Scandalous Grace

moved

2010-09-29T08:08:00.001-07:00

I have moved all the blog posts and will start actively blogging on the new site:

thereforenow.com

Parable of the young son

2010-09-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

I decided to write this up as its own parable.

Once there was a man who worked at an insurance company as a programmer. He was an expert in statistics and computer science, and ran ever more complex actuarial studies on a massively parallel super-computer.

One day, his young son asked him what he did all day when he went to work. He thought and thought about a way to explain to him what it was he did, and he simply could not think of a way to explain what he was doing in a way that his son could comprehend. So he told him what he considered the most basic and actual truth about it:

"I make money."

Satisfied, the son went on to play. Months later, his mother happened to take him up to his father's office so they could go to lunch. Starry-eyed and excited, the son tagged along. When they arrived at the father's desk, he asked, "where do you make the money?! Confused, the father answered, "Well ... right here." The son answered, "but, where do you melt the metal? Where do you stamp the designs? Where do you keep all the money after you make it? I want to see!"

Laughing, the father pondered how to answer. How to explain that he got paid for his work, and his paycheck was electronically deposited into their bank account? He said, "Honey, it isn't like that." And they went off to lunch without another explanation.

Now the son is grown, and he still doesn't understand what his father was doing.

Parable of the two young music students

2010-09-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

Once there was a great music teacher who only took a few of the most gifted and promising students. One of his students was a very disciplined young man, hard-working and eager to please. He had not at first wanted to play, but he realized it was something that pleased his mother, and because he desired to please her, he worked at his studies very hard. Every morning he would wake before dawn, practice his scales and finger exercises, and slowly perfect certain passages in the grand classic he happened to be working on. All marveled at his dedication and devotion. In the evening, when others of his peers played outside, he again pulled out his metronome and worked at perfecting the most difficult passages.

The great teacher recognized his discipline and talent. There was technicality and even a clean perfection to his playing that was rare.

The great teacher had another student who was also quite gifted. Although his parents balked at the trouble and time and expense of bringing their son to the lessons, he begged them and insisted against their wishes that he be allowed to take lessons. He too woke up, and from an instinctive and raw appetite he played every chance he could get. He imitated songs he liked from movies and recordings from all styles, and was constantly making up songs and trying his hand at everything he heard. In fact, often his parents would argue with him to stop playing so much because his obsession was intrusive and bothersome. His obsession was anything but discipline, because he would often ignore his other chores and duties, even his personal hygiene, in his insatiable need to constantly play.

In the lessons, the teacher had trouble getting this other student to discipline himself to practice the finer points of playing more difficult passages. However the music teacher was gracious enough to realize that a different approach must be taken to lead this student to greatness. In fact, although in certain ways this student's playing was undisciplined and even a bit sloppy, there was a joy and life to his playing which hinted of true greatness. There was a truth and presence and ease to his playing, a natural musicianship that was indefinable.

The disciplined student went on to a prestigious music academy, where he played Mozart and Bach at music juries where teachers scribbled criticisms as he played. He did indeed receive the highest grades. Occasionally he played at recitals, and eventually he became a piano teacher and a professor of music at the academy. The other student travelled around the country, playing small concerts at bars and outdoor festivals.

Often what looks like success is only a prison made of fear of the opinions of others. True love counts the opinions of others as nothing, and though imperfect and humble of appearance, is impelled by real desire.

Thoughts to my mystified friends

2010-09-23T04:37:00.000-07:00

This is a note to the mystified reader who wonders how an otherwise intelligent guy ended up not only as a Christian, but as a person seemingly obsessed with some kind of controversy about some fine point of faith that seems frankly irrelevant.

I am not out to convert you. I might be out to convince you, but there isn't a person on earth who doesn't hold some kind of opinion and who doesn't want to be persuasive. There is a difference between respectful persuasive intelligible dialog, and weird angry evangelistic fervor. I'm posting this as a public service so some of you who don't get this can understand where the heck I'm coming from. It is supposed to be respectful and persuasive.

First, I do not believe the earth is 6000 years old. I do believe in Biblical inerrancy (the whole Bible is true) but you have to understand that there is room to think straight within that world. Look at it like this: if the story of the creation of the universe and all of life was written initially in the language of ultimate science, and was fully accurate, no one in antiquity could have even begun to understand it. Even today we couldn't understand it. However, it was not written this way.

Here is a way to understand this. My father was the manager of a large insurance office when I was young, and was an expert in worker's compensation claims. As a child, I asked what he did when he went to work. He said, "I make money." I pictured him melting down copper and pouring it into little molds making coins. When I went to visit his office, asked to go see where they make the money. They laughed, and I was confused. Was he lying or inaccurate? Was he trying to mislead me? Of course not. He simplified his answer because he could not explain worker's compensation and the complex machinations of his office and how they used an IBM mainframe computer to run actuarial numbers or whatever to a 6 year old. I completely misinterpreted his answer in a literal way that wasn't even close to accurate.

Genesis 1 is a one chapter rundown of the creation of the universe and all of life on earth. Not only is it meant to be intelligible to mankind in antiquity, but it is only one chapter. It sets the stage for a much more focused and larger story, and the larger story is really the point. Let's face it, the details of Genesis 1 don't even make sense. It says there was evening and morning, and even vegetation, before there was a sun and moon. That just doesn't make any sense. Does this mean I don't believe? No, it means I am a 6 year old trying to understand the creation of the universe, and I am getting a 6 year old answer. The fact is, the universe exists, and was somehow created. The actual details of what really happened in what order in concert are still way beyond our comprehension. Thus, I put Gen 1 in a right perspective. It is true, it is even literally true, but it is an explanation of an unspeakably complex thing written in a way that is minimally intelligible to all people from antiquity forward.

This brings up another point for my mystified friends. Belief doesn't mean you can't doubt things, you can't think for yourself. There is a place to say honestly, Genesis 1 sure is weird in its details, but I still believe it. You can put things on the 'I don't get this' shelf, without throwing the whole idea of belief and faith out the window. You say, I have trouble believing that a perfect and good loving God could have ordered his people to commit genocide down to the last Canaanite man, woman, and child, when they entered the promised land. I have trouble with that too. I don't get it. I don't even like it. In fact, it makes me sick, and I have some serious questions for God when I get up there. It calls His justice and mercy and goodness into question. I would be a fool to cover this over and pretend I just 'believe' without having doubts about this. I DO have doubts about this. However, I still believe. Where John the apostle says 'God is love' and that 'in this is love, ... that God loved us ... " and all of that, I believe it. Some of this weird stuff, I don't get, and I think I am allowed to believe and to hold out with some doubts. Any Christian that won't own up to having doubts is not very well grounded in the truth of their beliefs.

In fact, one of my favorite guys these days, Peter Rollins, has this byline on his blog: 'to believe is human; to doubt divine" - go check it out: peterrollins.net/blog/

Here is another thing for my mystified friends to understand. This is such a huge point. When you think of Christians, or the Christian community, you think of the absolute buffoons on television or whatever. No one I know or love is like that. You think that the Christian church is all wrapped up in right wing politics and a weird and harsh form of American patriotism. I lean to the left politically, and I'm concerned for the environment, and I don't poo-poo climate change! Yes, and there are MANY others. There is a huge world of extremely intelligent and extremely large-minded people in the Christian community. There are people on the very cutting edge of culture and thought, who are the people you really ought to be listening to. Can you imagine if all Germans were judged by their association with Naziism? It is no service to anyone to judge or ignore or write off THE GERMANS because of WWII. It is no service to anyone to judge all of christendom by the Spanish Inquisition, Robert Tilton, and that crazy church down the street. There is a gargantuan world of people with great free-thinking principled lives that are part of Christendom that you would probably love to sit down with for a few hours to sip coffee and really talk to.

Finally, the whole point of this blog, the scandal of grace, is that most people outside the church, and a lot of people inside the church, don't get that the point of Christian faith isn't to trick you into being more moral. It is about believing that even when you are not perfect, not moral, not successful, even then you are deeply and truly loved and cared for. When you have problems and grief, there is somewhere to go with that. It is about a love and a joy that cannot be taken away, about significance that cannot be lost. It is about being freed from having to engineer your own significance and success and fulfillment. I have to say, if I am trying to persuade anyone of anything, it is to invite you to try jumping in, the water feels GREAT! Don't let legitimate doubts about a few weird things in the Old Testament prevent you from experiencing what C.S. Lewis called being "Surprised by Joy." If I said anything to you, I would say, I really love walking in this way. I still have plenty of problems, plenty of frustrations, plenty of failures, but I also have an assurance that it will all work out and that God is truly with me.

Justification Equation

2010-09-21T04:57:00.000-07:00

I was listening to an excellent teaching by R.C. Sproul, and he came to a point where you can hear him cracking the chalk against the blackboard decisively with this equation:

Faith + Works != Justification ('!=' is programmer shorthand for 'not equal')
Faith = Justification + Works

How the dust was flying! You can hear people starting to cough. You gotta love him!

He is talking about assurance, as in, being assured that you are really a Christian, really eternally and forever under grace, eternally out of condemnation. If we add works to the wrong side of the equation, we remove the possibility of assurance. Assurance, he says, is a crucial element of our sanctification, and I would have to agree with this.

If we have come to a point, and it is settled, that Christ has truly justified us, that our sin cannot ever come between us and God, and that it is out of our hands to spoil that, we enter a new dynamic. No longer do we labor. No longer do we strive. No longer do we worry. What we DO is no longer part of the equation which leads to justification. Thus, what we do becomes motivated from a very different place. We no longer act from fear, no longer perform based on an attempt to justify ourselves.

We always couch this in religious terms but I believe this is true across the entire spectrum of human experience. Just as Solomon writes:

“And I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:4, NASB.

All men, believers or not, religious or not, in their field of endeavor, strive for significance and skill as a means to significance, a means to self-justification. Even as we talk, make jokes, do business, work, recreate, form important relationships, we strive for significance with each other. In our minds, significance is earned by our deeds, our cleverness, our greatness in business or debauchery or pleasure or skill with words or music. I must craft my own importance because it is up to me alone to do so. I am constantly on the lookout to be more clever, more successful, more insightful, happier, with better pleasures and appreciations, to prove my significance.

In Christ, this is completely turned around. We are justified as a gift. We are declared significant carte blanche. We no longer need to become great at anything to prove our significance - we simply ARE significant. We are declared just. Any attempt to water this down, to obscure it, to blunt it, only takes us back to the fruitless land of doing things to prove our worthiness.

The flesh rebels at this. The flesh wants to act, to do things, to prove significance. The flesh doesn't rebel at the law, it loves it. The question isn't law or sin, the question for the flesh is really which law to revel in. Either a law of religious leanings, or a law of partying, or a law of violence, or whatever. Every community has its rules for belonging and honor, its rites of passage. You can feel yourself recoil at the idea that you need do nothing to be significant, to be justified.

However, under this new dynamic, under a decisive declaration of justification, we act and work and do things from a wholly different impulse. Under grace, whereas works are no longer necessary, works appear as fruit:

“But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:18-23, NASB.

So, we can come around and say, am I acting from faith? It is the right belief, a real assurance of justification, that leads to the right fruit. Works exist in both equations, but if you put works on the wrong side of the equation, you nullify grace. Do you see that? If you have faith in the work of Christ but still have the notion that you have to do stuff to earn justification then it nullifies Christ's work because you are still the one justifying yourself. This has drastic consequences to your works, because they are motivated by self-justification and not as the fruit of love.

When Christ justifies us, all of our human endeavor comes from a wholly different place. We joke differently, because we do not need to pose as a clever person - we already have an assurance that we are completely justified.

Do a mental experiment with me. Just pretend that no matter what, I mean NO MATTER WHAT, you were the very apple of God's eye. If you just got out of an orgy and smoked illicit things and did every debaucherous selfish act you could think of, you could immediately still pray and God would send you a million dollars dropped right out of the sky. How would you live? Would you still orgy-ize and smoke things? Would you keep asking for a million dollars?

Let me pose this to you: it really IS like that. We really have passed out of judgement, and as Peter says,

“... seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” 2 Peter 1:2, 3, NASB.

A million dollars is nothing more than a burden to manage, and a facade of fake wealth. You can't eat a million dollars. Jesus fed 5000 with a few fish and loaves. Money is nothing but a tool, and it is far from the only tool of provision. Sin is unfulfilling and rotten. So since we are justified no matter what, we are now free to look at the world with a right mind, a free mind. If EVERYTHING is permissable, and EVERY RESOURCE is available to me to do so, then the only question is, what greatness, what humble peace, what sweet loveliness, does my justifier have in mind for me today?

Here is my advice to you my esteemed reader: put works on the right side of the equation. As Peter says,

“Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;” 2 Peter 1:10, NASB.

Be assured that you are justified by Him, you are significant already in the eyes of God. Live from this position of strength.

John the Baptist and Jesus

2010-09-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

“In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.” Luke 1:5, NIV.

Here we have a pretty obscure verse that shows us something very profound. John the Baptist is descended from the Levitical priesthood, and thus represents the Law. Both his mother and father were full blooded descendants of Aaron. Aaron was selected as the first priest, so saying they are descended from Aaron is saying they are high-pedigree priests:

““Then bring near to yourself Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the sons of Israel, to minister as priest to Me--Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s sons.” Exodus 28:1, NASB.

They are known as Levites because Aaron was descended from one of Jacob's sons, Levi:

“Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said, “Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks fluently. And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you; when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.” Exodus 4:14, NASB.

““And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons from among the sons of Israel, to perform the service of the sons of Israel at the tent of meeting, and to make atonement on behalf of the sons of Israel, that there may be no plague among the sons of Israel by their coming near to the sanctuary.”” Numbers 8:19, NASB.

However, Jesus is not descended from the line of Aaron, but from the line of Judah.

So, when John baptizes Jesus, we have Jesus submitting to and fulfilling the law. John baptizes as one who represents and is under the law, for repentance from sins. As we look through John's ministry we see that it has to do with declaring the need for repentance, thus representing the law.

However, John himself says that he is subservient to Jesus:

““a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” And so John came, baptising in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.” Mark 1:3-7, NIV.

“John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven. “You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’ “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. And so this joy of mine has been made full. “He must increase, but I must decrease. “He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. “What He has seen and heard, of that He bears witness; and no man receives His witness. “He who has received His witness has set his seal to this, that God is true. “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.” John 3:27-34, NASB.

So we have the one who represents the law, preparing and making the way, and pointing to Christ, saying publicly that he is less than Christ. This is a picture of the law acting as a tutor to lead to God's work of grace, and of the law being less than grace.

“John *bore witness of Him, and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” John 1:15-18, NASB.

What this says to me is that the idea of law being an agent which cannot produce righteousness but which leads one to grace, is a message that God spoke even in the grand sweep of long Jewish lineage over thousands of years. The message of grace is His message, His primary message, a message He planned from the very beginning, and which He is using the Jewish nation and the grand sweep of history to teach us.

Love is eternal because it does not depend on attributes

2010-09-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

This is a response to an absolutely fascinating post by a guy named Peter Rollins. You can and should read his original post here:
peterrollins.net/blog/?p=1231

It really got me thinking about some of the foundational aspects of grace and love, so I wanted to post my response on my own blog as a matter of record.

I really enjoyed this. I heard a radio DJ in Vancouver BC read the jacket notes after playing Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, talking about his Idee Fixe - that it was about a love so great that it pined eternally and forgave everything. I can't stand Berlioz, but I walked on clouds for days thinking that this is the kind of love God has loved me with. It is ironic that for most of us, the great love of God seems to be a vapor compared to romantic love, whereas romantic love is actually only a shadow or icon of the love of God for us. It is also another reason why in Christ we leave the universe of requirement and enter the universe of grace. Under law we maintain relationship by maintaining the necessary attributes to prevent rejection. Grace goes beyond accepting relationship based on adherence to certain traits, and enters into love based on pure identity. We become His sacred x, his pearl of great price for which He sells all else.

As to the criticism that it seems specious to define love as only that which loves always without defining attributes, this is actually the strongest idea in the piece. If love depends on attributes, it is not love but earned credit. If it does not need attributes but is based entirely on identity, then since nothing can be earned, nothing can be lost, and it becomes eternal. This is why, when Paul lists his huge list of unpardonable offenses in 1Cor 6 (aberrant sexualities and slander and greed and such), he follows immediately with "All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable." The relationship which is defined by admiration of attributes is subject to a perfection of behaviors, but the relationship which is defined by grace is defined by pure love based on direct identity.

Thanks again, loved the ideas in this one.

Letter to the North American Church

2010-09-16T05:50:00.000-07:00

There is an event called "Eighth Letter" where writers are encouraged to write a letter to the church in North America.

eighthletter.com/

A site listing many other contributions can be found here: rachelheldevans.com/8th-letter-synch

I think it is a cool idea and I think anyone who is following my blog knows what I would say. However, on reflection, and after reading around the blogosphere about what people think the North American church needs to hear, I came to some thoughts about the matter. So, here is my letter:

Dear North American Church,

I have heard SO MANY terrible things about you! Everyone I talk to, Christian, agnostic, and atheist, seems to think that you are the most flawed institution ever. I am certain that you are the root of all prejudice, hypocrisy, greed, heresy, small-minded ignorance, and petty fear. You are too inward, too materialistic, graceless, homophobic, too easy on sin, you avoid hard issues like eternal hell and damnation, you're seeker-sensitive instead of Christ-sensitive, you're culturally irrelevant, and on and on and on. You are hopelessly out of touch with real scientific truth, and are full of morons and stupid people who won't even acknowledge the obvious truth of evolution. Most of you probably believe the earth is 6000 years old and flat. In fact, the AMERICAN part of the North American church is the worst; the Canadians are a little better. The Mexican church isn't really part of North America is it? It's more like South America, they are there for youth mission experiences. Since they are kind of third world, their weird supernatural voodoo religious leanings are OK since myths are a help to primitive peoples. Maybe at one time you, the REAL North American church, were great, except for all the killing of native Americans and such, but now you have descended into a morass of complete and hopeless evil and worthless impotence and irrelevance.

I am here to criticize this criticism on your behalf. Yes, it is a bit surreal, but I am going to go with it. I am a little tired of all the self-proclaimed prophets and apostles constantly prattling on about their little soap-box issues, which may or may not be valid points, as if their criticism is the problem with THE ENTIRE CHURCH.

Here is a news flash: the church is full of sinners. After Christians come to Christ, they are still sinners in need of mercy. You, the North American church, are full of people who don't really know what they are doing. Every single one of them. Including your members who so easily criticize what you are trying to do. Your best pastors have trouble juggling multiple competing issues and directives in a balanced way, and not every pastor is perfect. So even if they have a clear and right mandate from the Holy Spirit, they are not perfectly executing on it. Is there not grace and patience for that?

The old zeitgeist was that you were hopelessly culturally irrelevant, were not enough about relationship, and were not seeker sensitive. The new zeitgeist is that you are trying too hard to be seeker sensitive, are too hipster, are too frank about sexual matters perhaps, and are not reverent and even liturgical enough. The church should be more timeless.

Here is the real point; when your leaders criticize this way, they begin to define themselves by their criticisms, and the times when they need to be more seeker-sensitive or culturally relevant, or timeless and non-hipster and reverent, they have been so vocal against the idea that you can't really step into that paradigm. If they would shut up they might have more options in following the leading of the Holy Spirit as things develop.

So, if your vision and the mandate you believe you have is to be seeker sensitive, then for God's sake be seeker-sensitive. Perhaps listen to this criticism and see if there is any way you might improve, but realize that God terribly loves you and is far more committed than the critic to seeing your vision and ministry succeed.

If your particular congregation is middle class and affluent, and is basically inward and not into helping the poor, you come under fire from the people who say that your problem is that you are callous and inward and unconcerned about the unfortunate. Well, maybe you are truly guilty of this. Your members did not join you because they were fired up about helping the poor now did they? Are they going to hell for this? Are their wounds and concerns and problems any less? Maybe you want to lead them to more concern and work for the poor, to be less busy toward some lesser concerns. But they have families and children and jobs and it isn't so easy an issue. Is there grace enough to let them fail and to lead them into true relationship with the Father and into true concern for all people, including the poor?

Here is the point. The real message of the church is grace. It doesn't mean there aren't problems in the church. It doesn't mean the church is doing it right at all. Look at it like this: my wife is fantastic. She isn't perfect, but I am not going to be happy about it if someone is going to go on and on and on delightfully pointing out her flaws so they can look smart. They don't look smart when they do that. They look like a self-aggrandizing malicious fool. And this is what most of these criticisms of the church look like.

So, to the critics who lead the church, I say, stop it. These are all difficult issues in a very difficult modern environment, and we are more than ever under fire. If you want the church to be like this or like that, say so with respect for the dignity of the church. Hipster seeker-sensitive churches or liturgical churches or whatever may not be your style, but they are doing what they think is best. Maybe you think that most churches in North America don't do enough for the poor and prisoners and such; how can you best influence them? Personally I think most churches don't emphasize grace enough, but you know what? They mostly believe in grace to a certain extent, and I would like to be able to helpfully and GRACIOUSLY speak into their environment in a way that they can receive it.

