impress each other with our spirituality. The world is not impressed much with our spirituality, though, because our spirituality is not the kind that benefits the world much.

The Bible talks a lot about helping the poor. There is this spot in Galatians where I was reading the other day that talks about how, other than spreading the gospel to the Gentiles, the apostles asked Paul to “continue to remember the poor.” It’s in Galatians 2:10 if you want to look it up. It seems kind of out of place the first time you read it. It seems like the apostles would have asked Paul to continue being faithful to the church or to continue praying for their ministry, but their request was just for him to help poor people.

I think often we get so caught up becoming good Christians, we forget that God created us to and desires that we become good human beings. We are part of this world and it seems that if we are going to try to minister to it, evangelize it, and change it, then we should start paying attention to its needs, instead of seeing anyone who doesn’t share our viewpoint as an enemy.

Flow

Sometimes I wish I could stop thinking. I’m pretty good at it and I’ve got lots of room in which to do it. My hat size is at least 7 ¾. I say “at least” because I haven’t bought a fitted hat in a while, so I’m not sure if my already giant noggin has grown or not. All I know is the last hat I bought was that size and it was a little tight. It gave me a headache when I wore it. Anyway, the reason I bring all this stuff up about my head is that I think God either gave me some extra processing room knowing that I would think more than anything else, or my head has just expanded because of overuse. It doesn’t really matter. All I know is that I wish I could shut the overworking machine off at certain times.

I was reading this book the other day that said that true happiness comes not from having a lot of pleasure in your life, but by doing things that are challenging, yet rewarding to you. The book also said that when you are doing something like this that is gratifying and not just pleasurable, you don’t even have any positive emotion. You’re just doing and you’re not aware of anything going on in your mind like emotion. You’re not meta-analyzing the situation to figure out how you feel at that moment. You’re just living in the moment. The book called this concept flow. I like that idea. I think that’s what living by faith is like. If you’re doing exactly what you’ve been gifted to do, what God has called you to do, and you just put yourself out there and do it, you stop thinking, analyzing, and hesitating and just do.

Bono on Faith

I was listening to an interview that Bono, the lead singer of U2, agreed to do for a Christian conference with a pastor of the huge church that was putting on the conference. Now, I don't know if everything Bono has ever said, done, or sung is theologically correct, but I do know that he said one of the most Christian things I've ever heard uttered. I say that because it was not in a church service. He was not on a soapbox. He was speaking about his own life.

The pastor asked the rock star something about his view of Christianity. Bono started by saying that he has never had a problem with Christ. It's mostly Christians he's had problems with. That made the auditorium full of Christian pastors and leaders laugh. Then he said something like this: "I have always believed in grace. I'm kind of counting on it."

That made the room chuckle, too, for one of two reasons. It's possible we were laughing because we know rock stars. Rock stars don't exactly have reputations for holding up high moral values, and Bono and U2 have been known to drink, smoke, and cuss. So, maybe we were laughing because we agreed that Bono really needed grace. I hope not. I hope we were laughing because it was so profound that this non-theologian had described the essence of grace and faith without an outline for a sermon or a pulpit to set it on.

The thing is, each of us could have said the same thing about counting on grace and it would have been true. The problem is that most of us don't think about ourselves that way. We know people who are going to need grace when they reach the day of their death, but we don't always count ourselves among their number.

I don't know about you, but all this trying to make myself good has me thinking it's possible to achieve goodness on my own. That's just not true.

Weightlessness

Faith, I think, is that woozy feeling you have when you're free falling. If you've ever had the chance to ride on a zipline, it's that instant between the time you push yourself off the platform and your weight is caught by the cord. It's the jump in your stomach that you have when you're going a little too fast over a hill in the road. I'm sure bungee-jumping is quite similar. It's weightlessness.

Most of the time, we think of steps of faith, like the one Indiana Jones takes in The Last Crusade. There are times when we are tested and we are supposed to step out in faith. The Bible says, though, that we are to live by faith, not to take steps of faith every once in a while. We are supposed to perpetually be seeking weightlessness, not to step out into the air and frantically search for the ground again. Jesus wants us to, in faith, die. There is nothing temporary about death. Once you take a step into the grave, you can't get yourself back out. You have to wait for someone who can raise the dead.