Almost all North American Churches:
1. Care about seeker sensitivity somehow, and want to welcome non-Christians
2. Have a degree of timeless reverence
3. Have a concern for the poor and downtrodden
4. Believe in holiness and repentance
5. Hold to the essential doctrines of the faith
6. Truly believe in the grace and mercy of the Father
7. Are locally and globally missional, to some extent

So, to the leaders in the church, if we are going to speak into churches, we need to realize that no pet idea or doctrine is going to cover every congregation completely. The very impulse to get down to the beating heart of the best criticism of the church is damaging. The first thing to realize is that God loves every human, however flawed, and God especially loves His church. He calls it His bride. He knows about the flaws. He also loves that certain people have enough passion and thoughtfulness to think about the church in such broad terms. However, the idea that it is somehow helpful to go on pinpointing what is wrong with the church, setting ourselves up as some kind of infallible judge, is harmful not only to the church, but also to the criticizer. Sure the church has a degree of "cognitive dissonance", but honestly is this confined to the church? The commands of Jesus are meant to be almost impossible to keep. Why is it shocking that people 'claim' to follow Jesus and do a poor job of it? Of course they do a poor job. We are all sinners, flawed and lazy and incomplete and misguided in many ways, in need of a savior. He is here to forgive, to bless when there is no merit for it, and to lead us truly and with grace and dignity to better pastures. It does no good for us to turn around and stand our ground and yell at the sheep for being lost or out of the pasture. We completely miss God's heart for His church this way. Instead, speak grace to His church, with a sensitivity to His heart for His bride. We cannot see what the church is like until we at least try to see the church with His eyes, and His eyes are full of love and hope.

worshipping when you're wounded

2010-09-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

I decided to post my sermon notes for this message so I can get some comments back and new ideas from everyone. It is kind of a loose amalgam of blog post and brief speaking points, but I'm throwing it out there anyway because I'm out of time and I have to go to work. Sorry for the fact that some of this is as yet half-baked.
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1. Introduction to grace and suffering

We have come to characterize the Christian life as a response to the initiative of God. God tremendously and strongly loves us, and we begin to learn to respond in kind. Our response to God's initiative of love is our worship. There is another factor, however. When we are having trouble, when there is affliction or injustice or chronic hardship in our lives or in the lives of others, how can we intelligently interpret that as God's initiative of love and grace? In other words, if God is gracious and loving and wonderful, why am I having such problems? Why am I hurting? Why am I so wounded? How can so many of the NT authors reflect this idea:

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." James 1:2

"... we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations ..." Romans 5:2

They must be crazy or delusional, because no one in their right mind rejoices in tribulations. I want to show how the right thinking about grace can make this truth really live and breathe for you, and how you can interpret grace and worship into your real life with all of its disappointments, problems, hardships, and afflictions. Beyond being delusional, the NT authors found a source of strength and joy which no circumstance on earth could overcome. This is certainly the same frame of mind and the same power which God wants to show us how to walk in now. Affliction is absolutely guaranteed for 100% of humanity, but our response to it is the real wild card.

1.2 The universality of suffering
Anyone on planet earth who breathes is experienced with affliction. Certainly the birth experience itself is shocking and afflictive event. We all expect death to be traumatic, and as Billy Graham has said, one out of one people die. The minute we wake up every morning we begin to commiserate with Leo Kottke's song:

=====================
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
And you crawl out of bed and you crawl out of bed
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

And there's tears in the bank and the credit card
In the back yard, in the back yard, in the back yard
If you look in the mirror it's your father's face
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
======================

1.3 Extreme examples of grace under affliction
Let's take a look at what Paul call's 'momentary light affliction':
“Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as if insane) I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches.” 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, NASB.

This is some pretty serious stuff. We know also that Paul had a chronic condition of some kind, a lot of people think it was his eyes:

“See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” Galatians 6:11, NASB.
combined with this:
“And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me--to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” 2 Corinthians 12:7-9, NASB.

Paul was no stranger to serious chronic affliction, punctuated with bouts of acute affliction ranging from hunger, exposure, physical torture, and much much more. It is important to understand that it is this man, the same man in the same book who wrote out this impressive list of afflictions, wrote of 'momentary light afflictions.' How could this possibly be?

It is a matter of comparison. If you compare your afflictions to other people whom you perceive to have less affliction, or to previous times in life when you seem to remember having less affliction, happier times, your present affliction will seem all the more to carry a tremendous weight. It is this inner perspective, this inner comparison of the mind, that makes the affliction all the harder to bear.

1.4 Woundedness - woundedness is a special case. Affliction is a present pain, that may soon go away. Tribulation is an outward circumstance that makes life difficult. But woundedness is a result of our own sin and the injustice of others, that has harmed us on the inside. It is an internal scar that we carry with us. It is chronic, and often it is something that no talk, no counsel, sometimes even no prayer, can seem to touch.

1.5 Owning your wounds: Brothers karamazov quote: "It is Rachel of old," said the elder, "weeping for her children, and will not be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set on earth for you mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and be not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep be sure to remember that your little son is one of the angels of God, that he looks down from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and points at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will you keep that great mother's grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin."

When Jesus was weeping and sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane, who was going to come up to Him and say, "cheer up Jesus! Have a positive attitude! It will all work out! Where's your joy brother?" We are not to put on some false joy when we are hurting and wounded. It is better to own our grief, to allow ourselves to really be hurt. Comfort can come, dignity can come, when we realize that the cross we bear is a real cross, and the pain we experience is important to God. when we come to a Christian assembly, and only put our best smiling face forward, and in all our relationships never reveal our wounds, we never enter true fellowship.

2. Your personal suffering is important to God
It is thus important to note, that none of this says that your affliction, your present tense difficulties, are nothing. They are real. They are true. They are pressing. They are a cross which kills. You are an unsung hero bearing under a difficult weight. As Peter says:

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:6, 7, NASB.

This word, He CARES for you, in the Greek, means something very strong. It doesn't mean, He has some distant and vague feeling of pity for you. The tense is this: "it is a deep burden to Him." He sees, He carries the burden of it, it is an emotional and important thing to Him. He knows that it is difficult for us to see that these things are fleeting, and a beautiful heaven is coming soon.

When I went to Auschwitz, I saw the picture of Christ dying on the cross that the Christian brother scrawled on the wall with his fingernail. It was 25 years ago, and I remember it clearly to this day. (A detail of this picture is at the top of the blog post.) It is one of the world's great canvases, created under such demonic stress of evil and torture that one cannot even imagine it. Here is a man who knew that he would die, who possibly knew that he would be experimented upon alive by Dr. Mengele, and who looked to the suffering of Christ for solace and believed. For the longest time, I would look at this canvas in my mind, and think that compared to such suffering my own problems were of no account. I have come to see that this robs me of the dignity of my own cross. The artist of Auschwitz does not serve as a club to beat me over the head and tell me that my sufferings are nothing and that my weaknesses are unforgiveable; this is a disservice to the power of this artist's courage and faith. Grace says, find inspiration that the comfort and strength you find from God in your present hardships, will continue right up to the worst evil.

For each of us, our woundedness takes its own shape, and our woundedness is very precious in the eyes of God. This is the important kernel, the core message, of this post. Grace means God cares, God loves, God sees, God understands our pain. Worship is expecting this compassion, pressing in to God's perfect heart, while in the present tense affliction still presses on us.

2.1 The importance of our unique individual suffering
- Edith Schaeffer's book on affliction, example of the guy on his death bed, and how important it was for him to persist in saying God is good from that place. He was the only person in history with his history and demeanor and particular affliction that could declare the praises of God from that place of difficulty and faith. The critical warfare is an individual's worship under fire. Our worship under affliction weaves a vast tapestry which together is a beautiful thing from the perspective of heaven. A tapestry looks like a tangled mess underneath, but is beautiful on the viewing side. Life on earth is the tangled mess side of the tapestry.

2.2 Suffering as an opporutnity
it is the fleeting opportunity of praise in the midst of difficulty which is our tiny window of opportunity to exercise real powerful faith. It is the truly deep place of fellowship with His sufferings. Also, you are going to have to walk through the affliction one way or the other, should it be with faith or without?

3. Close look at the verse:
MOMENTARY affliction: it is not forever, even chronic affliction. The years pass very quickly. Eventually and sooner than later we will be with the Lord in heaven. Just like the school child can't imagine they will ever graduate from high school, and the teenager can't imagine that they will ever really find their soul mate and get married, we can't imagine that our presence in paradise will ever be real, but it will. Then, even our most persistent affliction will be seen for what it really is -> MOMENTARY.

LIGHT affliction: we've all said, I can't go on like this. But it depends on what you're comparing it to.

IS producing for us: not at some imaginary point, but NOW.

ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY: What story or movie unfolds without some kind of challenge or problem? What hero is there who doesn't face impossible odds? The most amazing stories come out of the WWII period, because it was a time of intense suffering and thus a time of big heroes and a time when people's tenacity and strength were really tested and proven. In the end, though we think it is the good times, the prosperity, the peaceful times, which will define us, it is actually the worst times that define us. This idea is only a partial shadow of the real truth, that our afflictions are creating a lasting and extremely substantive glory. Like Jesus, we will be honored and even praised and known by our wounding, our scars.

4. Conclusion:
4.1 How not to take this
God is not about putting us constantly under affliction. We are not weird medieval monastic masochists, delighting in flogging ourselves and taking ridiculous vows of poverty and silence and constant fasting. There is no glory in suffering, there is glory in grace and overcoming faith. God does not delight in our suffering. He delights in our liberation, our joy; but there is a special beauty in His compassion for us and our beautiful response under affliction. Sometimes suffering is an instrument of healing from Him, a way of speaking through discipline when we have become deaf to other forms of revelation. This is not always, and is perhaps rarely, the real source of affliction. Many times it is the result of the sins of others, or even worse, the result of our own sin. His love is not some trick message to give us a psychological crutch in times of affliction. He obviously wants us to have life and have it abundantly. There is no doubt that most if not all of us have been terribly wounded by the circumstances of life, and He has a real desire and an agenda to heal us and move us from our Egypt of bondage through the desert of transition to the abundance of the promised land. In affliction, faith says that God is yet gracious, God cares deeply for me, and there is yet hope that a greater life awaits me. There is power to have joy and truth in the present, to worship God in spirit and in truth, in the midst of our woundedness. Our woundedness, our affliction, is our big fleeting chance to worship God in faith. It is our big and temporary chance to shine as true saints, to do the thing that distinguishes us as believers, when it appears unwarranted.
4.2 How to take this
“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2, NASB.
Jesus did not really find pleasure or joy in His suffering. He suffered with the understanding that it was for a PURPOSE, that it was for the joy set before Him. His suffering was accomplishing an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. He was all about the joy set before Him. He didn't like suffering. He trusted the Father's plan and compassion; He made His request known (please take this cup away from Me!), but He submitted for the greater joy. This is also His design for us.
4.3 Prayer and ministry time; the focus is on worshipping, not for His wonderful attributes that kind of have nothing to do with you, but being cognizant of His deep burden of care for you,of the reality and dignity f your problems and woundedness.

Peace to everyone who reads this.
==============================

homosexuals and gossips

2010-08-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

This is a response to a list of 'problem' verses that seem to indicate that Paul doesn't really mean it when he talks about grace. My friend Kim Dickson (who is a wonderful Christian woman, and with a beautiful spirit of free dialog and exploration for truth) posted this verse in the midst of a lengthy dialog. It is part of a legitimate question about whether the Bible really does teach grace the way I am describing, and I am glad to explore it. Here is the verse:

"Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

The question at hand is, how does the idea that a slanderer or an adulterer (and all those other obviously sinful people) should not inherit the kingdom of God fit with Paul's message in the following verse?

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:1-4, NASB.

If there is therefore no condemnation, if we are free from the law of sin and of death, then how come greedy people and slanderers are not going to heaven? Perhaps Paul is schizophrenic, or crazy, or he just forgot about the grace message when he was writing this other thing. Let's get one thing straight: this is not a Jim McNeely issue, it is a "we haven't quite bothered to understand how Paul's mind works" issue. If we are coming to this trying to prove some doctrine wrong or some other doctrine right, instead of coming in search of actual truth, we will get nowhere. We must come to a unity in interpreting Paul's thought that does not twist scripture to our own ends. Are you willing to listen, to think, to change your mind? Are we all involved in a reckless and ruthless search for the real truth here? Are we going to go on being lazy about this?

If we go with the idea that Paul is not schizophrenic, and that there is a unity of thought to his writings, we need to look at Paul's general message and Paul's intent and circumstance in writing to the Corinthians. In the book of Romans, Paul had never been to Rome, the nerve center of civilization at the time, and he wanted to make sure he outlined a full explanation of the gospel from beginning to end. The Corinthian letters are different; Paul had spent a lot of time with these people, and he was writing a pastoral letter to address some specific and thorny problems. Corinth was a very carnal city and not only were there a lot of temptations there, several within the church tended to succumb to these temptations.

Now, the verse we looked at in Galatians is very useful to solve our problem:

“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Galatians 5:13, NASB.

Like the Galatians, the Corinthian believers are also called to freedom. If someone is a Christian, born of the Spirit and standing in grace, fruit will begin to bud and form such as love and joy and patience and kindness and such.

Under the law, the freedom of grace looks like license to sin. Under grace, sin looks like a really dumb way to spend your freedom. Paul is saying, you can tell when someone is posing, when they really aren't under grace, when they simply do not get it, because they are drawn to the forbidden! Under the law, if you say, you can't have sex with THAT, the fleshly part of you says, wow, that sounds EXCITING! I want to break out of this prison of prim properness and really live! Grace says, go ahead, you are allowed to do anything, do as you wish, you are eternally loved. You come into your right mind and say, REALLY?! Actually, I don't think I want any of that, gross! I'm actually really blessed right now, and sin takes me to places I don't like. I prefer to be happy and honorable and to live with dignity - why not?

This is all too simplistic though, right? It can't work without a threat. There has to be some kind of consequence for sin! Are we preaching some kind of universal salvation? Let's take another look at this same verse, but this time, let's include a tiny bit of context:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-12, NASB.

Notice that last sentence which I included this time. "ALL THINGS ARE LAWFUL FOR ME!" We don't need to thumb over to some other book or context to see this, it is in the same direct stream of thought as our 'problem' verse! It is the very next verse, nestled in the whole section on how terrible sexual sins are! What are these things that are lawful? What is he saying? The simple context would indicate that he is talking about fornication, idolatry, homosexuality, coveting, drinking to excess, swindling, etc. But didn't he just say that those who do these things should not inherit the kingdom of God? Is Paul crazy? All of the sudden he is saying you can do anything, but you might want to avoid sex with goats because it isn't profitable!

I want to pause here and note something. If your idea of salvation, your idea of what the Christian gospel really is, leads you to chop off this last verse, then you are really really really not getting it. The mindset of grace just looks at things differently. For example, look at a verse like Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23, NASB.

If you think, "SEE! Wages of sin is death! We should stop sinning! Wages of sin is death!" You are totally missing it. The law is about earning favor by your behavior, you earn WAGES. Grace says, "SEE! Free gift! Free gift! eternal life!! WOO HOO its FREEEEEEE!!"

Here's another example:

“No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” 1 John 3:6, NASB.

Under the law, you think, "SEE! stop sinning or you don't abide in Him!" Whereas grace says, "SEE! abide in Him, and sin falls off of you easily! Abide in Him! Know Him! It's great!"

Look again at our problem verse. What is the difference between the swindlers and revilers and fornicators and Christians? Is it primarily that they stopped reviling? NO, we don't have the power to just stop doing these things and the specifics are peripheral anyway. Grace is an umbrella term for a supernatural work of God in a sinner's life. Forgiveness is included in the package. So is washing. Because forgiveness is real, it allows you to see how rotten your sinfulness is, and to actually really want cleansing. This is heart-level change, born of a supernatural work. It includes justification AND sanctification, and it includes the idea that GOD DID SOMETHING in the midst of a troubled soul. There is a supernatural God-initiated change in a person. Law wants to strip the supernatural from the equation. If someone has this supernatural work of forgiveness and cleansing, there is no question it will be obvious in their life. There will be a great joy, and the interest in the things the law forbids will drop off.

So, it is not the specific behaviors themselves which prevent an individual from entering the kingdom of heaven. It is the disbelief in grace, the fascination and love for the forbidden. It is the dependence on self, the lack of the supernatural. It is the heart which seeks earnestly that which is NOT heaven. It is the heart which, led on by the exciting forbiddenness of evil, finds heaven and its freedom boring.

There is an issue of identity going on here. It is not individual behaviors which are at issue, but what you are. There is a difference between having a drink and being a drunkard. That difference has everything to do with your stance on the grace of God. He says, SUCH WERE some of you. We need this leeway because if we are going to minister among real sinners, (like, for example, ME), we are going to need some wiggle room to say they were washed but they still get their feet dirty again sometimes. We need room for people who used to BE drunkards or revilers to have some successes and occasional failures, to have an open door back to success. People whose heart is changed may have minds and life patterns which drag somewhat behind. We need room for some people to have a lot of failure. Legalists are willing to dismiss people for far less than God is. If someone fails once or fails 100 times and they come back, wanting to change, then there is a washed part of them in there that is struggling to show some fruit. Some fields that have particularly good soil may grow some great fruit, but they also grow great weeds; they need more attention, more patience, more work. If we do not have the same cloud of misfits and scoundrels and sinners delighting to hang around us like Jesus did, maybe we are not speaking forth the same message that sounds like beautiful music to their ears. If we don't like hearing about forgiving 70 times 7 PER DAY, we are going to be very uncomfortable with the kind of people God is really interested in.

If the way we read this makes us want to chop off the "All things are lawful" clause, then we are not getting it. If we focus on certain sins in this list, like homosexuality, while ignoring others, like coveteousness or reviling, we are not getting it. It is not the specific behavior, it is the MASTERY over a person that is at issue. We are not looking for specific instances of behavior in order to boot people out, we are looking for clues to the inner master of a person that says, they really may not be one of us. There is a difference between being 'unrighteous' and being under grace but stumbling. Our efforts to help and forgive aren't going to work because they need stronger medicine than a smiling welcome and general acceptance. Grace takes a different shape for them, the Father heart of God has a different plan to truly bring them into the fold in a way that they really belong.

So here is what is going on. There was someone in the Corinthian congregation was actually having sexual relations with his step-mother:

“It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.” 1 Corinthians 5:1, NASB.

This whole section in 1 Corinthians is really addressing that particular problem. There is some crazy crazy stuff going on, and Paul says, don't think that the response of grace is to smile and coddle him and pretend it isn't happening. Probably the guy isn't really a believer and is playing you all as shills; go ahead and have the freedom and the huevos to boot him out the door. We're under grace - that should be scary to sinners trying to take advantage of us! He is saying, guys, do a little tiny bit of fruit checking, and take some minimal action. Grace doesn't mean you can't do this! This is grace in practice in the real world.

Paul writes a second letter to the same Corinthian believers, about the same guy he told them boot out, imploring them to invite him back into fellowship:

“But I determined this for my own sake, that I would not come to you in sorrow again. For if I cause you sorrow, who then makes me glad but the one whom I made sorrowful? And this is the very thing I wrote you, lest, when I came, I should have sorrow from those who ought to make me rejoice; having confidence in you all, that my joy would be the joy of you all. For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears; not that you should be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you. But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree--in order not to say too much--to all of you. Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest somehow such a one be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. But whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” 2 Corinthians 2:1-11, NASB.

In the end, grace dictated tough love, and tough love worked. It wasn't easy, it was scary, and Paul, moved by the Spirit, really cared more than anyone realized for the welfare of the one disciplined. Grace does not mean there is no discipline, no sorrow. However, grace is quick to sieze on success, on hope, it finds the lost coin and has joy in the reconciliation. In fact, we are not the arbiters of grace; we serve a great and deeply loving Father who longs to see these lost ones reconciled back to the joy and felowship of the community of those who walk in His awesome grace. I'm so grateful to be there!

Ann Rice's anti-conversion

2010-08-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

This is my reaction to one of the numerous articles about Ann Rice's departure from the Catholic church. Read the article here:

www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/religion/stories/DRC_Mann_Column_0827.94e71a77.html

I am so sorry to constantly stir up trouble. This is not an attack on Jim Mann, whom I know and respect. However, the tenor of this is typical of just about every evangelical church in America:

Quoting the article:
"Jesus warned us 2,000 years ago that the Bible’s message would be offensive to the world. Heck, it offends Christians, too. The reason for the affront is the mirror-like aspect of God’s word, revealing our deepest flaws and all our ugliness apart from God. The Bible calls us to change our thinking. It calls us to change our actions. That’s where we get the term “conversion.”"

Ann Rice 'converted' to Catholicism. She is rightly rejecting a lot of the catholic church's graceless legalistic weirdness. As protestants, we reject a lot of it too. She rejects the pro-life stance; I have a problem with that, but no evangelical right-winger seems to be able to allow that there might be noble reasons why people want to think that way, and that it is possible to have a respectful dialog. See this blog post if you haven't:

jimmcneely.blogspot.com/2009/09/public-discourse-in-nation-full-of.html

I don't think the Bible calls us to 'convert' by primarily changing our actions. It isn't primarily about confronting us with our ugliness. For goodness sakes, who wants to 'convert' to that?! Yea, I get to be confronted about how rotten I am! I didn't know! If I make an impossible promise to change my behavior and follow the world's most monumental moral code then I can be a Christian too! That sounds awesome - NOT!

The message of Scripture, of Jesus and Paul and the writer of Hebrews and John et call, is the message of GRACE! We are converted from the world of earning favor and being good, to the world of being loved by God first. The part that is offensive is not that the Bible presents a higher and more unobtainable moral code. The part that is offensive is that we are asked to no longer manipulate our own significance by superior behavior, skills, or intelligence. It allows God by grace to establish our significance, and revels in His power and truth to establish us and even appear to be righteous.

These kinds of articles about Ann Rice or whatever are just more fodder for non-Christians to dismiss the church. I'd like to see what Ann Rice would think if given a chance to hear that Christianity is based on a loving Father, on truth, on grace and enduring mercy and forgiveness. I'd like to ehar how she would react if told that she is the pearl of great price that God desperately wants, and that that love is the engine for inner and moral change. I can promise you she didn't hear that hammered home in the Catholic church, and she wouldn't hear it in most protestant churches either.

The deeds of the flesh

2010-08-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

In dialog with a friend, Kim Dickson, she did my work for me and brought up some passages that might seem to contradict grace. I am going to work through these one by one. However, before I do, I want to think through a bit of groundwork.

First, as Christians, we believe the Bible. The whole message of scripture is the right message. This is not a situation where we should be saying "they believe these verses but we believe these other verses." We all believe all the verses. I believe that the perspective of grace ties all the message of scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, Romans and James, together in a way that a more legalistic perspective does not. I am going to look at these passages that way - in context, according to a perspective of grace, and against the framework of Paul's thinking in Romans, Galatians, and his other writings, and against Jesus' teachings.

Here is the passage I want to look at first:

"The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." Galatians 5:19-21

Now, this is a perfect example of the whole point; Galatians is the proof-text for the message of grace. It almost isn't fair to start here, because the entire book is making the point that I am making, and making it probably much better than I could make it.

In Galatians, Paul is hopping mad at the people in the church at Galatia:

“I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:6-9, NASB.

And again, even more forcefully, here:

“You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain--if indeed it was in vain? Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?” Galatians 3:1-5, NASB.

What is the gospel he is talking about?

“... knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified. “But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! “For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. “For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”” Galatians 2:16-21, NASB.

What 'Law' is he talking about? THE LAW! No idols, no sabbath work, don't murder, don't commit adultery, the WHOLE LAW. Somebody show me where is talking about some other law! You can't, because he is not. By the works of the law no one shall be justified.

Then he says, "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." When you come under grace, you no longer have personal obligation to live under the law, and righteousness springs from a new well. I always say, you cannot have Christian virtue that is of the natural - Christian virtue requires supernatural manifestation. It is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit as much as prophecy or words of knowledge or speaking in tongues might be.

Notice how he ties in the idea that the life he now lives he lives by faith in Christ, 'WHO LOVED ME'! The inception of our Christian walk is that Christ loves us, would rather die than live without us. And he brings up the crucial point that if righteousness comes through the law, it nullifies grace. Our ongoing walk, our present behaviors, today, are completely wrapped up NOW in the propitiatory death of Christ. When he talks about nullifying the grace of God and Christ dying needlessly, he is saying the same thing as when I say "the blood of Christ plus nothing" saves us. If it becomes the blood of Christ plus not having idols, or the blood of Christ plus not committing sexual sins, or the blood of Christ plus not having habitual sin, then the blood of Christ is nullified, and Christ died needlessly, because it wasn't enough to save us.

This isn't my idea, or some weird twisting of Paul's message, this is the general message of the entire book of Galatians. This is what they were violating, this is what he is addressing. What I am saying is truly the general point of the book as a whole. Skip this and you skip the real context of the 'problem' passage. Interpret the 'problem' verses in a way that puts people under law and you commit the exact error that Paul is so hopping mad about.

Does grace advocate sexual sins, and idolatry, and habitual gluttony and smoking and orgies? Of course not!!! Let's quote the entire passage here:

“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:13-23, NASB.

This, in context, paints an entirely different picture doesn't it? It's like a politician who gets quoted from an interview entirely out of context of what he was saying, making it look like he is saying something completely different.

When he says the deeds of the 'flesh', he means the deeds of the natural man, the natural mind, the non-supernatural person who is trying to do good by the law. He says, we are called to freedom! Use freedom to walk in the fruit of the spirit, not the flesh. If you try to live by the law like the Galatians, by the flesh, the flesh will win, and you become Jimmy Swaggart - you preach one thing and live something else. We do not live by NOT doing the deeds of the flesh, we live by being free, and walking in the fruit of a supernatural day-by-day experience with the Holy Spirit. This passage is all about fruit checking. Does this person seem to have any evidence that there is freedom, that there is supernatural fruit, is there an inner love and joy and peace, or is there anger and selfishness and strife and immorality? The solution to these evils is not to come under law, but to come under grace. So, if one is not under grace, and shows fruits of such, yes, they are headed straight to hell. It isn't a judgement on the behaviors, so much as it is their choice to live under the umbrella of obligation and law.

Some may say that this is too small and technical a point, who can understand it? I say, if you don't care about this, you miss the entire point of being a Christian. Christian virtue is about changing the source of the flow of motivation and thought to a free and desired and Holy-Spirit born joy. Any other source, whether it is obvious like a prostitute or concealed like a pharisee, is destined to failure. Notice that Paul looks at the deeds of the flesh that he lists as 'evidence' - they are ways to check fruit, but not the means by which one obtains the favor of God. We do not decide in the flesh, because our Sunday School teacher said so, that we are going to have peace and joy and love, and eschew orgies and selfishness. It simply doesn't work that way. One either comes under grace, and bears the fruit of that, or one comes under the flesh (law), and bears the fruit of that.

It is all about grace, and this passage, in its full context, proves that. I say, jump into the water of real scandalous full-blown grace, believe in the Father's love for you despite all that you have done or will do. The water is FINE!!!

The idolization of the 'changed life'

2010-08-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10, NASB.

Discipleship, sanctification, the "Lordship of Christ", the evidence of "changed lives" - these are all euphemisms for a graceless Christianity. Notice that when people speak of the "Lordship of Christ", what they mean is that through their own obedience they 'MAKE' Him Lord - not that He actually IS Lord. I guess that poor Jesus cannot make Himself Lord unless I perfectly repent. What power I have! I conjure and control God with my 'holiness' - until I fall off my little pony! If the main sign of true Christianity is a "changed life", then if those who otherwise consider themselves Christians still stumble, still struggle, still crawl off of the altar of being a "living and holy" sacrifice, then is that evidence circumspect? Of course it is, because human beings will always consider their last failure the truest evidence of what they really are, and this kind of thinking just reinforces the idea that perhaps they are not really a Christian. That just leads them into further failure, and closes the door to God, discouraging them from going to the throne of grace in their time of need. How do you think the Father feels about that whole dynamic? I don't speak for Him directly, but personally, it angers me to no end.

On the other hand, we have the actual teachings of Jesus, and Paul, and the apostle John, et all. We have numerous parables and stories depicting the tender Father-heart of God. We see Him doing miracles to prove He has the power to forgive. We see Jesus persevering with making Peter the cornerstone figure of His church, even in the face of heinous rejection and betrayal. In this case, it is JESUS who is Lord - even terrible rejection and betrayal and abandonment by all of His closest disciples could not stop Him. He raised Himself from the DEAD, and came back with mercy and grace in His heart for them. I think that for them, the first disciples, the 'Lordship of Christ' would mean something very different than the half-hearted dim-witted drivel that most people who throw this phrase around mean.

Many modern Christians thus make virtue and their own changed life an idol, a graven and false image of God. 'Holiness' seems to be the chief end of their beliefs, not grace and mercy, not worship, not a free relationship with the true living God to whose throne we can go boldly in time of need. Grace for them is only a springboard into gracelessness. It is just as ridiculous and hopeless and pointless as it sounds. You can tell by your prayerlessness that you are sitting in that place - you have the picture that 'God' always sort of hates you and you certainly don't REALLY like Him either, He just makes you feel really bad about yourself all the time. Why would you PRAY under that dynamic? No wonder that people fall away from such nonsense. It is such a bad and colorless idol! If you want to worship an idol, why not make it a fat smiling Buddha who will let you have some fun! Then you can at least enjoy yourself for a short time before you spend eternity in hell. Maybe this is a bad example, but you can bet that everyone who chooses to be outside of the church definitely believes it; and they are more right than they know!

The language of graceless Christianity enters subtly through the back door even for many who otherwise profess to believe in grace. "We must move on from the need for mercy to a 'deeper walk.'" "Yes, Christ loves us, but we must strive to become more and more holy and make Him Lord of our lives and [blah blah blah blah blah]." "I need to die to self because the mind set on the flesh is death." What they are really saying is this: "I need to take every scripture out of context and twist it to make me and everyone around me feel much much worse about our tepid relationship with Christ. Guilt-inducing conviction indicates that the Holy Spirit is really moving." I'm sure they mean well, but what they really mean is, if you don't show evidence of a truly changed life then you probably aren't a Christian. What starts with grace continues with law and obligation.

So, does this mean that we reject virtue altogether? Does sanctification, gradually increasing righteousness, discipline and holy living, have any place? Of course, don't be ridiculous. Here is a news flash: really giving over to Him in belief in His grace and His empowerment, IS DEATH TO SELF. It means I am no longer in charge of making God accept and love me. It means I give up responsibility for being good and significant. It means I give up the secret idea that I can manipulate the favor of God by a limited and flawed and short-lived repentance. Eventually you get worn down enough by the circumstances of life to realize that you can't repent very well, and that in fact you don't even WANT to keep going that way any more. It is at that point you are ready for the power and joy of knowing Him. It is a JOY to surrender everything, even our own responsibilities. However, the power to change, the power to grow in holiness, the power to sustain a true behavioral change, is not an obligation, and it is not the basis for the Lordship of Christ even for me personally. Such change and such behavioral shifts are a GIFT, a fruit, a wonderful consequence of a growing and ongoing relationship with a God who loves me like a very good father. When we shift from the universe of law and obligation over to the universe of grace, when we set our minds on the things of the Holy Spirit, love and joy and peace and kindness blossom. It is a GIFT!

Grace and mercy and the everlasting acceptance and love of God really are good news! It is so HAPPY to believe all of this, and doubly so because it is BIBLICAL and it is TRUE. It is solid and sustainable to think that we will fail, but God will forever accept us and lead us to greener pastures, and feed our hunger for righteousness. Changed living is not the foundation of Christianity, grace is. There are terrible consequences when we worship idols, even very virtuous and seemingly benign and safely harsh ones. Jesus, on the other hand, is full of grace and truth:

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” John 1:14, 17, NASB.

Boldly to the throne of grace!

2010-07-26T05:52:00.000-07:00

“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:15, 16, NKJV.

This is an awesome verse from the first section of the book of Hebrews, in which the author is going on and on and on about the excellence and superiority of Christ. He talks about His deity, His superiority over the angels, the power of His word, and His incarnation - that He became flesh. And so we come to this little gem.

He is a High priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses! He knows what it is like to be tempted, weak, and confused. He knows, He has been there. God has assumed flesh and understands!!! This was one of the points of the incarnation. He was in ALL POINTS tempted AS WE ARE. Temptation to greed, compromise, laziness, gluttony, sexual things, slander, covetousness, murderous anger, He understands it all. This is a tremendous comfort, He is never shocked by our weakness.

Now, here is another thing to notice: He was without sin. Him. HE was without sin. The obvious point of the verse is that it is clear that no one else is without sin. He experienced our weaknesses, but whereas we sin, He does not. The implication is that it is known that WE SIN. Whatever else the writer of Hebrews is talking about anywhere, being diligent to enter rest, getting discipline, being of faith, whatever, you can bet that he knew that he was talking to SINNERS. Ragamuffins, scoundrels, chest-beaters, beaten down bruised reed type of people. Weak, tempted, and NOT without sin.

If he meant that it was all in the past, but that now in Christ we are largely sinless, then why would he be going on talking about going boldly to the throne of grace? He is talking about NOW, real sin in our current experience. Otherwise we would have no further need of the throne of grace. Well, I don't know about you, but I find that comforting and a pretty helpful thing!

And here is the kicker, Jesus uses this experience, this knowledge of being weak, not to rub our noses in His success and our failure, but to foster sympathy. When we are weak and tempted and actually fail, He thinks, I know what it is like, I know the power of forces that led you to failure. Therefore I sympathize, therefore I have arranged for grace!

Now, if we are thus to come boldly to the throne of grace, does that mean we sin, and go through our obligatory guilty period, until we have enough repentance under our belt experientially under our belt that we can prove that it is OK to pray again and maybe expect favor, as long as we have excuses and promises of change ready? That isn't coming boldly!!! You think you can 'repent' better on your own without God's help? How is that working for you? When we sin, our place of healing and forgiveness and change IS the throne of grace. It is, after all, a throne of GRACE!! The only place you are going to get forgiveness and absolution and real repentance and true change is the throne of grace. You want to change, you want to repent, you want to stop certain behaviors? Where else do you think that is going to happen? It happens there, at the throne of grace. Go boldly confess freely, admit everything. It is, after all, a throne of grace!

Now here is a great thing. The seat of ultimate justice, the seat of ultimate power, the center of judgement, is also a throne of grace. If God ministers grace from His throne, you can bet that the justice that you fear in your conscience is dealt with completely. It is not a fake coping mechanism to make you feel good, a psychologist's pill to cover over your turmoil with a narcotic fog. It is truth. There may be consequences in this physical world, but the tables are turned. In all actual truth, in REAL LIFE, the ultimate seat of judgement has extended mercy and favor, and in the end that will stand forever.

The Prodigal Son 6. Unapplauded Love

2010-06-24T04:37:00.000-07:00

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

As usual, I was thinking the other day about the prodigal son story, and I remembered a particular insight that I really wanted to share. As Henri Nouwen observes, we may identify with the younger prodigal son, or we may identify with the disapproving elder son, but God is calling us to a place where we identify with the father; the further along we get living in the kingdom of God, the more we walk in the father's shoes.

The father in this story bears a particular burden, in that he loves his sons in a way that they do not comprehend nor do they respond in kind. He makes extreme sacrifices, even to giving away half of his life's wealth, only to see it thrown to the wind to the one he entrusted it to. Still he loves. No one applauds him for still loving, no one notices that he has the world's biggest heart. He has entered a phase in life where he loves his sons for different reasons than that.

Notice that it does not seem that this icon of a father, this father who so selflessly loves, the icon of fatherhood, is able to turn out perfect and moral and well-behaved children. This is actually profound; The father, who really represents God Himself, cannot and does not control his children, and as you would imagine, they tend to get into trouble.

This is not his greatest burden, however. Let's reread this portion of the story:

“So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.” Luke 15:20-24, NIV.

Notice this: no one else was watching to see if his son had returned that day. He was alone in his concern, in his hope. No one else ran to kiss him. No one else did anything except marvel that he still cared for him that much. We can imagine the servants looking on, puzzled, and thinking, "the fattened calf, NOW, for him?!"

Here is another great example of a man with this father's heart, who stood alone in loving his son, the story of David and his son Absalom. Here, after Absalom had betrayed him badly, and had almost stolen the kingdom right out from under him, and forced him into exile, was his response upon learning that in the ensuing melee, Absalom had been killed:

“And the king covered his face and cried out with a loud voice, “O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!” Then Joab came into the house to the king and said, “Today you have covered with shame the faces of all your servants, who today have saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters, the lives of your wives, and the lives of your concubines, by loving those who hate you, and by hating those who love you. For you have shown today that princes and servants are nothing to you; for I know this day that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased.” 2 Samuel 19:4-6, NASB.

Joab his advisor, and the whole nation, were irritated at David for so mourning the death of his enemy; but David did not view him so. David stood alone in loving his son, in mourning his passing.

So the heart of a father is helplessly compelled against all reason and against all counsel to always love. Others stand ready to condemn, to judge, to be done with the boy, but the father never thinks so. Even the father's child who is the very object of his love does not understand at all; the prodigal in the story imagines only judgement, and David's son actually tried to exile him and kill him! Indeed, David had a heart after God's own heart, which is not always easy or full of rainbows and cotton candy! The father always hopes, always forgives, and is always moved by a powerful longing and hope and will to bless. It is a lonely and often sad position, but a powerful one. So is God always towards us, towards you, towards me, and so do we become more and more as we mature in Him. Condemning voices may arise against us, true voices, persuading counsel that is compelling and right, but God is more powerfully compelled by His compassion and concern. As we learn His heart toward us we begin to have this same heart towards others. This is the true heart of the pastor, the true heart of the husband and father, this powerful and sometimes irrational love that never never grows cold or runs dry. We cannot expect others to understand, it doesn't work that way, the heart of the parent towards a child is different than every other relationship.

The Prodigal Son 5. The Responsible Son

2010-06-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

Sometimes, did you know, other people get blessed instead of you? Sometimes other people much less deserving than you prosper and are honored. Sometimes, God likes to forgive and bless other people to whom you would rather see "justice" meted out. Sometimes God just will not do the right things on the right schedule!

Let's take a look at another parable:

““For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. “And when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. “And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; and to those he said, ‘You too go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. “Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. “And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ “They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You too go into the vineyard.’ “And when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ “And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. “And when those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; and they also received each one a denarius. “And when they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ “But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? ‘Take what is yours and go your way, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. ‘Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ “Thus the last shall be first, and the first last.”” Matthew 20:1-16, NASB.

The guys hired early in the day are upset because somebody else got blessed, someone less deserving than them. We all have such a sense of exacting justice about what authorities should do for us! Jesus is teaching here, the kingdom of God is about blessing people who don't deserve it; if you don't like that kind of thing, heaven is going to be a very uncomfortable place for you!

The elder brother in the prodigal son story has the same syndrome. He has an exact sense of justice concerning who should be accepted, who should be blessed, and who shouldn't. Doesn't he have a point? If you think about it, the dynamics of this scene are absurd! No one could be more irresponsible than his brother; he took his entire inheritance, and burned through it in perhaps a few months. Then he returns in shame and rags, and his father doesn't even scold him at all! In fact, he celebrates his return! The elder son, solid and faithful, was never celebrated, but here is this fool who is dressed up, and there is the tent full of music and dancing!! They're DANCING!!! Yet here he is, he never left, he never did anything wrong, and yet he was never celebrated, never the center of attention. No one danced, no music was played in celebration for him, for consistently doing the right thing.

Should he sin all the more that grace might increase? Shouldn't he do some dramatic wrong so he can also get a party? What good is the father's answer here - "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours." That's it? It doesn't even feel like anything is different for him after that speech; nothing feels like it is really his, and he is still stuck here with nothing except the responsibility, and no stinking party, not even a goat. He is angry, he gets no reward for his hard-earned responsibility and his brother gets fattened calves and music and dancing for his foolishness. The world is turned around, his father is a fool!

In Numbers, we have the strange story of Balak, who tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel:

“Now God met Balaam, and he said to Him, “I have set up the seven altars, and I have offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.” Then the LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth and said, “Return to Balak, and you shall speak thus.” So he returned to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, he and all the leaders of Moab. And he took up his discourse and said, “From Aram Balak has brought me, Moab’s king from the mountains of the East, ‘Come curse Jacob for me, And come, denounce Israel!’ “How shall I curse, whom God has not cursed? And how can I denounce, whom the LORD has not denounced? “As I see him from the top of the rocks, And I look at him from the hills; Behold, a people who dwells apart, And shall not be reckoned among the nations. “Who can count the dust of Jacob, Or number the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the upright, And let my end be like his!” Then Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have actually blessed them!” And he answered and said, “Must I not be careful to speak what the LORD puts in my mouth?”” Numbers 23:4-12, NASB.

If you read the context, here is a group of people who have been forced to wander in the wilderness for many years, whom the ground swallows up, who have been disciplined and punished and who complain bitterly about all of it. Yet, even unknown to them, God defends them against enemies, and calls them blessed! I wonder if the Israelites would agree?! This is the same spirit as the elder brother; they and he do not see that they are blessed, and the blessing they have and will have are not recognized by them, they do not perceive their position and give thanks. Thus, when someone else is blessed, the brother becomes angry, because what he sees is that this person IS blessed while he IS NOT.

What we really see between these two brothers is this: they both resent their father. They deal with that resentment differently - the younger acts out and parties and squanders, and actually leaves. He is brash and foolish. The other, in his resentment and quiet angry responsibility, stays and smolders. Neither likes the way the father handles things, it is just that the older brother is able to maintain a veneer of respectability while the other wears his discontent on his sleeve. The only difference is how they act out or handle their discontent and ingratitude.

Here is the thing to learn from this: can we look on God, our Father's blessing and mercy and grace given to someone else, when we ourselves do not feel celebrated or recognized for the moment, and rejoice? Do we like to see others celebrated? Are we envious when others are noticed, received, forgiven, paraded, honored? Can we walk in the quiet knowledge that we are loved and cherished by our father when that is manifested in a common and undramatic, daily sort of way? We will be very uncomfortable in heaven if we can't dance and enter the celebration with all the angels when the Father bestows blessing and honor and grace on another sinner. Heaven is all about grace, and that means there is going to continue to be a lot of blessing flowing to people who do not appear to deserve it. We can choose either to rejoice and celebrate, or to resent and sulk. The father's will is for all of us to rejoice and dance. Isn't He wonderful?!

The Prodigal Son 4. The Son's Return

2010-06-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

Henri Nouwen, in his marvelous little book "The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons", makes the observation that if you look very closely at Rembrandt's painting of the return of the prodigal son, there is something funny about the appearance of the son. Given his circumstances, one would think that his hair would be long and matted, his beard grown out, his shoeless foot blistered and calloused. However, if you look carefully at his face in the picture (larger version here) you notice that his face is more like that of a baby, an infant.

Having gone out from the father, having done everything he thought he wanted to do, having been pressed down with shame and failure, having come to the very end of his options, and even having overcome his fear of condemnation and shame, the son returns to find this beautiful acceptance, this belonging, this welcome from his strong and stable father. There is a rest, a new and quiet contentment, there is finally safety, back in the embrace of his father.

I am reminded of Psalm 131:

“(A Song of Ascents, of David.) O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; Nor do I involve myself in great matters, Or in things too difficult for me. Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me. O Israel, hope in the LORD From this time forth and forever.” Psalms 131:1-3, NASB.

Despite the critical gaze of his brother and others around, the son's eyes are closed and his thoughts are quieted in the final authority and safety of the father's love. In the picture, the older son stands apart, and above, the father and his brother, looking down with an air of scorn. When we have erred, when we have sinned, many voices real and imaginary would dissuade us of the rightness of the father's embrace. Many voices and critical looks would tell us that we have crossed the line, that we ought not now receive the Father's mercy and love. It is not enough that we tell ourselves this, others remember our mistakes, our shame, others look with disapproval on our return, of our Father's acceptance of us and mercy and tenderness towards us.

Yes, it not just our own conscience which weighs us down - it is the imagined or real disapproval of others that can prevent us from entering into the lavish love and embrace of the Father who loves us and forgives us. We hide and do not return, as much from fear of the elder brother as from fear of the father's condemnation. This fear is justified, as the father does not condemn, but others really do condemn!

Notice however, that in the story, the prodigal son does not need to defend his return to the elder brother - the Father defends him. All he needs is the safety of the father's acceptance and love, and the father's authority over his forgiveness. The other brother can and did challenge the father about whether it was right that the younger son should be so easily and lavishly received back, but it was the father's heart toward the prodigal that was the final word about the situation. We do not need to and cannot defend ourselves against the voices of condemnation; His word is final and His word is gracious and forgiving.

So the fateful and feared moment comes, and the errant son returns with trepidation, and enters the the father's embrace like a babe newly born. Now how quickly the father restores his dignity! Bring the best robe, put it on my son! Put a ring on his finger! Sandals for his feet! Set the feast! How extravagantly and publicly the father establishes his place as his esteemed son, how extravagantly he celebrates his return! How overwhelmed the son must have been! The robe and especially the ring are symbols of stately rank, eminence, and social distinction. The son expects to slink back in shame and be put up as a servant, but beyond merely accepting him back and hiding him away, the father dresses him up in a way that publicly establishes his eminence and importance. The father wants to make sure that everyone knows that his son is back, and that his son has been received with honor and joy!

Behind the prodigal son's back, notice that even there he speaks to defend, to edify, to build up a network of acceptance. The elder son comes to question the honor the returned scoundrel receives, but the father reasons with him. Can we not expect that our Father similarly defends us in secret conversations and against unheard condemnations against us?

And so, we come expecting that our own mistakes will prevent us from receiving the father's provision, and yet Jesus teaches us that beyond our wildest expectations God seeks to quickly and publicly restore our dignity and our eminence, speaks with authority to the voices of condemnation, and is genuinely overjoyed with us! He really does love us, it is in His heart to embrace us, clothe us, establish us as His children, and to defend us. This, according to Jesus, is the Father heart of God towards us!

So, if you have read this, and someone asks you what it was about, I want you to go away with this - remember the image of the prodigal safe and at peace in the father's embrace. Through the stress and turmoil of his own mistakes, his own condemnation, his fears of his father, his fears about his brother and others, his father's acceptance and love are his safe place in the middle of it all. While he was wrong, clothed wrong, in the very midst and bottom of his sins and consequences, while he still smelled of the road and pigs, his father embraced him, and he was safe at rest. Remember this beautiful image.

The Prodigal Son 3. The Prodigal FATHER

2010-06-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

The free dictionary defines prodigal this way:

1. recklessly wasteful or extravagant, as in disposing of goods or money
2. lavish in giving or yielding prodigal of compliments

I think we get words like prodigious, product, productive, from the same root. We've heard the term 'prodigal son' so many times associated with sin, with squandering wealth and opportunity, that we equate it more with evil than with extravagance. The real root of the word tends toward the idea of extravagance.

So, let's take a different look at the father in the story. When the son asks for his inheritance, does the father say, "well, I'll give you a week's worth of money to go out and try living on your own." He gives him everything. When the son returns, he doesn't say, "get him inside and give him some of that soup." No, he runs out, he falls on his neck, he calls for rings and robes and sandals and fattened calves and feasts. When the older son complains, he says, "everything I have is yours." This is a man of extravagance; the prodigal son is much like his father. He has added wisdom to his extravagance, but he is not a cheap, stingy, withholding man. This is a man who is generous, who throws parties, who is passionate and unafraid to show it.

More than that, this is a man who loves deeply. He obviously mourns the absence of his son, and is overwhelmed with relief at his return. He is not even trying to be reserved about celebrating his son's return. He spots him coming while he is still a long way off, which means he must have been in the habit of going out and looking. He is therefore obsessive about him, and while for all practical purposes it might seem his son was dead, he did not give up hope.

Shall we expect less extravagance from our Father in heaven? Jesus is teaching us, this is what He is like! It was not enough that He made the whole earth, He made an entire universe which is so vast that the earth is not even a speck of dust in comparison. He made the earth itself drip with opulent life and provision, and made us to be vastly intelligent and mysterious creatures. In fact, Solomon says in Ecclesiastes that He has set eternity our hearts. This is not a stingy God. We can expect extravagance and blessing and quick passionate forgiveness and abundant provision when dealing with Him. We have a rich father who loves to give and who loves to throw big parties and who loves us very very deeply and isn't afraid to show it. What could be better than that?!

The Prodigal Son: 2. The Mindset of the Prodigal

2010-06-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

The son who wished the father would die, who only wanted his money, who left and squandered his whole inheritance, at last came to himself. That's what it says, "he came to himself." We tend to think that he squandered everything and then immediately came home, but notice that once he was broke he still did not come home. He still stayed away, he sought employment, any employment, demeaning employment. His estrangement was not merely hedonistic - this is a very important observation! It took more to bring him to himself. It was not until there was famine, and he was starving, that he turned and faced the truth about himself. We cling tenaciously to our mistaken ideas about our lives, our autonomy, our freedom, and it takes a great deal to bring us to a change.

However, there is another factor. We see this in his schemes to return - he fears his father's attitude towards him. He thinks, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ This was not a sudden or one-time statement; he had on ongoing deep-seated assumption that he could not return to his father because he was no longer worthy to be called his son; we see this in the tenacity of his isolation.This fear was a more powerful motivator than his bankruptcy. Even though the father freely gave him his inheritance, and obviously had a kind and uncontrolling heart, still he feared his condemnation. More than anything, we fear condemnation, we fear the voice of our conscience, and we project this fear onto God. Though He has gone to great lengths to show mercy and grace, though the scriptures are full of it, we imagine Him to be a smiter of the evil, a celestial hater of people such as us. We imagine that He looks down waiting for us to do something wrong so He can judge us. This is perhaps the most tempting and the most harmful and evil graven image we can produce - the harsh and hating God. Just like the son, we imagine many many things about God which prevent us from seeking intimacy with Him until our situation becomes truly unlivable.

So, where his sojourn away from home started out as a hopeful assertion of his freedom and manhood, it sustained itself because of shame and fear. So many times we stay in the place of bad habits, of terrible circumstances, of what amounts to slavery, not just because we are strong-willed, but because we fear to step out of them since we are ashamed of what we have become. And we write that shame onto God's script, we imagine that He is the source of that shame. We imagine that our own self-judgement is our Father's judgement. It is actually the shocking nature of this story that it is NOT the father's judgement.

So our sojourn into self-assertion, our foray into freedom, our squander and failure, becomes not so much a stubborn thing of the will, but a fear of change because of shame. Like Adam and Eve, we hide from God shivering naked under a bush sewing our fig leaves of excuses to cover our guilt and embarrassment. Like them, like the son, we imagine only God's disappointment, His judgment, His anger, His rejection. We become isolated and shut up to pointless and joyless tasks and work to cover our emptiness, our loneliness, our shame. We sieze on every form of law, the more stringent and hopeless and demeaning the better. We think to cover our shame with pointless fig-leaf promises of repentance and humility, when in reality nothing we do can cover us. Fig leaves do not sew well and do not cover well, and neither do the promises and excuses of the prodigal.

The prodigal thinks it will please his father, it will smooth things a bit, if he says that he is no longer worthy to be his son. How enormously he misunderstands his father's heart towards him! This is almost the most insulting thing he could throw at the father, to denigrate and belittle the father's powerful feelings towards him. When we think in a way that projects harsh loveless judgment onto God, we miss the mark so badly. The things we think will please God are often nothing more than fig leaves which cannot be sewn and will quickly rot away. It is not that he hates fig leaves or despises our efforts, it is that He loves us in a direct and powerful way that does not need such excuses or efforts.

In closing, I want to observe that the prodigal son's motivations were atrocious and infantile. He left with selfish and rotten motives, he came to himself with the same selfish and rotten motives, and he stepped over his shame and returned home because of desperate and selfish motives. He still did not want to be his father's son, even when he returned! His heart was wrong wrong wrong from beginning to end. In returning the way he did, it was a terrible misunderstanding of his father's feelings towards him to think that the same father who would not withhold his inheritance would so easily disown him. When we come into bad circumstances and make resolutions and promises to God, it is not from right motives! We do so because we project lovelessness and harshness onto God, as if that is the only way He will take us back, as if He has no actual love for us! But, the father said nothing of this, cared nothing for this, didn't even listen to the promises and excuses. He doesn't care that our motives are wrong! He will take us back, with joy, without a single thought of our selfish excuses and motivations and ridiculous wrong conceptions about the way He sees us. Of course our motives are wrong, they will only get set right by being with Him; how else could this work? He loves us. That is the point of all this! He pines for us, He longs for us, He constantly thinks of us, He wants us back in His arms so bad! WHATEVER brings us back to Him, He accepts us! Stop thinking that the prodigal had to go through all of this to come to the end of himself so he could get right motives and then return. He never had right motives. It is too great a burden to tell people that God will take them back once they have suffered enough and have learned right motives. No one has right motives. The right motive is that He loves us, and we never return to Him truly believing this. His love for us does not reside in our motives or our faith. HE loves us. Despite our pointless efforts, despite our stubborn and powerful shame, despite our promises that we can't fulfill and our false and ridiculous humility, He takes us back, He will in time straighten us out, He loves us greatly. The prodigal returns knowing none of this, and as we each stand now, we are yet in the prodigal's shoes. We do not know how much He pines for us, how much He loves us, we come making ridiculous excuses and with pointless puerile plans that will be swept away by a great and grand love.

If this all doesn't get us weeping and crying then what does it take? What a beautiful faith we have as Christians, what an exquisite thing all of this is to believe!

The Prodigal Son: 1. The Father who Doesn't Control

2010-06-03T05:13:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting eagerly to get to the parable of the prodigal son, as it is the richest and most profound teaching about the father heart of God in all of scripture. Everything up to this point has been leading to this teaching. Let's start by reading it:

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Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. “And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. “And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. “But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. “Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. “And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, “and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’ “And he arose and came to his father.

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. ‘And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; ‘for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.

“Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. “So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. “And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ “But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. “So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. ‘But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. ‘It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’” Luke 15:11-32, NKJV.
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First let's set the stage. We have a man who is a father, with two sons. He seems to be fairly well off, a landowner with enough inheritance in the balance to make at least one of the sons obsess over it. When a father has some wealth, the children inherit that wealth when he dies. What this son is saying, is that he is tired of waiting around for the father to die, give me my portion now! It could not be a more stark example of raw greed and selfishness. What he is really saying is, I don't care one whit about YOU, I want your MONEY!

Now, here is the amazing thing - the father actually gives it to him! He doesn't take offense, he actually complies! What you would expect him to say is something like this: "You rude and impudent little rodent, do you realize how hard I've worked to get to this point? How dare you ask this!" Instead, he gives him his portion. What could have been going through his head? He could see that his son was eaten up by a lust to get out of there, to see the world, to make his way. He could see that he could not be content staying where he was. This father was not going to try to exercise a level of control that would make his son a slave, like a man in prison. He would let him go, and because he had a very great love for the son, he did not take offense.

God does not withdraw His giftings from us even though He knows we will misuse them! Talent, provision, etc. The richest and possibly most exciting time of this son's life was when he was walking off away from his father, loaded with his inheritance, full of confidence in his own abilities, ready to take on the world. It is a very important component in the way God works - he is not controlling, not manipulative, He does not withdraw blessing. This is a very peculiar and strange aspect of the story.

Now, the son was gone a long time. He did not leave for a minute or two, he left for a long enough time that he burned through his entire inheritance with loose living. Given provision with no wisdom, he squandered it all. He was gone long enough, and the father knew him well enough, that he figured he was all but dead; he had given up hope. We see this in his statement, "for this my son was dead and is alive again." He had truly, genuinely, definitively left the fold. I think this is a point we all know in our conscience - we have been blessed, and are gifted, and have been given much, and we have squandered it away on pleasures and comforts and our lives and times are empty and fruitless. We take what our Father in heaven has given us and use it for our pleasures and comforts and idleness, and eventually we regret the shape our life takes. He does not withdraw His blessing and we think this is the stamp of His approval, and even though we misinterpret it still He remains firm in not attempting to control us.

Here is a key to the father heart of God: He is determined to let us freely choose Him. He does not manipulate, he does not trick us into righteousness. He does not withhold blessings or close and open doors to force us down the right path. He is very determined to allow us our freedom. He lets us make our own mistakes, even profound mistakes, he does not hold us back against our own hot desires. Just as Satan tempts us, and is more interested in our inward desire, so also God, in a benevolent way, is interested in our desire. If we come to Him, if we remain with Him, if we return to Him, He wants it only to be with our true heart. He is determined that we come to Him such that all other options have been found wanting - we only want to be in His house. If we are not truly thus, He does not want to prevent us from making our own way. To Him, the crying prodigal returning broke and starved and naked is far more preferable to a rich son held hostage and shut up to an unwanted blessing. We are never held hostage, never tricked into the kingdom. He is the Father who doesn't control.

The God who Loses Things

2010-06-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

Reading Jesus' parables, it seems God is always losing things!

“Now all the tax-gatherers and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” And He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ “I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? “And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”” Luke 15:1-10, NASB.

I am fond of saying that God is not co-dependent, nor is He some kind of control freak. He certainly has the power to control, but it seems to be quite important to Him that He play hands-off. He lets us choose our own way, even if it means making terrible mistakes, big mistakes. However, Jesus seemed to like these makers of mistakes, these sinners, and they seemed to like Him. There was some fondness going on here which offended the established religious legalists. They grumbled! For God's sake, He is EATING with them!

If your message, your hope, your belief, your soapbox, doesn't belie a fondness for real people despite their apparent lack of religious reputation, and if people of a non-religious or not so obviously moral persuasion don't seem to want to hang around with you, you might actually be on the wrong side of Jesus' persuasions on this. He likes people. Notice that it was not Jesus who called anyone a 'sinner' here; he saw lost coins and lost sheep. These are things of value which have been misplaced. It is the religious establishment which brands them 'sinners'. Where the religious people see scandal and seek separation, He sees value and seeks restoration.

I am glad, because I count myself a sinner. I am the lost sheep who wanders. I am hoping He is the kind of God who persists in seeing my value, who rejoices to find me, who goes to battle for my worth against the religious who seek my condemnation. If I am anything beyond that, I seek to be His physician's assistant, to be part of the rabble hanging around Him that they grumble about.

His liberality with giving us freedom and autonomy may lead to a lot of us getting lost, but His desire and longing is to find us, to celebrate us, to restore our place and establish our worth. Contrary to the fears of our conscience, He does not focus on the errors we make, the trouble we are, the shame we bear. He focuses on our intrinsic worth, on our restoration. He truly and always loves us.

I am the one who is forever and always loved by God. The creator and king of the universe likes me. It is all going to be OK; I may be a bit lost in the woods from time to time but He knows how to restore me, He wants to restore me, He sees that I am missing and by His initiative and power He seeks me. I am resting in His love and power, and in His knowledge that despite my anonymity and poverty He sees my worth. I am real because I am loved by the only One who matters.

The Father Heart of God

2010-05-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on this started to come to me after watching "Everything's Fine" with Robert De Niro.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780511/

In it a widowed father tries to set up a reunion with his grown children, who all cancel. He longs for his children to come and eat together at his table, but it turns out one by one that none of them can make it. Each of them are in the midst of problems that they would rather hide from him, fearing his reaction, his disappointment, or that he is emotionally fragile and would be too hurt to know these difficult things. Then he travels across the country to go see them. We see that it is the natural and powerful bent of a father to long for his children, to worry over their happiness, to accept them as they are with all of their problems and mistakes and to simply want to be with them.

Even terrible fathers know the weight of this love in the power of their regret. It is the greatest weight of the conscience, this beautiful burden of love. The father in this movie does not care so much that the disappointments and problems his children face are disappointing to him, but that the fear they produce in his children removes the intimacy of their relationship. As a younger father he did not understand this, but as an older father he sees it all much more clearly.

We can believe that these aspects of the heart of an earthly father are only faint shadows of the way our Father God in heaven feels towards us. Oh, He longs for us! He does greatly love us! This is the thing that rules-based religion misses. He worries over our relationship with each other, He longs to accept us, He longs to help us. He worries that He is too controlling, not controlling enough, and it is all based in an incredibly strong and pure love for us, for our ultimate welfare. He forgives so quickly, so easily, He so quickly accepts and restores dignity and provision. He so selflessly accepts His own indignities for the the sake of His children. He greatly longs for us, greatly loves.

More about moral and aesthetic good

2010-05-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

I want to start by recapping the last post's argument about this. I have to say that this is an important and seminal thought for me. In human experience we have a problem in that the idea of moral and desirable good are split - we are often wanting what we know is wrong, and rather despise what is right. It is almost laughable to say that you love the moral way of living. In fact, a lot of movies show a kind of 'coming out' moment when the protagonist casts off the fear of traditional ideas of the good and embraces their true desire. This is not a recent thing, not a political thing, not an American problem. It is universal and true for all of humanity, from Eve and the serpent on. God is working to bring us back to a place where what we honestly want coincides with what is right.

I want to expand on something I only hinted at last time. If this is so, this is the work of God, then why am I still struggling. Surely I'm missing something, I've gone too far with this idea. It can't be right! What about these kinds of verses, you can't just throw them out:

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24, NASB.

“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” Galatians 5:17, NASB.

This fairly well disproves my last post doesn't it? Righteousness, holiness, godliness, is not about getting what you want, it is about DENYING yourself what you want! Perhaps, but perhaps we should look at these passages a little closer.

Jesus says, "if anyone WISHES to come after me." We have a wish, a desire, to come after Jesus. In context, there has just been another debacle with the pharisees, but Jesus has taken the disciples off by themselves, and has asked them, "who do people say that I am?" Then He says, who do YOU say that I am, and Peter says, the Christ. It is at this time, this first time, that He begins to explain that He will die and be resurrected. Peter is alarmed, and takes Jesus aside to rebuke Him. This is the context - Peter, the one who first proclaimed Him to be the Christ, the Son of God, rebukes Jesus about all of this talk about suffering many things and dying. Jesus is replying to this.

What does He say? He says, you want me to stop talking about suffering and dying? Actually, not only will I suffer, but all who wish to follow me will suffer. You have found this great treasure - the Messiah, the son of God, has come! You wish to follow. You must go and sell all you have to get this treasure - but you don't know how much you must sell, just as you do not know the extent of the incredible value of the treasure you have stumbled upon. You must sell your very self, deny your very self, if you wish to obtain this great thing. I am going to suffer, and if you follow Me, you will have to learn this. The writer of Hebrews put this all in perspective:

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Hebrews 12:2, 3, NIV.

He did it for the joy set before Him, a joy which was not taken away. The point of all of this isn't suffering, it isn't the cross itself, it is the difficult passage to joy. Have you ever thought, if the Father so loved Jesus, why did He make His son suffer so? Why the cross? Even Jesus says,

“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” --which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” Matthew 27:46, NIV.

Perhaps it is the exact same formula as the garden. In the garden, there is one thing which is forbidden; every tree is OK, except the one, and yet Adam chose the one. Here is Jesus, and God is basically saying, we are going to up the ante so your success is all the more dramatic. Everything, all human experience, has now become the forbidden; that is the ultimate end of the law. I am narrowing what I require, the law, to even being alive. For Adam, the whole world was OK except for the one tree, and yet he chose poorly. For Jesus, the tables turned, and the whole world was off limits except for death, and still He chose correctly. Jesus fulfilled the law in the most ultimate sense, in that He obeyed an edict which was absolutely against any normal human desire, and still obeyed that imposition upon His desire.

Moral good and desirable good

2010-05-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

I want to delve into something today that may at first seem like nit-picky hair-splitting semantics. I think that if you will persevere and read to the end you will find that it is most profound and is deeply foundational to our idea of grace and the real motivation for living the Christian life.

In Genesis 2 and 3, we find these verses:

“And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”” Genesis 2:16, 17, NIV.

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Genesis 3:6, NIV.

We have here the first time the idea of 'good' was divided. What do I mean by this? If someone says, "I'm being a good girl," they mean they are not cheating on their diet or overspending or smoking or such. It is a moral good - they are denying themselves something they like in order to do the right thing, and thus they are 'good'. On the other hand, if they go ahead and have that hot fudge sundae, they aren't being a 'good girl', but they might say, "MMMMM, this sundae sure is GOOD!" That is what I mean by the two meanings of the word 'good' - there is a moral idea of the good, and an aesthetic idea of the good.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve were free to eat any from tree. All that was pleasurable was also all that was good. The one forbidden fruit was also the one undesirable fruit. It wasn't until the serpent started speaking to Eve about it that she first realized that the forbidden could be desirable; before that point all that was permitted was also all that was desirable, and all that was forbidden was undesirable. This is the state God intended us to live in.

Now we live in a world where it is alien to even the most holy person that the moral good could actually be the clearly desirable thing; even in the mind of the righteous person, the moral good is set against the aesthetic good. Pleasure is universally wrapped up and intertwined with the forbidden. From food and eating to addictive behaviors to sexuality, our desires are constantly drawn to the forbidden. I believe that for many, the steam goes out of the marriage relationship because their sexuality was based on the fiery desire of the soul for the forbidden, and once in marriage sex was acceptable or even mandated, it became more of a duty. This is pure speculation and certainly the reality is always more complex, but this identification of the desire with the forbidden is a real factor.

And so we live in a world where we are constantly and always confronted with the call of the forbidden to our desire - it is the voice of the serpent everywhere, calling to our fallen nature, reasoning with us about the desirability of sin. Temptation has its power because it draws on this very truth; Satan is interested much more in our desire, than in our health or our finances.

In the original intent of God, there did not need to be a division between the 'will' and the 'desire'; the will sees what is right and gathers strength to do the right thing even though the desire is set against it. In the garden, prior to the fall, this was not necessary.

Imagine that God intends to restore us, to heal this terrible wound, this gaping division in our inner souls. Imagine that God wants to remove this need for something called the 'will', this necessity to constantly go against what we want, to constantly do what we do not want, because it is moral. Imagine that God wants to refashion us somehow so that our real desire does not run against what is right. What, eventually, would this healing look like? What kind of world would that be? What would the kingdom of God look like if it really did come to earth? It would look like GRACE! That's right, unbelievably, the impossible dream of living an idyllic existence in which the desire and the will are in perfect peace and harmony within us, where the moral good and the aesthetic good are one and same, is the world He wants us to enter RIGHT NOW. The main characteristic of the new person we become in Christ is this, that this rift between moral good and desirable good, is removed. Our true self, the newly born person we are, does not have this division.

It bears saying that this really is what the law is - it presses notions of right and wrong on the unwilling person, set against their desire. It insists on the moral good, even though the inner desire is for the forbidden. This is the exact beating heart of what is variously called 'legalism', 'pharasaism', etc. Of course no one would ever come right out and say, "Oh, yes, I'm very legalistic, I'm a total pharisee!" I've talked to people who are as legalistic as you can get and they don't think they are legalistic. However, in that they insist on imposing moral codes that are inconsistent with the inward desire, and set the inner man into this division of moral vs. aesthetic good, and think that this division is what true faith really is, they are legalists. This division of moral good from desirable good and the emphasis on morals over desire is what makes religion seem so colorless and lifeless. The aim of Christ is not to emphasize an even more stringent or better moral code, it is to bring the good of morals and the good of desire into a unity within us. He preaches a stringent moral code to fish out that division, to diagnose us as sick, to bring us to a place of healing and transformation.

Someone whose mind is still set in the divided universe, the universe where the good is divided, where moral good is set against desirable good, looks at the offer of grace, and says, "You mean now I can just do ANYTHING? I can just sin and sin and sin that grace might increase?" It must look like this, because what God is really offering is not merely release from guilt, but a healing of this division. This is His ultimate goal, to take us back to the garden, where what is desirable coincides with what is right. The healing He seeks for us, is not just to have the freedom to sin without consequence, but to have the freedom from our true inner desire to actually want what is right. He wants what is morally good to become what is aesthetically good, in our true inner selves.

If you are thinking clearly about this, your mind is fairly screaming an objection. "Hey - are you saying we become sinless? We're not sinless now! We don't just become Christians and then lose all desire for sin! What the heck?!" In fact, when you think about things clearly in your normal right mind, and ask these kinds of questions, you end up going through Paul's reasoning in Romans almost point for point. Romans 7 only makes sense really when you can say, "Hey! I thought i was this new creature, dead to sin! Why do I still sin? What is GOING ON around here?" This is the context of Romans 8, there is therefore now NO CONDEMNATION for those who are IN CHRIST JESUS. Our true self is born of the spirit, but our MIND does not always go along! So, the mind set on the flesh, the mind which reverts back to imposing law on the unwilling human desire, must fail. The mind set on the spirit, the new man, does the things of the law instinctively. This is the short answer.

The parables Jesus taught us about the kindgom of God are all about desire and passion. The man finds the treasure, and FROM JOY over it, sells and makes his sacrifices. Moral good without desire is still desire for evil that is thwarted. In a way sinners who do what they want are much happier than religious moral people who do what is right but never do what they want. Real healing, real grace, real power for living, comes when we change over to the universe of grace. To those on the outside, it looks like the freedom to sin, because their desire is still wrapped up in the forbidden. But to those who enter grace, the hope is that the power of the desirability of the forbidden begins to die off, and we begin to learn to live with a true passion, a true desire, for the living God. Thus the division in us, the two goods, begins to unite, and we start to learn what it is to live with a single mind and a whole heart without shame or remorse.

A modern person reads the sermon on the mount

2010-05-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

We're still looking at the sermon on the mount. Read it here:

www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%205-7&version=NIV

Let's think about this from the perspective of a modern reader. Here is what might really go through someone's head when they read this. "Poor in spirit ... not sure what he means. Mourn ... hope that never happens! Meek ... I hate those meek Jesus songs. Skipping ... skipping ... some day I might try to figure this stuff out. Ewwww, here's the good part! Salt and light ... yes! I'm a lamp on a hill, yes! Fulfilling the law, ta da ta da ta da ... OK, here we go. Angry = murder. That's right, except when I got angry at Jane it was justified, she was so wrong. Jesus got angry sometimes, right? Looking = adultery; come on Jesus! As if! Divorce - I'm in, but this is pretty stringent. Oaths - what....? Love your enemies - enemies? I don't have any enemies, this is probably no big deal though. skipping, skipping, skipping, to the guy who builds on the rock vs the sand. WOW, I should go back and read this better some day!"

The point is, we internally explain all of this away, skip the parts we don't understand, escape all possible conviction, and then the first part about the poor in spirit makes no sense whatsoever. So we think our fuzzy and anemic understanding of the law is what grace is. We imagine that God just sort of glosses over our sins and shallow minds the same way that we operate. On the contrary, grace presses the law home in a big way, and shows our poverty of spirit, our lack of righteousness, and produces a true hunger for holiness and transformation.

Does this mean I am coming in the back door with condemnation and law? Am I saying, 'you have to get really good and convicted and feel really awful about yourself before you can enter God's good graces? In a way, I suppose I am kind of saying that, but what I'm really saying is, what use are mercy and grace if you think you don't need them? What good is the law at pointing you to grace if you end up explaining it all away and you have no need of supernatural virtue, of the leading of the Spirit? Can you really get the awesome benefit from Jesus' teaching if you don't really bother at all with His actual meaning? We reduce grace from real glorious release and freedom to the milk-toast idea that He just glosses over our minor problems and doesn't care, leaving us essentially untransformed and stuck in our ways. This isn't actually grace at all, it is a very sad watered down and weak-kneed pharisaism which says, "I'm basically OK, so why would God be unhappy with me?" On the contrary, He cares, little things matter a lot, the state of the heart is the true issue, and in looking at things this way we have release into a tremendous level of grace. This opens the door to a world of moral virtue that goes extremely deep, and gives us a chance to try and fail in order that we might try and succeed.

Put another way, our relationship with Jesus is likened to a romance, He is like the bride and the church is like the groom. It is about passion, about desire, about longing. Fuzzy barely alive passionless numb readings of this text don't really fit with that idea do they? The bride always seeks in every way to beautify herself as her wedding approaches, because of her passion for her husband, her lover. A woman is always at her most radiant on her wedding day. We read this passage, and we see what He who loves us really likes in a bride. And from love, from passion, from desire, we see how far we are from this high mark, and we seek grace freely to make ourselves like this:

“And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” 1 John 3:3, NASB.

Grace doesn't say, all is forgiven, so now I can sin! Grace says, all is forgiven, I want to be better! I WANT it!

sermon on the mount

2010-05-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

I want to turn aside and take a look at Jesus' famous teaching known to us as the sermon on the mount. It is one of the most penetrating explanations of God's laws and ways ever given. I want to examine exactly what it says, and see how it fits with Paul's teachings about the law and justification by faith and grace. We'll start by refreshing ourselves about what the general message of the sermon on the mount is.

This teaching occurs in Matthew 5 through 7, which you might want to pause and go read real quick. Here's a link:

www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%205-7&version=NIV

You gotta love the internet!

For our sake, here is the basic outline of Jesus' teaching:

Blessed are the poor
Salt and Light
Jesus came to fulfill all of the law
Law explained to deep inner motivations on various points

You've heard it said, but...
1. murder
2. adultery
3. divorce
4. oaths
5. eye for and eye
6. love your enemy
practicing righteousness to be noticed
1. giving to the needy
2. prayer
3. fasting
4. treasure
worry
1. worry about self (food and clothing)
2. worry about others (do not judge)
3. worry about God (seek, and find; not withheld or given strange things)

Do it or die
1. narrow path
2. tree and its fruit
3. wise and foolish builder

Not only is that a nice outline, but a test of my HTML ordered list skills! Notice that at the end of the "you've heard it said, but I say..." section, we get the stinger:

““Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48, NASB.

So let's suppose you are a Jew back in the day, and you are curious and devout, so you wander up to hear what this fellow is saying. Here is what might go through your head as you listen to Jesus teach. "He is saying some very strange things about the value of being poor and unrighteous! Well, that's not me! I've always pretty much kept the law. This isn't the law, this is some strange blasphemous new teaching - I'm leaving. He says that he came to fulfill the law - hey, this sounds good, let's listen a little further. Anger = murder: OUCH! That's true. Looking = adultery: OUCH! That's true too! On he goes, this is incredibly convicting. I'm supposed to be perfect? THAT level of perfect? I'm starting to feel pretty poor. He's right, if I don't do this, like this, to this level, I'm sunk, it is all a sham. How am I going to do this? I need to hear more, much more."

So what has Jesus done here? He has taken people who believe in a shallow veneer of righteousness according to the law, who believe they are not in need of help, and pressed the law to apply to their deep inner motivations and secret thoughts. By the end of the message they come to realize that they are indeed poor in spirit. Just like Paul teaches, He uses the law to show them their need, to move them from their complacency to a place of hunger and thirst for righteousness, to a realization of their need for grace and mercy. He doesn't any more expect that those people were going to hear that message once and immediately walk out and start perfectly doing all of it than I am going to raise a garden on Saturn. He is whetting their appetite for grace!

Does this negate any of what He is saying, am I teaching that we ought not to worry about doing these things? Of course not. That is the same old question, should we sin all the more that grace might increase? NO! The spirit-led life looks like this. It knows the reality of God's presence, and thus prays in secret, in fact does all things in secret, because the secret mind/heart is the always present reality in which the living God works. It gives anxiety to the Father who loves us. It looks past the present sins of others and blesses always. We can always look back at this teaching, and measure ourselves, and find new and fresh need for grace. However, the tree must be drinking in the soil of grace to bear this fruit. The narrow way is not the self-motivated natural fleshly minded righteousness. No one is perfect and we all know it. We are the blessed poor, who are merciful, who know mercy, who hunger from our inner soul for righteousness, and who ask the Father for the bread of life, and receive it. The sermon on the mount is all about pointing us to grace.

Now, you have to ask yourself, which would you rather believe? That the "true gospel of Jesus" is a supremely harsh interpretation of the most difficult parts of this teaching, and that we should just ignore or throw out all of that 'poor in spirit' junk at the beginning? Also, throw out Paul's writings because those aren't the 'true gospel'? OR, would you rather believe that Jesus's whole message hangs together as a unity, that He presses the law home to show you that you ARE poor in spirit, and that this all fits perfectly with the further teachings down the road about the prodigal son and the lost sheep and His desire for mercy and compassion? Would you rather read this in a way that harmonizes perfectly with the writings of Paul, or set them against Paul's thought and divide the Scripture? Which sounds like a more truthful and scripture-honoring way to look at this?

At the end of the passage, Jesus wraps it all up like this:

““Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”” Matthew 7:24-27, NIV.

Which words exactly is He talking about? All of them! That's right, not just the ones about not lusting and not praying in public. The ones about being poor in spirit, about being unrighteous and weak but wanting badly to be better. He means the baffling words at the beginning that we usually skip over as well as the obvious convicting ones in the middle. If you can only hear the middle words, the obviously convicting word, how can you be said to have a right foundation? The people who skip to the middle section without seriously hearing the beginning are building a house on the sand! Hearing Jesus' words and doing them means hearing them ALL, and the beginning part, the meek and mild poor in spirit part, is the real game changer! He is saying you can go ahead and come out and admit that you can't do this, you don't know where to start, inside you are all full of rottenness. THAT is the right foundation!

You know what is so wonderful about this? It is honest, and it is doable. I look at the tax gatherer who can barely pray, but can only beat his chest and beg mercy and admit his sin, and I say, yes, I can do that. That is easy. I can be honest. God does not require anything of us that we can't do. He presses the law to a degree that screams, you can't do this, you may think you can do this, but you cannot do this. The real hearers and doers of His words are the ones who remember the perspective that the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom. It isn't the guilty and rotten pretenders who enter the kingdom, it is the forgiven. It is not the one who pretends not to look, not to be angry, not to worry, not the one who makes foolish promises to change, but the one who says, "Oh, that is true! I am that man, if there is no mercy I am ruined!" Seek and you shall find!

When you look at the scriptures through the eyes of grace as taught by Paul in Romans and Galatians and such, it all begins to come clear. More than that, we see the picture emerge that there is no question that we have come to a God who is the Father of mercy, who always loves, who knows how to break up our fallow ground and really come to a place of change and true inward transformation, because He truly cares for us. Why wouldn't anyone want to believe all of that?

I believe all of that. I find it easy to believe it. Jesus is teaching that very thing in the sermon on the mount, clearly.

I advocate evil

2010-05-17T04:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read the title right. After lots of dialog with people about God's grace and forgiveness, who ask, "are you saying people can just SIN," and, "what about hell and damnation?!" and such, I've decided to come out and admit it - I advocate evil. Since I believe in grace and mercy, that means that I want everyone to sin more and more and more. If someone is a Christian, that gives them license to do all kinds of evil and harm. Forgiveness means you get to do anything you want, ever. Wife beating is just cool. Wild orgies. Genocide. Pornography and alcoholism are the bomb. Christ died for us so we could go on sinning and sinning and sinning.

Since that is what people seem to be afraid that I am saying, I thought it would be helpful to lay the cards out on the table, there is no use beating around the bush. Let's reason about it from there.

Let's take our friend the serial adulterer. I'm not sure, but it is possible that the swinging free-sex lifestyle is not exactly the happiest and best life. Maybe our friend's insatiable appetite for lasciviousness is not always the best and most joyous thing. I'm sure he doesn't list his skills for secret sex on his business card, nor blog extensively about his experiences and send letters home to his proud mother about how his life of forbidden intimacy is coming along. Maybe he is sick of the shame and secrecy and rottenness of the consequences of his appetites. Maybe he is tired of taking such a powerful and beautiful part of his life and making it cheap and tawdry and shameful. Maybe he would actually like to entertain the idea of change, maybe he WANTS to change, but is so stuck in destructive patterns that he doesn't really know how, he feels that his life is over if he confesses and loses the comfort of it if he stops.

If I come along to our friend, and say, you are certainly going to hell for your deeds, how dare you go one cheating on your wife with other people's wives! You can't say you love God without having a transformed life! What might be the result? He might think, well, God already hates me, and this certainly reinforces my fears, and everyone else hates me too, and I even hate myself, but when I am with a woman she accepts me for a time and my troubles melt away. Why not go on with my caprine ways? Sometimes I feel bad afterwards, but hey, I feel bad all the time anyway. What does God offer but condemnation and the promise of hell? At least let me have my fun on the way to hell, it isn't going to change anyway.

If, on the other hand, I come along to our friend, and say, despite your ridiculously evil lifestyle, God loves you deeply, and has a vision for the true strength and purpose of your life. You have fallen short of God's glory, but He will forgive you forever and will work with you to help to dislodge this nasty pattern of desire in your life, and forge a new heart in you which loves honorable good things. There is real mercy, lasting mercy, mercy for your past and mercy for your future. There is mercy for what you actually need mercy for, forgiveness for your actual specific guilt! If you screw up and mess with a woman again (because you have years of this ingrained in you) God will still forgive. He wants to walk you out of this for the long haul. I am only His humble helper, but the Holy Spirit can touch your very soul with a supernatural power and change you. He sees past your behavior and loves YOU, as YOU, and wants to move past a focus only on your failures, to speak to you about what your life might look like if you had a chance to WIN! Not just in terms of stopping your addictive behavior, but of going on to a much much better way of life, full of joy and peace and contentment and rich spirituality.

Which approach might bring our friend the serial adulterer more surely out of his terrible ways? Which might lead him more surely to repentance? The harsh promise of the fear of hell and condemnation, or real lasting forgiveness and mercy, EVEN IF HE CAN'T PROMISE TO CHANGE? And, this isn't just true for serial adulterers. It is true for every sinner, the obvious ones and the religious white-washed ones. What if God really actually loves us, and seeks our best? What if God longs to extend kindness, to forgive, and to offer a path to heartfelt genuine righteousness that will not be revoked? I believe that He is always the Father who longs for His beloved prodigal to return, for things small and things great. Grace means the path is always clear and the door is always open to righteousness, help and power are always available to get up and try again. That is what it means. Love always trumps judgement. The transformed life might be a long time coming, but the love of God for us is real and present now. Transformation is a fruit that follows, and everyone wants it. Grace doesn't negate that, it opens the door to it. But if grace demands transformation, it is no longer grace. Grace says I forgive, I love, come to Me, I accept you, I will not stop seeking your best at all times. God is love and love always wins for everyone. Undeserved kindness transforms.

Modern Myths

2010-05-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

Someone posted this quote recently, and the conversation was relevant so I am posting it here.

"It is a modern myth that you can know and love Him and not have a transformed life by Him."

I am posting some of my own responses:
===========
It is much more of a modern myth that the goal is transformation instead of knowing and loving. 'In this is love, not that we love God, but that God loved us' - 1John 4:10

===========
To this came the response:

Biggest myth: That knowing and loving are separate from the transformation.

"This is love for God - That we obey his commands"
I John 5:3

=and=
Uh, we... don't... ever... attain perfection... in knowing/loving/transformation.

But if we're following, shouldn't we be continually getting better at it? I'm not not one to see k/l/t as some binary ("either/or") thing. This Romans text seems to show it more as a process, yes?
===========
Here is my response:

I think the engine, the animus, the dunamis, to the Christian life is wholly other than trying to continually 'get better.' It starts with finding our treasure, hidden in the field, and then FROM JOY OVER IT (Mt 13:44) making sacrifices and life changes. It starts with saying, yes, morally, I am a miserable mess, I need rescue. It continues (read Galatians) by grace. Always there is the struggle with sin (Rom 7) but always there is no condemnation (Rom 8:1) and always there is the open door to walk by the Spirit (first half of Rom 8). Nothing, not even sin, can keep us from the love of Christ (rest of Rom 8).

My starting place and my continuing animus is that I am the one who is loved by the Father, greatly greatly loved. Sin and righteousness cannot change that or increase it. Our works are a gift (Eph 2:8-10), or fruit. As Christians we have left the universe of earning favor, of criticism and judgement. It is living in the light of that favor, that joy, that great great happiness, that the power to work works comes to us, that our life becomes transformed.

Focusing on the transformed life instead of focusing on knowing Him and knowing that He first loves me, is like the guy going and selling all he has as a discipline, and then hoping he stumbles on a treasure. It simply doesn't work that way, it is all a sham, all a white-washed tomb. If our works aren't coming from joy over it, they are dead ones.

Further, don't argue with ME about it, I am nothing and I am completely stubborn in my insistence on grace and mercy and the sufficiency of Christ's blood for me every day. Look at yourself, to see if you are living under grace, if you have found your treasure hidden, if you have a constant sense of the Father's fondness for you. It is His kindness that leads us to repentance.
=========
Now, some other thoughts about all of this...

Here is where I see so many getting so lost in a depressing colorless lifeless pursuit of morals and a Christian version of pharisaism. It comes through very subtle back door deceptions, very well-meaning fervor. We have an emphasis on a "transformed life", and even on "knowing and loving God", which are sort of pitted against each other. You can't do the one unless you do both. The truth is you can't do either one, they are both impossible and onerous tasks. The Christian walk is characterized as looking at Christianized versions of laws and edicts, such as 'being in the word', 'praying more', not masturbating, not skipping church, doing youth ministry so you can inflict 'youth' with your same disease, or whatever, and gradually 'getting better' at it all. I personally cannot get fired up about a spirituality that is only about looking at how well I conform to such things, frankly it is boring and bereft of life. The focus is on a transformed life, whereas I think the focus should be on God's love for me, God's spirit leading us, and on TRUTH! Does this mean I advocate masturbation and prayerlessness? Of course not; I feel like I am continually circling around romans 3-8, with special emphasis over and over on Romans 6:1. But really, however cleverly and poetically you put it, such as "A transformed life ... " ta da ta da ta da, if your message really boils down to, stop masturbating and pray more, how do you expect people to really get fired up about it? Pray to who? Some fairy tale invisible entity who hates me, who won't let me love Him unless my life is 'transformed', which means actually that you intend to trick me into joyless colorless 'holiness' by getting me to fear His wrath and retribution?

Furthermore, here is what will happen in the inevitable dialog. "No - of course that's not what I mean!" "What do you mean then?" "I mean you should have a transformed life." "How do you know?" "Well, ... ." "Oh, well, isn't that what I was saying?" And on and on and on down the rabbit hole it goes. Of course no Christian will own up to being a legalistic pharisee, but until they are willing to say that it is faith in the blood of Christ + NOTHING ELSE that justifies us, until that translates into complete genuine freedom, until it finds a place for holiness as a fruit of being first loved by Him, until they advocate scandalous grace like Jesus and Paul and John, they ARE a legalistic pharisee. If you aren't getting romans 6:1 ("shall we then sin all the more that grace might increase??") put to you over and over and over by religious zealots, until you are experiencing some real persecution by the same kinds of people that persecuted Jesus, you have to wonder if you are really following in His shoes and preaching the same outstanding and delicious message that He did!

I am certain I am stepping on all kinds of toes here, so I apologize in advance, but I hope and pray that the beautiful truth that the Holy Spirit is trying to get across to the dear person who stumbles across this will come forth.

Discipline and grace Pt. 2

2010-05-12T04:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted some things about discipline and grace and it set me to thinking about it a lot more. Here are some more thoughts.

Grace vs. Discipline. If we are asked BY GOD to suffer in the flesh, to 'arm ourselves with the same purpose (1Peter 4:1)', how does that jive with the operations of a God of love and grace? Are we allowing bondage and servitude and legalism in the back door through teachings on discipline? Before you go on with this, I want you to pause and let yourself really inwardly ask this question, to honestly consider it. You might pray, "Lord, if it is true that You LOVE me and have mercy and grace so strongly for me, WHY all this talk about discipline and such? Why do You make it so hard?" It is important that you truly own up to your own doubts and internal fears and anger about this, you can't just go day by day reading trite theories about things. There is certainly a danger in teachings about God's discipline, in that it leads to a wrong fear and a subtle underlying disbelief in His love and mercy and grace. Some people become very dejected in their faith and are constantly expecting to be punished and disciplined all the time, and expect that most of God's dealings with them are going to be harsh and disciplinary. Let's look at the most famous text for this subject:

“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.” Hebrews 12:4-13, NASB.

One of my sons sometimes has a bit of trouble keeping current with his school work. Recently when I called him to task, and grounded him from a number of things, he got very upset and wanted to know why I was "going Nazi" on him about it. He later went on to say that he feels that he can't talk to me about anything any more, and he feels that I am always angry with him. From my perspective, I love him, I didn't even raise my voice, and I seek nothing except success and healing for him. We have a tendency to overplay the harshness of our discipline, don't we? If God presses through our conscience or something that we have an area needing correction, we are likely to view all of His kindnesses through that lens, because it speaks most loudly. However, this discipline is far from the final message God has for us. There is a very big difference between punishment and discipline. Discipline sees weakness and failure and brings whatever measures to bear to bring strength and healing. It has nothing to do with justice or moral wrong-doing. Punishment has more to do with facing the consequences for moral wrong-doing. Here we are talking about discipline, not punishment. In the end, discipline is meant to be joyful, but not in the moment of pain.

In fact, the discipline of God is the surest sign of His grace. He means to keep with us, to lead us on, to take us to a point of blessing and peace, even when we ourselves resist. He is more committed to our good fortune than we ourselves are! Isn't it true that our closest friends, the friends we trust most and have known the longest, are the ones that tell us the things we really need to hear? God is not less than our closest friends. Grace means God really means to bless us, to keep with us, to bring us to a place of true and lasting joy. Discipline is one means to this end, but it is not His whole voice nor is it by any means the only thing He has to say. It is an occasional season of revelation to us when we are having trouble hearing more reasonable voices.
Kinds of discipline. This is a point of clarifying terms, because we tend to use the word 'discipline' in two ways. There is self-discipline, or the ordered and focused life that is effectual in its purposes. The disciplined life says yes to the right things, even when it is hard, and no to the right things, even when it is hard. The disciplined life knows its callings, gifting, and strengths, and forsakes other interests in order to excel in them. The disciplined life lets others win at their callings, lets other excel, and focuses on its own complementary success. The second kind of discipline is God's discipline, or rather the discipline of another imposed upon an otherwise undisciplined person. In both cases discipline means the same thing - the focus on a higher goal through sometimes difficult means. If one does not or cannot discipline themselves, bring themselves to a place of order, to a place of focus and success, another must do so. It is the same idea, but its source is either self, or another person, or God.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, Otherwise they will not come near to you.” Psalms 32:8, 9, NASB.
Group discipline. Discipline in a group is even harder, and even more rewarding. Whether it is a family, or the workplace, or a church or parachurch group, it can only come to fruition if there is a common vision, and a strong gift of leadership and administration is present. Even with these, there is another element to discipline within a group that is most difficult. The members must agree to submit to the authority of the leadership and the administration of the group's vision and efforts; they must 'believe' in the vision. Just as a little fly ruins the whole ointment (“Dead flies make a perfumer’s oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor.” Ecclesiastes 10:1, NASB), so one undisciplined member of the group can ruin the whole effort. Each member must be individually disciplined to achieve the goals of the whole. The leadership must be ready to expect resistance and lack of discipline, but most people truly welcome the success and order and sense of belonging to a fruitful endeavor which is larger than themselves. Many times the reason the group falls into disorder and lacks success is because the vision is uncompelling, the leadership is weak, and the affairs of the group are not administered well. Other times it is because one or more undisciplined members are not brought to discipline or expelled (“Drive out the scoffer, and contention will go out, Even strife and dishonor will cease.” Proverbs 22:10, NASB.)

Discipline and grace Pt. 1

2010-05-11T04:59:00.000-07:00

We tend to think that the spirit-led life, the life of grace and mercy, is a life of free-wheeling 'where the wind blows' craziness. To a certain extent it is. We see this in the life of Jesus:

““The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”” John 3:8, NKJV.

If you ever try to do a study on Jesus in terms of time management, productivity, or discipline, you will find that there is nothing there. He's going here, going there, up praying at 4 AM unexpectedly (if He always did this, wouldn't the disciples have known what to expect?) He would hang around and then leave town unexpectedly. the disciples never had any idea what He was going to do next. It's almost like the defining characteristic of Jesus' walk was its complete unpredictability from day to day. Some need came along and He turned aside; yet in every case it served as a teaching moment for the disciples, and in every case it all fit some larger purpose.

Despite the apparent chaos, there is an order, an intensity, a focus to Jesus' way of living. He had a tremendous vision to seriously offer the kingdom of God to the nation of Israel before we see a clear shift in focus where He turns away from that and begins to focus on His disciples and building up the seed of the church. This is way beyond the scope of this post, but next time you read through one of the gospels watch for it, and in the middle of the craziness and the wind-blown itinerary, we see a focus and a discipline to teach certain things to certain groups and not to other groups, to heal people for a time in an area and then leave others unhealed and move on.

Look at this passage:

“Now they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed. And as they followed they were afraid. Then He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them the things that would happen to Him: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles; “and they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.”” Mark 10:32-34, NKJV.

This is toward the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, and we see that the disciples were amazed, because they understood the danger, the impending calamity, that certainly awaited Him there. He knew what He needed to do, it was not pleasant, and yet the Spirit led Him, just like it led Him to the desert to be tempted, to His crucifixion. He marched ahead of them, facing up, moving surely toward His fate. On the way, as usual, He is interrupted and heals people and takes on the issues and problems and addresses the misunderstandings of the disciples. The discipline and order of the spirit led life is not one that avoids difficulty, nor is it one that avoids the messy problems of real people along the way. Peter, who was on that road with Him, and was one of the amazed ones, presses the point:

“Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.” 1 Peter 4:1, 2, NKJV.

ARM yourselves with the same purpose! If you are ready to suffer in the flesh, if you have it in mind to do God's bidding no matter the cost, if you have set your face toward the place of your cross, you are ARMED, you are dangerous to the forces of evil. If you are distracted, seeking comfort and entertainment, led astray with spiritual 'ADD', if you are not ready to face your obvious purpose and fate, you are unarmed, harmless, aimless, wandering, and ineffectual.

It is strange, but you can always bet that the one thing you are avoiding is the one thing that is the most important thing you need to do. Once you lay that aside, once you set your mind to suffer, once you are of a mind to set your face like flint toward your Jerusalem, you are freed. It is strange as well that it is usually one thing, one simple thing, that faces you, and it is not that you lack revelation or understanding, it is that you do not want to suffer, you enjoy your aimless comfort. It is a problem of the will, not of the lack of some mystic revelation, that prevents you from being in the stream of the strong purpose of the Spirit's leading.

Paul, the guru of grace, has much to say about all of this. One of my favorites is in his letter to Timothy:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7, NKJV.

and here:

“You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. The hard-working farmer must be first to partake of the crops. Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things.” 2 Timothy 2:1-7, NKJV.

We have an agenda, a clear manifest. We are not called to cordon ourselves off from the random needs of people and the daily pressure of the unexpected, but rather we are called to freely, by the Spirit, arm ourselves with the strong purpose to take up our cross, and go forward with the amazing adventure of following Him who did the same for us. The Christian idea of discipline under grace is broader and more free than keeping a planner perfectly with each 15 minute time slot filled in. Discipline under grace is effectual and gets to the heart of us in the most direct way.

Terrell Dismukes' Story

2010-05-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Terrell, who was in a music group with me in Europe back in the 80's, sent this to me after reading one of these posts. I thought it was fantastic, and he agreed to let me share it.

============================

I read your blog post about God loving us, and it reminded me of something. Last November, I went to the Be In Health, For My Life Course at Pleasant Valley Church in Thomaston, Georgia, [ http://www.beinhealth.com/public/FMLOverview ]and here is part of what I learned there:

Probably the most foundational thing I took away from the course is the belief that God really loves me a lot and wants the very best for me. I was never really able to believe this the way I do now. I remind myself of this every day, often several times a day. I firmly believe that believing God really loves me a lot is foundational to worship, sanctification, and good mental health. God of course tells us many times in the Bible that he loves us. There is one particular passage that almost has my name written it, because when Jesus says in John 17:20 to his Father “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word,” he is most definitely talking about me. He goes on to say that “thou [the Father] ... hast loved them [including me, as per verse 20], as thou hast loved me [Jesus],” and that “thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” So God the Father loves me in the same way he loves Jesus, before the foundation of the world.

There are four major prayers by Paul for others in his letters. They are in Ephesians 1 and 3, Philippians 1, and Colossians 1. In one of these prayers, the one in Ephesians 3:14-19, in language that is somewhat difficult to understand, I believe Paul is praying that his readers would believe that God loves them, that they would understand how great this love is for them, and that they would know this love that God has for them, as much as it is possible to know such love that even passes knowledge. He finally prays that they would be filled with all the fullness of God. I believe that when we are filled with the belief, understanding, and knowledge that God really loves us a lot and wants the very best for us, there is no crack through which any evil can get to us from the outside.

Before I believed that God really loves me a lot and wants the very best for me, I was unable to tell God my Father that I really loved him. I felt unworthy to do so, and felt like I would be hypocritical to tell him that, because I thought I did not come anywere near the love I have should have for him. Now I think the real reason I was unable to tell him I loved him, was because I was not convinced that he really loved me. Now I am convinced that he does really love me, and I can freely tell him every day that I love him.

I think that the belief, understanding, and knowledge that God really loves me a lot is a foundation for worship, sanctification, and good mental health. It is a foundation for worship, for how can we really worship God in spirit and in truth if we do not really believe that he loves us a lot? With regard to sanctification, how can we truly obey God out of a pure heart if we do not really believe that he loves us a lot?

The apostle John writes in 1 Jn. 2:15-16:

“15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

I have discovered that if I really believe that God loves me a lot, I am not going to go looking to fill the void from not feeling loved by going to these things in the world. It started way back in Genesis 3 that Adam and Eve doubted God’s love for them, sought a replacement for that love from another source, and hid themselves from him.

Is Mercy different than Grace?

2010-05-06T06:05:00.000-07:00

It has been suggested to me by a friend that mercy and grace are very different things, so I wanted to look into this. We tend to use these words a bit interchangeably and I wanted to explore the nuances of the ideas involved, as a part of my quest to understand grace.

In English, these words reflect ideas that are two sides of the same coin. Mercy means, someone has done some transgression, and the punishment is not executed against them. Grace means that someone has done some transgression, and nevertheless blessings are given - provision and honor and such. So, both involve someone that has transgressed justice somehow, but the one decides NOT TO execute punishment while the other decides TO execute blessing.

Upon investigation, Paul seems to use the Greek words interchangeably to reflect these ideas, as here, where he means 'mercy':

“being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” Romans 3:24, NKJV.
('Grace' is the greek word 'charis' and clearly means in context that we are 'justified' or not held accountable for our transgressions of the law by its means.)

and here, where he means 'grace' with the same word:
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed;” 2 Corinthians 9:8, NASB.
('Grace' is the greek word 'charis' and clearly means in context that we are given an abundance of provision for doing every good deed..)

I think the reason is that the two are clearly wrapped up in one another. Consider the parable of the prodigal son (which we will look at in very great detail later!) At once, when the son returns, mercy and grace happen in the same breath:

“‘I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”’ “And he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him. “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ And they began to be merry.” Luke 15:18-24, NASB.

See that for the father, mercy was so evident that it wasn't even a thought in his head. He didn't even answer the son's request for mercy! He launched straight into the blessing - "Quickly bring out the best robe." The son imagined mercy was the need, but all the Father had any mind for at all was grace. Thus, it is the design of God that these are mixed together and ambiguous, not because we are fuzzy in our minds about it, but because God so quickly passes through mercy to get to grace that it hardly seems there is any difference at all!

Now isn't that wonderful?

Why does Christianity obsess over Law, sin, guilt, and forgiveness?

2010-05-05T07:00:00.001-07:00

To the uninitiated, Christianity's obsession with sin can seem off-putting. We don't like to constantly face what is wrong with ourselves, and no one wants to talk about it. You hear all this talk about God and love and yet it immediately descends into talk of morals and guilt and forgiveness. The idea of grace is all wrapped up in God's apparent concern with our moral status; He loves us and grants us favor despite our unworthiness. Why can't God simply love, without having to constantly reference our failures? It is wearying; I don’t want to think about my own unworthiness all the time, this is not a beautiful thing. The constant reference to my guilt does not make me feel loved. If my friend acted this way, constantly referencing how wrong and bad I was but saying they still loved me anyway, I wouldn't want to stay in that friendship; it is simply weird.

Yet, in the book of Revelation, we see Jesus up on the throne, and the image is that of a lamb as if slain. He still bears the scars of His death for our redemption. Apparently this will not be forgotten on to eternity; our sin, our need for salvation, will be forever impressed on the very image with which God presents Himself from the height of heaven. Is this a good thing? At first thought I don’t know that I like it. I just want to be accepted and loved, and have my moral failures and shortcomings all but forgotten and glossed over.

Well, I want to show why this is so fantastic, why it is actually the most wonderful and liberating thing about the Christian faith. Once you wrap your head around this you will walk with an incredible joy and release and freedom that is the greatest thing in human experience. You will know that you are definitively forgiven, that you are accepted, established, that your good destiny is truly secured. God is not constantly focused on what is wrong with us; rather, He is making it clear that He stands forever actively against the condemning voices, guarding us and blessing us. I want to reason through this slowly, and ask awkward questions, and get to a true intellectual and emotional understanding of the whole thing.

======The Worst Injury======

If someone injures you, for instance cuts off your arm, it is a grievous thing. You have the well-deserved sympathy of all, everyone comes to your aid. Church people visit, people bring you meals, your mother calls and everyone feels tremendously sorry for you. You didn’t do anything wrong per se, after all, someone cut off your arm!

However, if YOU are the one who cut off that person’s arm, it is a different story altogether. You are hunted down, thrown in prison. No one calls, no one brings you meals, your mother is ashamed. You are the guilty one, you are the one who did it. No one loves that person! This is a person who knows they are hated and they know they deserve to be hated.

The harm, the injury, the life-devastation is greater to the perpetrator than to the injured one, because after all, THEY ARE EVIL and they know it. A rotten and seething conscience is much closer and more active and more vengeful than even a missing arm. This is not to detract at all from the pain and suffering of the innocent party, but innocence and any other pain is much easier to bear than guilt. Guilt attaches to the central self, the core identity. Guilt is the chief injury a person can do to himself.
If I am injured, something about me is damaged, yet my truest self, my conscience, my innocence, remains intact. We can expect God and fate to treat us kindly despite our undeserved harm. This isn’t really a Christian or religious thing, it is a human thing. If I am the perpetrator of evil, I will forever be the one who is capable of evil; I AM evil. Not just my arm, or my emotions, but my very self comes under question. Even I cannot imagine good coming to me, because I know what I have done. Any good that I get subsequent to the proof of my evilness (I can’t believe the spell-checker didn’t ding me for that word!) must be snatched by my own wiles; if there is fate or justice it is all going to go against me.

======Garden Variety Sins=======

Now, we understand all of this when applied to some clearly evil person like Jeffrey Dahmer or Joseph Stalin. Most people are normal garden variety people with normal garden variety sins. Guys ogle women they aren’t married to, people gossip, cheat on their taxes, react in angry words with their children, overeat. Is God so nit-picky that we would go to hell for such minor infractions?

Before I answer that question, which is a very good question, you have to understand that we are going somewhere better with this. If I am going to give you directions to the glorious mountain lookout I have to talk you through the dark forest. I don’t mean to focus on the forest but you have to go through it to get there. This is the same thing, don’t check out.

Of course God is not ‘nit-picky’! He means well, he means to do you good by leading you through this. The apostle Paul says that the ‘Law’ is our tutor, that leads us to faith. It is not the agent of faith, the basis of faith, it is a road to somewhere. So Jesus teaches about the Law, and says that if you are even angry with your brother, you are guilty of murder! What does he mean? He means, it isn’t just what you do, it is what you desire, what you are like inside, what you love, your heart, that defines you. The law only points this out, like a flashlight shining into your messy closet. You may hold yourself back from murder but in a sense you wish for it, you may hold yourself back from adultery but inside you want it so bad. Jesus is saying that this kind of double life, appearing to be something while on the inside wanting something entirely different, means that your true self is actually quite evil. You only appear to be respectable. Jesus calls people like this a ‘white-washed tomb’, meaning it looks clean on the outside, but is dead and putrefied on the inside.

So we arrive at the idea that Paul teaches, that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” This is something which is not true only in some vague general theological sense. You can sense people fogging over when you start to talk about inheriting sin from Adam and all of that. That is true, but that is not the primary and active truth. What the Law properly parsed out shows is MY sin, my ACTUAL guilt, the real living fault-line where my soul has transgressed and broken down on the waves of life. In Augustine’s confessions, he had an epiphany of his own real sin:


 Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty rain of tears. That I might give way fully to my tears and lamentations, I stole away from Alypius, for it seemed to me that solitude was more appropriate for the business of weeping. I went far enough away that I could feel that even his presence was no restraint upon me. This was the way I felt at the time, and he realized it. I suppose I had said something before I started up and he noticed that the sound of my voice was choked with weeping. And so he stayed alone, where we had been sitting together, greatly astonished. I flung myself down under a fig tree--how I know not--and gave free course to my tears. The streams of my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to thee. And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to thee: "And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord? Wilt thou be angry forever? Oh, remember not against us our former iniquities." [259] For I felt that I was still enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries: "How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?"

I myself had such an experience, perhaps this is why Augustine’s experience resonates so deeply with me. I was just out of high school, and had decided that Jesus was the way and the truth, but I had not really come to an understanding of the faith. I went to a big formal Baptist church, with an organ playing and all of that, and a guy got up and said, “we must remember that Christ has died on the cross for our sins.” I did not really understand at all what he was talking about, and I found the organ music irritating, but I was hit with waves of a sense of my own sinfulness, of how I had done so many things wrong, so much harm, specific things. I wept and wept in there, just deep waves of weeping and regret. Everyone kind of moved away from me; I probably should have gone out by a fig tree somewhere.

The point is, we must come to the very end of ourselves. It is tempting to relegate these kinds of stories to the category of nuthouse religious experiences, when in fact they are stories of a person coming at last to the full truth about themselves and the world. It is no general principle of ‘man’s sinfulness’ from which we must be rescued. I am the perpetrator, I am the one. I may have received some sin nature from Adam, but that is academic. I really screwed things up badly. Me. I actually need forgiveness myself for real evil. I have loved and acted on love for very selfish and damaging and stupid things. I am actually ashamed. I think it is probably impossible to understand the real release of forgiveness until you come to a place where you see that not only have you been harmed, you are a harmer. It is this worse thing, your own personal true evil, that Christianity addresses. God sees you, sees your shame, your wrong, and where everyone else on earth rightly hates you for it, He has compassion even then.

====Conclusion====

This post is not the end of the road. The only point is that our truest need, our greatest damage, is our own evil. The Christian faith focuses on it because it is the central need of every human. It is our most hopeless problem. It is not some theological theory, it is the real fire that eats at our joy and our inner peace day and night. It is born of real deeds that demand true justice. It is not just that ‘all’ have sinned - it is that YOU have sinned, I have sinned, we have done real specific evil, we are the ones who love evil in the real world. If God loves, He must hate the evil that harms us. Yet, we each have a big hand in being the agent of harm towards those around us. This is the miracle of the Christian faith, not that a superior moral code is presented, but the solution to the problem of our own evil, the problem of true forgiveness, has been accomplished.

I will be so bold to say that you will not enter into true faith, true intimacy, true peace, until you come to the weeping tree and truly beg for an end to your uncleanness. Then the scales come off of your eyes, and you see your life for what it really is, for what glories God really intended your life for, and how you have so fallen short. Rightly does He hate your sin, and at great cost does He forgive. Then do you see that it is forgiveness that you want, it is release from a punishing conscience that you long for, and the work of Jesus to release you while preserving justice to those you've harmed becomes very very important to look into.

Now, Paul ends his whole first section of the book of Romans like this:

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39, NKJV.

In other words, if God has dealt with this most central and difficult need, our inward evil, and still stands with us and blesses us, what else could be so bad? If our own evil can't get between us and God, what else could even come close? In a sense, if you are released from guilt, you are released from the sting of virtually every other stress! Even peril and death can't hold a candle to the feeling of pending condemnation, and that is all over with in Christ.

Do you get it? WHAT A RUSH!!!!

Jesus came to complete the Law

2010-05-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

This is a rather technical post, and is a necessary defense of the Biblical foundation of the message of grace that I am teaching. To all who are not able or willing to follow all of this, I apologize in advance. I hope you might try to read it anyway, there is some really great juicy stuff in this discussion.

A response from my friend Robert Krauss quotes Jesus:

The Word made Flesh (Yeshua) said:

"Don't think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah - not until everything that must happen has happened. So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P'rushim, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" (Matthew 5:17-21)
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My response:
From the tenor of the verses you chose, and because I know from our history what you are trying to say, let me paraphrase your interpretation. This verse says something quite contrary to your message of unconditional love and grace and total forgiveness now and forever. Jesus teaches us that He came to complete the Law - to make it really stick. Every little jot and tittle, every dot on every 'i' and every cross on every 't', will be required of each man. It clearly says that whoever OBEYS them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. You can't just believe and wander on in forgiveness still sinning, you have to obey! Jesus says so, it says so here in black and white. Or rather, in red letters.

In response to what I take your meaning to be:

What does "complete" mean, as He says, not to abolish, but to complete? It means we are supposed to adhere to and live under the Torah, the OT law? Is that what it means? But it says "I (Jesus) have come ... to complete." Are you saying that WE, His followers, are to complete it, by obeying it? On the contrary, no less than the apostle John says:

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8, NKJV.

If we thus have sin, if we don't deceive ourselves, if we are truthful, doesn't that imply that WE can't complete the law in that sense? So, it must mean that He, rather than we, are referred to in "completing" the Law.

Now, Matthew 5:17-21 clearly says, we should not teach others to disobey, lest we be least in the Kingdom of Heaven. Does the message of grace, of complete mercy, teach others to disobey? In Paul's words, "shall we sin more that grace might increase?" Of course it does not. Let's skip to the good part:

"there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" Romans 8:1

follows romans 7:

15* For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
16* But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good.

Teaching that the law is good does not mean one is empowered to keep it. In fact, if Romans 7 were not true then Romans 8:1 would not be necessary would it? Or do you not really believe the writings of Paul? In that case you are a Jew in fact, not a Christian. What is Paul's solution? Let's read on:

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Romans 8:2-6, NKJV.

So, we see that the mind set on the flesh, the mind set on the law, the mind set to do the law under human power, is death. It spells this out so clearly here, that the law could NOT achieve freedom or virtue, being weak through the "flesh", through individual non-supernatural human power. Christian virtue is supernatural, you cannot strip the work and stirring and empowering of the Holy Spirit from the Christian way of virtue. But the requirement of the law is fulfilled by Christ, fulfilled in us. The law is, so to speak, completed in Christ, in that it requires punishment or justice for sin, and Jesus suffered and died to fulfill that requirement. Yes, the propitiatory death of Jesus is the way he "completed" the law. It certainly isn't that we fulfill it or are sinless or even come close to fulfilling even the important parts.

Let's move on in the Matthew 5:17 passage. What is the 'righteousness far greater than that' of the pharisees? Does he mean, their moral fiber is far greater? Then how is it that JESUS teaches this in Luke 18:

10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer.
11 “The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer.
12 ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
13 “But the tax-gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
14 “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”

The Pharisee prays truly that he does these things. It isn't enough; doing the Torah, the Law, isn't enough! Who among us even does as good as this guy? He always fasts twice a week! Our righteousness has to exceed all of that? But the tax-gatherer went away justified, NOT THE PHARISEE!!! HIS righteousness did indeed exceed the pharisee's, and he didn't do any of those good things. Right? So how does this work? If your interpretation of what Jesus means by 'abolish' and 'complete' the Law is correct, then He must be schizophrenic or insane, or at best a very poor and inconsistent teacher. But He is not, because that is not what He means.

I'll tell you exactly what it is, the little secret that so few people have put together. This is the part I hope everyone carries away from this post, if they couldn't follow anything else. Jesus thinks exactly like Paul, Paul in fact learned it all from Jesus. Jesus does fulfill the law, JESUS fulfills the law. No one else does. All have sinned. All sin. ALL. Jesus offers true forgiveness while upholding the law, that is the miracle of salvation. The law is, as Paul says, "a tutor" that leads us to mercy.

Rather, the one who seeks mercy acknowledges, in fact KEEPS -holds on to the truest intent and precept of - the law more truly than the one who pretends to adhere to it and thinks they have no need of mercy. The confessor, the seeker of mercy, submits the inner secrets of the soul more truly to the law than the religious poser. It is forgiveness which adheres most closely to the law, saying in all its implications and inner motivations that it is true. The one who believes in grace can apply the law most deeply to himself, because he seeks not self-righteousness but forgiveness for the truth of his life. It is mercy that opens the door to the kind of inner transformation that can really fulfill the law without regret or wrong motivation.

In closing, notice this: the 'legalistic' way of looking at this is set at odds with Paul's teachings. It can't be good to throw out Paul's epistles can it? My way of looking at this preserves a strong interpretation of both passages easily. Not only is it true, but more free and happy. I would rather believe in mercy and grace and beat my chest as a fully acknowledged sinner because it is true and it is actually doable, and leads to a deeper and more honest holiness. Plus, walking away justified is a great and wonderful thing, much better than I deserve - but after all, I'm not God, God is. I didn't make any of His ways up, He did.

Not under law

2010-04-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

“Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Galatians 3:21-29, NASB.

The law, according to the writings of Paul, has its purpose, but it isn't the purpose we may think. I have grappled with all kinds of metaphors to illustrate this, such as forest for the trees, clanging cymbal in a symphony, carburetor in an engine, anything that shows that too close a focus on one thing alone out of context makes understanding it impossible.

The law very much has its place, it is just that the place isn't a personal resolve to obey. The law is a flashlight that shows the skeletons in the closet, but a flashlight cannot lift a single mote of dust with its light beam. Does that make the flashlight bad or wrong? Of course not. God doesn't just point the law at us and say, "aren't you foul!" He points to say, "you might need some help there."

So we have this spelled out in Galatians. Look at v. 24 and 25, read it close. The law has become our "tutor" - what does he mean? It leads us to Christ, because it sets up a moral standard that we have trouble fulfilling, pointing us to the need for something better, something beyond that. He is quite clear in this passage that we are no longer under this tutor, now that faith has come, we are NO LONGER UNDER A TUTOR!

Which law is he talking about? By what standard are we to pick and choose which laws are obscure and no longer to be applied to Christians and which laws are still in force? We're probably still under the ones that make sense to us now, right? Just the real important ones. All those weird old-fashioned ones are the ones he is talking about here, we're not under those weird ones. On what basis do we distinguish? If you think back to all of your teaching and learning as a Christian person over the years, this point has always been a little fuzzy hasn't it? It is fuzzy because PAUL DOESN"T DISTINGUISH. The ENTIRE LAW is our tutor, the ENTIRE LAW is the thing we are no longer under because of faith. He doesn't just mean, you no longer have to get circumcised and you no longer have to observe the feast of booths. He means you no longer HAVE to observe ANY of it.

See why this question arises over and over in Paul's writings - "Is the Law bad then? You mean, we don't have to do the law? You mean we can simply do anything we want? Should we sin more so grace can increase?" If you are grokking this correctly, those are precisely the right questions. The answer is not, "Oh, I didn't mean that, of course you have to do the big important laws. Only certain laws are the ones you are no longer under, and you'll have to figure which ones out since Paul is so ambiguous about what he means." He isn't ambiguous - he says "the Law", and he means the WHOLE LAW. So the answer is, no, you don't have to be under the law, any of it. It simply doesn't work that way any more, if you are under faith/grace/Holy Spirit. It doesn't mean you look at your skeleton laden closet and say, wow, I just love skeletons! It means, I won't be condemned for them, and I can be certain of help cleaning them up.

Doesn't this passage, and all the rest of Paul's writings, start to make sense now? When Jesus nails us all for even having an idle angry thought as being murderers, he is pressing the law as a tutor to lead us to the place of the tax-gatherer who couldn't lift his head when he prayed, and said "have mercy on me, a sinner!" This is how Jesus had such exact harsh moral teachings and yet just as clearly pressed teaching about mercy and grace and had sinners throwing parties for Him. Jesus isn't schizophrenic, He just happens to think exactly along the same lines as Paul does. Why is that weird? The law takes us to that place that says, "I really do need help, I don't want to do this any more." And it is this tax-gatherer/sinner, not the self-righteous pharisee, who went away justified. When he tells them, go and learn this, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, He means it in a most personal and profound way. He wants us to let the law corral us to the place of grace.

So, Robert Krause :), we are no longer under the law, it is spelled out here and in many places in the writings of Paul. Grace puts the law in perspective, but we find that the law does not really attempt to put grace in perspective. That would be the wrong way around.

In the end, we are deliriously, deliciously free. Free indeed. When our motorcycle falls down, grace helps us back up. Despite our glaring and horrible faults, God remains our Father who welcomes us back, who always loves us, who quickly restores our dignity, who celebrates us. We are ever His pearl, His precious obsession. The law only serves to lead us to this place, this great romance. The gospel, this real gospel, the gospel which is according to the whole message of scripture, is really really great happy stuff. It makes me genuinely glad to be a believer, I have something real and beautiful and substantial to believe, something true.

motorcycle metaphor

2010-04-28T05:21:00.001-07:00

My friend Dave Wilson relayed the story that he was stopped at an intersection behind a car and a motorcyclist. The motorcycle had fallen over sideways as it had rained and the road was slick. The guy was having a difficult time getting the motorcycle back right because the road was slick and it just slid over when he tried to right it.

On top of this, the guy just behind him was sitting in his car, mad, and honking. Finally Dave got out, walked over, and helped the guy pull his motorcycle back up, and away everyone went.

This is a perfect metaphor for law and grace. Yes, it is a problem to be down on your cycle stopping traffic. The law has power only to sit and honk - to tell you that you're wrong, to condemn. It has no power to help. Grace gets out, without judgement, and helps you get on your way, without anger or criticism.

everything is different

2010-04-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

everything in the world is different
everything
your own fingerprints on your own hands
are different
every blade of grass
every tree
every thought
every second
every birth and death
every dog is different
I learned this from my 8 year old son
who is quite different from his brothers.

summing up so far

2010-04-21T05:36:00.000-07:00

I wanted to pause for a few minutes and review what is being said. If you get excited about any of this (and I hope you are) and you want to explain these ideas to a friend, I want you to have this ready on your lips; you should be able to walk away from this with the ideas firmly in your mind and ready to verbalize and explain to anyone who asks.

TREASURE. First, the kingdom of God is about desire and love and wreckless abandon. Sacrifice comes from joy over it. Remember the parables of the treasure and the pearl of great price. Not only is God a treasure to you, you are the pearl of great price to Him.

Love's source. "Not that we love God, but that God loved us." The pressure is off! He already knows that you can't keep the commandments, even the big one. You don't love God, you don't have to. Love isn't in that place. He loves YOU, first. When you fail, when you stop loving, it isn't dependent on you. Your first calling is to realize that YOU are unconditionally loved, and the response will come.

The scandal of real grace. If you really take what Paul is teaching, the question is going to arise, just like it did for him, "What are you saying? Can we just sin all we want because of grace? Is that what you are saying?" If you aren't getting that question then you probably aren't talking a strong enough message. Do 'sinners' like to hang out with you? If not, maybe you need to rethink which camp you are in.

Not advocating sin. By saying so, we are not becoming 'antinomian' or 'Calvinist' or whatever. We don't have to answer to brainwashed seminarians who seem to have little regard for the scriptures but tons of regard for obscure arguments from church tradition. Does that sound familiar? His kindness leads us to repentance, His kingdom is always about welcoming the prodigal, He forgives when you actually need forgiveness. Grace and mercy are the constant warp and woof of the Christian experience. The unconditional love of God is the soil in which true holiness grows.

Difficult passages. Harsh law-pushers want to take certain passages, such as James 2, and twist them against Paul's writings, to nullify grace. Very simple reading and thinking about what James says causes such difficulties to vaporize. The whole message of scripture leads us to grace and grace again. It is what Jesus came for, the point of it all. Believe it!

There is so much more to say from here, even these points beg to be fleshed out and defended more. I also want to say that I need to hear your thoughts, your questions, your objections, don't be shy. It only strengthens things to have a real dialog.

james vs. paul

2010-04-20T03:58:00.000-07:00

There is a passage in James that is a classic stumbling block to serious belief in the full-bore grace of God that Paul teaches. Even Martin Luther wanted to excise this book from the Bible, because he viewed it as being so antithetical to the message of salvation by faith alone apart from works of the law. I think that upon examination there is no problem.

Let's delve into this passage now:
====================================
James 2
13 For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
14 ¶ What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?
15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
16 If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder.
20 You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?
21 Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.
23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.
24 You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.
25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?
26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
===================================

The first thing to notice in this passage is that James is talking about faith, authentic faith. It isn't really about works, it is about authentic faith. Read it again and decide if I am right, or if I am twisting something; in fact, you probably skipped reading it so go back and read the passage carefully.

As an experiment, consider someone who has works but no faith. This would be like Richard Dawkins (the famous atheist, author of "The God Delusion") visiting a homeless shelter. That would not be to James liking here either, would it? He does not require only works, he is looking for authentic faith. He is saying that true faith will show itself in action somehow. If someone builds a chair, and asks, "what do you think of my great chair?" You might look at it and determine that it is a rickety mess; however, to avoid hurting their feelings, you say, "that's fantastic, great work!" Then they will say, "have a seat." If you won't sit in it, you don't really believe what you say, do you? Isn't that the point?

James is saying, if you actually believe, you will naturally sit in the chair. The point is still faith. Can you imagine Paul taking issue with this? They are completely on the same page. Let's take a peek at Romans 8:

===================================
8:1* ¶ There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2* For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
3* For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
4* in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
5* For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
6* For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
7* because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so;
8* and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9* However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
===================================

For being supposedly so opposed to each other, isn't it amazing how closely these passages harmonize? Paul says, like James, that you can look at outward fruits and see whether or not there is a true indwelling of faith, of the Spirit, of a work of God in someone. The whole key is the authenticity of faith, the faith in the work of God that leads to the indwelling of the Spirit of God, the kind of work that really does produce fruit.

The thing that happens that is so wrong is that people come and put these passages at odds. They interpret James to say, run around and do stuff whether you have faith or not! Forget all those strange things in Paul's teachings that are so hard to understand. What the heck is "the mind set on the Spirit?" James is simple, it gives me something to DO. Then you prove you have faith, you get faith by doing stuff. Give me that practical religion, I can't understand all this ethereal stuff.

James is not advocating faithless deeds, he is advocating authentic faith. Can you imagine that James is saying to ignore the work of the Holy Spirit and instead just do a bunch of works? James' question is, is your faith real? Faith proves itself in actions, but truly effectual actions are rooted in a full-bodied faith born of the work of the Holy Spirit. In the same way, Paul raises the question, of whether there is an authentic work of the Spirit. If you take James here in a way that doesn't harmonize with Paul's writings, you end up making the exact error that Paul is talking about in Romans 8 - you try to perform acts of the law by the flesh, by personal resolve, by limited human power.

Neither of them are saying that deeds are the ultimate point. They are both talking about faith, and they are both talking about the fact that true faith will manifest itself in its fruit. What I'm saying is, if you want real fruit, James style fruit, Holy Spirit born fruit, enduring real righteousness, YOU HAVE TO LOOK TO GETTING REAL FAITH! If you start off running around feeding orphans, as wonderful as that is, you will end up nothing more than a resentful mess in real life and do more damage than good if it is not done from the perspective of a true living work of God in you.

Let's put this another way. If you were to have a conversion experience, and come to faith in Christ, and seek and receive a real transforming work of the Spirit, would you hope that it would have absolutely no effect on your day to day actual life? Or would you hope that it really did transform you, heart and soul, deed and truth? What kind of "gift" would a faith like that be? Nobody wants a fake veneer walk with God! We all want what James AND Paul are saying. Why is this a controversy? Does any of this nullify grace, nullify mercy, nullify God's patience with us as imperfect sinners? Of course not.

The kingdom of God, and its works, will always look like the guy who found his treasure, who from joy over it sacrifices things and does works. FROM JOY OVER IT. JOY. If James' teachings don't look like joy to you, I guarantee you aren't understanding it right. Go get the true faith, go find your treasure, find your joy in it, and your beautiful works, your fruit, will flow. Follow Jesus' example:

===================================
Hebrews 12
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
===================================

not advocating sin

2010-04-19T05:22:00.000-07:00

I need to put one thing to rest. I am not advocating sin. This seems to be everyone's chief fear when I talk to them. Pastors, friends, close people, people who see my imperfections and ridicule the message of grace, actually almost everyone I know, disputes the message because they think I am advocating sin, or what is called in theological circles "antinomianism." I can't even seem to finish a sentence before I am interrupted and corrected and rebuked for this. In fact I am pressing on with this work despite the fact that I am terribly discouraged right now because the obvious and wonderful message here is so universally opposed because of this fear.

Let's look at the way Paul approaches this. In Romans, Paul spends 11 chapters setting the stage, in which there are very few if any direct imperatives. Go thumb through Romans 1-11 some time and check it out - very few imperatives. He spends 11 chapters describing what it means to NOT be a believer, what it means to BE one, and the Christian's place in the dealings of God with the Jewish nation. He explains grace for 11 chapters! In chapter 12, when he begins to press into practical the practical applications of this identity, he starts by saying:

"I urge you THEREFORE, brethren, BY THE MERCIES OF GOD, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service fo worship." (Romans 12:1, NASB)

We are so worried about not being antinomian that we just like to skip all that drivel about our identity in Christ, about being identified with His death, all of that stuff that is so hard to understand, and jump straight to the good stuff, the convicting part, the application. We like to hear the convicting stuff. Yet, look how strange his list of applications are:

- think humbly of yourself
- exercise your gifts humbly, such as:
-- prophecy, service, exhortation, giving, leading, mercy
- unhypocritical love
- love good and abhor evil
- brotherly love and honor
- etc.

It never really gets to any seriously convicting part, I guess Paul didn't enjoy trying to make people feel guilty and terrible about themselves. In fact once he gets through this list, he launches into an entire section about being in subjection to the governing authorities, which at the time were actively anti-Christian.

What exactly am I saying? I am saying that real belief in grace, real belief in "the mercies of God", is the kind of belief that inevitably raises the question "what - should we just sin more? There are no rules at all???" (Rom 6:1) If you aren't getting that question then you probably aren't advocating as strong a message of grace as THE BIBLE is! Do sinners like to hang out with you? Then you probably aren't in the right camp. And it is just this message of dangerous levels of grace, outrageous levels of mercy, total and sustained forgiveness, that is the real soil for genuine holiness.

We see the same pattern in the other letters of Paul. For example, in Ephesians, He spends 3 chapters without any imperative at all, just going on about Christ and our identity in Him as a believer. Starting in chapter 4, he says

"walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called." In other words, get it straight that you are the beloved of God, called by grace, given tremendous gifts by grace, and walk practically in the light of that. But we want to jump straight to Eph 5 and beat married people over the head with loving and serving the spouse. Guess what? None of it makes any sense until you get the first 3 chapters straight!

Ministers with lots of theological brainwashing inevitably try to couch everything in terms of its danger for antinomianism or arminianism or 5 point Calvinism or some other theological mumbo-jumbo, instead of reading the ACTUAL TEXT of scripture for what it obviously really says. I am tired of all the guilt-inducing thinly veiled pseudo-grace double-speak. I believe in a God who truly loves me, in fact who likes me quite a bit. I am going to live from that place, and everyone who feels compelled to dispute it can try that if it makes them happy. I stand today in need of mercy, and I'm getting it!

In this is love

2010-04-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Another of my favorite verses:

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10, NKJV.

The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind soul, and strength. And yet, not Paul, but John, tells us, that love is not in this. However we make the rest of 1 John work for us, it all has to jive with this verse, does it not?

Here is the message: love begins with God. NOT that I love God. It is NOT that I love God! The pressure is off! That's right, He doesn't expect me to fulfill this greatest of commandments on my own. He loves first. If not this command, which command does He require? Being a Christian is not about entering a universe full of rules and conditions. All other human society is about fulfilling expectations and rules. Even complete hedonists have their own society of rules and conditions to be a part of the party. Becoming a Christian really primarily means, belief that God first loves us, and sends His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Faith in Christ is a condition in the same way that it is 'required' for you to be at the party in order to enjoy the party. Yes, you have to go. Yes, you have to believe, you have to receive the propitiation. However, couched in the frailties of human language and colored by the human condition, in which we are only used to living under laws and expectations and rules since the time we were infants, it is difficult for us to see what this all means.

Now does this mean that we do not love? We just sit around not loving and being loved by God, it is all a one-way street?

Let's say, hypothetically, that it does. Yes, we just sit around not loving, being completely horrible and self-centered, expecting and hoping that God somehow loves us anyway. Isn't that the way it is anyway? If God expected us to change first, to love first, we have a distinct problem don't we? Have you ever made a resolve that you need to love God more? It doesn't really work does it? You can pretend and pose and talk the talk. At the back of it all is a real irritation with all of the interruption and work that it represents. Life becomes all like a trip to your in-laws when you would rather be fishing or something on a beautiful day. I confess: I am all a sham. No, I do not love God very well, I am quite terrible at it.

So, I would say, yes, it does indeed mean that we do not love. Just settle in and admit it, start there. Until you have worked it out that the first thing is that GOD loves YOU, even YOU, whatever you do, you are quite useless, and worse than useless. Your first thing is to stop posing and start being honest. You don't love God, you don't know where He is, you have other interests and problems, His laws and requirements are all an intrusion into your little party. He knows the real you anyway, He is quite OK with it.

This is the thing to get straight, here is what this is saying. He loves you. HE loves you. He LOVES you. He loves YOU. YOU are the one He loves. Do you get it? Forget about sin and performance and serving and the whole world of all of it. It will come later in the right place and time. HE LOVES YOU. The 'kingdom' of God is all about real honest desire and passion, and it starts with Him. You are the pearl He seeks, the sheep He went to rescue, the long-lost son He longs for. HE ACTUALLY LOVES YOU. This is the beginning. Once you stop all your fake posing and stop whitewashing your loveless dead tomb of a heart and let this just soak in, you will see it. And then you will see that this is actually all about love, it is not a demand or a moral requirement.

THEN, you will begin to see that an honest response of love will start to form in you. He loves me, you will say in your heart, He knows everything about me and still He loves. And real affection, real joy, real simple honest delicious love begins to come to you. It is a response to His love, not what he requires but what He longs for!

And this is the context from which to read the rest of 1 John, to understand love in general.

Vision

2010-04-13T12:11:00.001-07:00

1.

the architect envisions
the site
the purpose
sits at the table
with pen and tools
carefully
draws lines
crafts letters
sips coffee
scratches his head
erases things
pauses to think
soon the plans are finished.

hot persistent terrible burning
suffocating relentless cruel shame
horrible anguished sleepless nights
the architect envisions
the dying agony of millions
which adorn this most historically important
architectural space

70 years later
we find the beautifully lettered blueprints
for Auschwitz.

2.

I went to Auschwitz
as a seer of sights
as I walked
my faith
was shaking slipping
as I witnessed the remains
of carefully engineered cruelties.

I entered
with fear
Block 11
"The Block of Death"
If you walk down the stairs
there are cellars underneath
less than 7 meters square
where up to 38 prisoners
would be stuffed naked
to starve
to die
to be experimented upon.
These are the darkest pits
of one of history's worst places.

Years ago a person
was shoved into one of these cellars
who knows how long he was there
before an idea occurred to him.
Pushing his weak and trembling elbow
into the naked bony sides
of his companions,
with a small stone
or with his fingernail
he etched into the hard wall
in the darkness
a picture of Christ
dying on the cross.

I saw this canvas with my own eyes,
and my mind received instruction:

"I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me."

They could do every evil thing
to this man
but they could not conquer his faith.

3.

I went to Auschwitz
as a seer of sights
a tourist to the spectacle of tragedy
and I saw
a mound of eyeglasses
I remember it as a mountain
and I saw searing like the sun
that it was not
nameless faceless millions
who were murdered
a person was murdered
a person
with vision
hope
romance
fear
genius
sin
a real person
The world still bleeds from the loss
We will never know what they saw.

Joy Over It

2010-04-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite passages:

““Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, “who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Matthew 13:44-46, NKJV.

There are two parables here, and while at first glance they are similar, in fact they are very different, like two bookends, or a left and a right hand. The first is from the human perspective, the second is from the divine perspective.

In the first, we have a man, someone walking through a field he does not own. One might say, he is trespassing. He is poking around a bit. Unexpectedly, he finds a treasure hidden in the field. No one else knows about the treasure, no one else sees it. Everyone else looks at this field and says, 'there is a worthless scrubby rocky piece of land!' It is such a bad parcel that the owner doesn't even know there is a treasure in there somewhere. However, our man, by sheer accident, has found it. It is invaluable treasure, the fortune of a lifetime. He is THRILLED! Note, that he maybe should have gone and told the owner, but that isn't what he does, because he is greedy for it. He WANTS the treasure badly, he really wants it.

And here is the key: 'from JOY over it' he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. The whole field, which no one else wants. He sells everything, sacrifices everything, from joy. His joy leads to sacrifice because he has perceived value hidden in that field that no one else can see.

And so, the non-believer looks at our field, and doesn't see the treasure. All that is evident is the weird right-wing churchy people, the buzz-kill stop-the-party attitudes, dressing up early on Sunday, fake weird people, guilt-inducing sermons, the whole rottenness of Churchianity culture. And They Don't WANT It!!! Of course they don't! I didn't buy the field, personally for the field, and the field is nothing like what it looks like from afar anyway; I bought it for the TREASURE, which they can't see. There is treasure, sweet treasure in most of those hated right-wing churchy people. Notice that the whole field isn't treasure, there is a lot of scrub and rock and bluff. A lot of stuff in the field is just churchianical bilge, but there is treasure in there. More importantly, there is treasure in there; there is God in that field. What kind of God?

The next parable gives us the absolutely shocking nature of this treasure. Notice in the first parable, if you read it carefully, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure. In the second, the kingdom is NOT like a pearl, it is like the merchant who seeks. In the first, we have some bumbling fool who trespasses and stumbles over a treasure quite by accident. But here we have a merchant who is an expert, and who is always searching, searching his whole life, for this great pearl. He knows pearls, he is an expert, he knows what he is looking for. This person IS the kingdom of God. In other words, God is the merchant, and we are the pearl. This is the intent of the message: we are a rare and sought after treasure in the eyes of God. He really really likes us; he wants us; he perceives enormous beauty and wealth in us.

In both parables, we have sacrifice, deep sacrifice. However, it is not a grudging martyr-syndrome long-faced obligation. It is a sacrifice born of real desire, of intense greed. These are people who see what they want very very clearly, who could care less what others think, they see something that no other sees. And they go for it. They do whatever it takes, they sell everything, to get the thing they want. Apparently the kingdom of God has far less to do with being tricked into being bleached colorless and being inoffensively moral and good, and far more to do with wreckless passion for treasures. And these are secret passions, hidden treasures, perfections and beauties which only they see.

And so the kingdom of God is like an intense cosmic romance, a coming together of the two genuine desires with a sacrifice born of utter disregard for everything else in the world. God doesn't forgive because it is His job; He forgives because he so greatly loves, and sacrifices all else. The secret 'force' or intelligence that has caused the universe to spring into existence, and who has caused life in all its complexity and mystery and ferocity and wonder, has been searching the universe, and he found ME. I am His pearl, I am the one He loves. I am important, far more important in His eyes than I would have believed myself.

I am walking today, you are walking today if you have seen your treasure, as one who is greatly loved by the God who is real. In His eyes, according to this, you are a pearl worth sacrificing all else for. To God, you are worth dying for. God sees something in you that no one else sees, and He is the only expert whose opinion matters. Forget trying to be good, and worry about real desire, and instead walk in the joy of being the one who is very greatly loved. This is the soil, this is the seed, that bears all other fruit.

Is this not something wonderful, something exciting, to believe? Don't you really hope it is true?! It is true.

Starting a book about GRACE....

2010-04-12T05:17:00.000-07:00

I am starting a new book about grace; as my wife Betty knows it is my constant soapbox, my idee fixe. I wanted to post some things as I'm working toward it here so I can reference it on FB and such and get some reactions from friends. This is not really a chapter, but a sampling of some of the ideas I want to reference.

============================

Grace and forgiveness and mercy are the real and central message of God, the core gift and offering of Jesus Christ to the world. They are the key difference between Christianity and every other system of belief. The gospel is actually really good and happy news. Grace encloses and extends and reinforces mercy. It is not necessary or even possible to be forgiven once in the past, and to move on to a maturity which does not lean on grace and mercy day by day. There is none worthy, none righteous, including the religious and Christians. We become Christians by being delivered out of a universe of law and retribution and earning favor or punishment, to a law of love and liberty and grace, based upon belief. All acts and works of righteousness stem from the root of grace, not from the root of law. The law as understood in Romans cannot be narrowly defined as some weird historic ritualistic animal sacrifice; it means, really, the whole law, loving God and fellow man. We are not under obligation, even for these things. The purpose of the law is not in fact to obligate anyone.

Christian law, the law of Jesus in the sermon on the mount and such, is much much harsher than Jewish or Islamic law. It demands impossible things from the heart, impossible sacrifices, impossible perfection in subtle points of ethics and motivations. Christian law does not just apply to behavior, it applies to the secrets of the heart and mind. It is cruel and impossible, to a ridiculous and extreme degree. If we aim to discard Jewish law only to replace it with Christian law, we do not present liberty or good news. We present condemnation and despair. Those seeking true freedom, true happiness, correctly run from such ‘good news’.

We must form our day to day and practical doctrine from the whole message of scripture. The scriptures speak as a unified whole, a monolithic message. You cannot take the harsh sayings of Jesus only, and throw out the passages which indicate patience and mercy and kindness and softness toward the sinful. Jesus is not schizophrenic, Jesus is in fact very much in line with the message of Paul.

Justification, as well, is not a one time gift for past sins, at which point the Christian enters into a harsh world of moral perfection and obligation. Maturity does not leave grace and mercy behind. Blood is perhaps an apt metaphor; it circulates not only to constantly bring oxygen and nourishment to the body’s tissues, but to remove the wastes which accrue as a product of living. The result of belief in mercy and forgiveness is that there is a an open door, always, to press on to holiness, holiness which is desired as a result of being loved and blessed, not a veneer of holiness pressed upon an unwilling slave who longs to be free from its demands. We stand, new Christian and “mature” Christian, together, as sinners in need of grace and mercy, and always getting it. True holiness is born of grace, not law. It is absolutely and thoroughly Biblical, as we shall see.

Many would say, this is nothing more than a license to sin. As Paul says, shall we sin all the more that grace may increase? Many pastors would say, that may be true, but if you stood up in the pulpit and said so, everyone would take it as a license to sin. I’m so glad that we have moved forward and past the wisdom and revelation of the apostle Paul, whose teachings we can so easily ignore and toss out with the garbage. Obviously he didn’t understand the needs of the modern congregation. We should be clear that his message was so strong concerning grace that he was compelled to answer the question, “What then? Shall we sin all the more that grace may increase? may it never be!” We will explore his answer in more detail later, but rest assured that he spends EIGHT CHAPTERS in Romans making this point. It is quite important, and anyone who thinks they can ignore Paul’s message in Romans and interpret any other passage in the Bible is headed into deep and terrible waters.

I want to emphasize that I believe this is an error of a large percentage of mainstream evangelical Christianity. The saving work of Christ on the cross has been marginalized to a one time past experience for the believer. We see this in countless sermons from kind and well-meaning pastors, who sweetly give sermons that make the whole congregation feel convicted and condemned for things they will never really comply with, and tack on a completely unrelated call to belief in Jesus at the end. Our holiness seems to be wholly disconnected to our salvation. I do not believe it can ever work that way, and I do not believe it is Biblical.

You can either choose to read the Bible from the perspective of a pharisee, and make the 'nice' parts uneasily fit into your hard world, or you can read it from the perspective of grace, and interpret the condemning parts from the perspective of Paul’s teachings in Romans. You cannot hang your hat on James’ statement that faith without works is dead, without reference and harmony with Paul’s statement that we are justified by faith, not works. Either the whole Bible is true, and it is happy, or it is contradictory, and you should go elsewhere.

The true Christian has left the universe of the obligated, of slavery to the law, of unwilling morality, and has entered the universe of grace, of favor beyond merit.

The Christian doctrine does not exist solely to trick or scare people into being more moral. Christ came for liberty, for truth, for love, for forgiveness. It is a message in which God loves us with a very strong and enduring love, and in which righteousness is grown patiently and waited for as a fruit, not demanded by a harsh slave master. It waters, it nourishes, it waits patiently, it says, “there is no fruit yet, but indeed, it will come.” It is a message of God-initiated love, not a message of condemning messages of “hope” which are all about cleaner harder-working protestant work-ethic principles to live by.

Righteousness is a gift, not an imperative. It is to be taken with gratitude, not demanded under threat of punishment. Otherwise, the message in which Christ came to save the world, not to condemn it, becomes meaningless and ridiculous, and we start to avoid the ‘easy’, the ‘nice’ passages.

touch

2010-03-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

The river
touches mountain and sound
for millenia flowing
wild and free
confined to its ribbon bed

is this water
one with the glacier
one with the delta
or separate different
is light a wave
am I the one soul
who at birth
who at death
who now breathes
freely chooses
the forged path I walk
does history forge me
or do I walk apart
clean my dishes
sing my song
perhaps yes and no

the river roars its answers
knowing not these questions
for millenia flowing
wild and free.

you may think

2010-03-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

you may think

you may think
these are words
this is a poem
this looks like a clever one

you may think
you can read it
appreciate it
like a daffodil or a butterfly

you may think
he is a poet
you are an enlightened reader
you appreciate his fine work

you may think
this guy sucks
he thinks this is poetry
I've read Milton and Yeats

you may think
this is uncomfortable
what does this guy want
I am reading his damned poem

you may think

turn as one

2010-03-10T21:22:00.001-08:00

Oh!
the cloud of white birds
turn as one
across the vast farmland
for an instant shine
in the waning sun
Oh!
the white birds turn as one.
Oh!
the white mountains shine behind.
Oh!
the fast river
flows around the smooth smooth stones.
Oh!
the farmer wipes her brow
and turns again
to the nascent living soil.
Oh! Oh!
beautiful beautiful beautiful day.
I and my son turn as one
and walk back home.
Oh!
we turn as one.

still

2010-03-05T10:22:00.001-08:00

still
the fog hangs
white mist gently obscuring
the trees stand as gray shadows
the moon a blurred whiteness
a slight mist moistens
from the deep sky
the frosted meadow glistens

still
I watch as my mind
clamors for succor
until as a babe
I settle all peace
as in my mother's arms

still

now

2010-03-03T07:34:00.000-08:00

(image courtesy of h.koppdelaney)

the time has come

from
every universe
all eternity
every potential
all possibility

the time is now

just
this once
once again
we converge together
at this humility

the time has come

time for birth
time for death
time to plant
time to harvest
time to kill
time to heal
time to weep
time to laugh
time to break
time to build
time to love
time to hate
time for war
time for peace

the counterpoint
of billions of
independent
sentient
universes
has coincided
in this single present

rhythm

2010-03-03T07:33:00.000-08:00

Rhythm

The rhythm of the waves
washes the air
an ever changing ostinato
Soon fades with the tides
Each time the same
Each time different

Leaf upon leaf
tree upon tree
shimmer the mountain in sunlight
whisper on the waves of wind
Each time the same
Each time different

The kiss lingers
The lovers love again
Urgently merge waves of savage tenderness
In a counterpoint of shared ecstasy
Each time the same
Each time different

Desperate pain and dread
disappointment and failure
besiege the soul in waves of shame
addiction failure betrayal
Each time the same
Each time different

change and novelty
newness and invention
soon grow weak
nuance and rhythm
are the hidden power of life

prejudice

2010-02-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

A thousand ptolemies
lie dormant in my breast
comfortable false conjectures
that conveniently fit the facts
universes so reasonable
and yet so wrong
at their heart.

Where is my observatory?
How shall I perceive it?
How can I know what is real?

O Show me the true center of things
and show me the real order of living
and let my ptolemies
be left in their medieval dungeons
where they belong.

sand

2010-02-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

(originally written in foot-high letters 100 yards across a beach)

ebb and tide
wind and wave
must surely steal these words

yet I will
for a moment
steal the silence
from this sand

as sure as this wisdom
will surely fade
as strong the force
that drives these waves

I must speak.

real life

2010-02-16T07:33:00.000-08:00

the dozens of living swans
seem amazingly like the real ones
I know from Disney
from plastic and concrete in the old woman's yard
from childhood picture books
I had never seen a real swan
aren't they supposed to be in a lake
don't their necks form hearts?
where is the music
the symphonic swell?
And here they are digging for slugs in a field
they are lovely
but not like the real cartoon.

The snow tufted evergreen trees
seem amazingly like the real ones
I know from childhood holidays
they look green
they look cone-shaped
and they are even flocked!
I had never seen a real living tree
with actual snow
with green needles
the shape isn't as perfect
as our artificial tree was.
Yet here they are laden with snow
thousands of living trees
but not like the real Christmas ones.

My actual wife
seems almost like a real woman
I know from magazines
from movies and television
from adolescent fantasies
I never had a real woman with me
wasn't I supposed to chase her at the last minute thorugh the airport?
somehow our arguments don't seem as funny as the TV ones.
who knew it would go on for 20 years?
Here she is and she loves me
the feel of her real lips
is like nothing I could have imagined.

My life my day to day existence
seems very different not at all like
the real lives I know
the action hero lives
the buff and brilliant shirtless guys
the rich and powerful who never work.
At a certain point
all my potential
had to become a real decision
in a real house/job/marriage/friendship
Here I am laden with history and mistakes and successes
none of which have I ever seen
in the life of a celebrity.

The philosopher steps out
has a look
with a look
of astonishment
steps back in
arms waving
feet stomping
yelling
screaming
threatening
scolding
wooing
singing talking crying laughing
the crowd
irritated and interrupted
turns and twists
to see the flickering shadows
on the wall.

moving mountains

2010-02-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

the desire came
uninvited
unreasonable
untouchable
by my own derision
or the inevitable scorn of
wife
mother
father
friend
boss
and even God
a mountain that stands unmoved
against wind
against storm
against time
all my doings
are the fuzz of green trees
around its base
I am powerless to
move it
change it
touch it
where does it start?

In a hidden cleft of rock
there is a wild tiger lily
impossible and exquisite
orange with brown spots
and long yellow pistils
the next time I am there
it is gone
for it
the mountain
has moved.

orange

2010-02-09T07:26:00.000-08:00

orange twilight
glows over the waters
fir silouettes stretch
across the horizon
along the island mountains beyond

beyond metaphor
beyond story
beyond discontent

the shaded path meanders
mile after mile
the silent and persistent
life of the forest
moss and fern and wood
transcends
scientific explanations
the seeking of poems
the need for exercise
the hunger for epiphany

up the mountain
a spray of young alder
paper birch
hemlock
spruce
stand playing in the wind
in a secret glade
a huge fallen redcedar
hosts explosions of moss and lichen and fern

silence and life and ancient secret
brood over this place
simplicity and wildness and beauty
fragrance the air itself
quietness quenches my mind

A gunshot shatters the stillness
and I remember
below
the call of the civilized
demands and chores and bills and worries
contentions and conflict
entertainment and snacks
other distractions
unaware of this poetry so near
demand my presence my joy

I linger then turn back
carrying unspoken secrets
simple plotless stories
of quiet fragile enduring life.

part

2010-01-26T18:24:00.000-08:00

O and the ocean does churn
and the mountains do stand
and the sun does shine across the waters

And all the critics
fight the constant tide
of trivia and envy and need

The tiny child rests against
its mother's quiet breast
safe and unknowing
a part of
apart from
all the angry urgent majestic world.

winter poem

2009-11-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

silent wild fury
descends from deep heights
quiet I stand
made of secrets
woven of desire fear music stories
almost blind
wonder at the grand firs
pressed down with white
so weary of the weight
at a slight wind
powder cascades
from some high branch
in a silent explosion
a salty tear
born of cold
born of wonder
born of secret pain
born of mystery like the stars
washes its path down my whitened face

I move on through the thick deep silence

Awl

2009-11-19T17:53:00.000-08:00

It was the awl
that blinded little Louis
that was used
to create the first braille.

It was the everyman
the destroyer of sons and daughters
the wounder and the wounded
the patient and the doctor
the blind leading the blind.

I am the blind one
I am the maker of ways
for all of us unhealed.
I tell rumors of light and color
and unseen beauties
I am the dreamer
the idealist
I believe in the unseen.

isaac

2009-09-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

“Then He said,
“Take now your son,
your only son Isaac,
whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah,
and offer him there as a burnt offering
on one of the mountains
of which I shall tell you.””
Genesis 22:2, NKJV.

Your son
your only son
whom you love:

Take him
tie him down
kill him
burn him

All at the behest
of GOD.

WHAT?

This is carefully designed to offend.

It stands against paternal love
It stands against hope
It stands against what is moral.

There is nothing good in this command
nothing could comply with it
except raw trust.

Our lives are filled
with impossible demands
situations in which every possible option
seems wrong
nothing is what we want
no clear moral option presents itself
all options stand in the way
of our once glorious potential

Yet here we stand
we are cornered
faced with evil choices only

Only absurdity faces us:
either the universe sprang into being
from nothing
uncaused
or
a great intelligence
strange and silent
a writer of crazy stories
put us into this furnace
or
who can know.

All absurd
and yet
here we are.

Take your precious and limited life
your only life
which you love
and go
wash the dishes
do the laundry
pull the weeds
do your work
believe
offer it there.

Public discourse in a nation full of boneheads

2009-09-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

Ossification occurs when soft tissue turns into bone. Sometimes this is good, as when an infant's soft cartilage transforms into healthy normal bone as the child grows. Sometimes this is bad, as when spots in breast tissue calcify and can indicate cancer. Malicious ossification is a perfect metaphor for the current state of our national political discourse. Places where we need flexible negotiation, respectful persuasion, and effectual compromise have become increasingly stiff, alarmist, disrespectful, and polarized. The rest of our national problems pale in comparison to this problem, because no solutions to the other problems can even be rationally discussed and no workable solutions can be arrived at in the current climate.

A statesman is listed in the Encarta® World English Dictionary as "a senior politician who is widely respected for integrity and impartial concern for the public good." This idea of a statesman denotes a leader who is broad-minded, and can be trusted to reach satisfying solutions quite apart from temporary winds of political bias. The voice of the statesman is missing from our current public discourse. In particular, most people seem to insist on leaders who will "stand up" for their viewpoints. What "stand up" means is, they want leaders who are inflexible, thoughtlessly opinionated, unafraid to be rude, and completely uncompromising; such leaders are celebrated. Any form of compromise at all, any flexibility in negotiation, any incremental success, any slight bit of give towards the interests of those on the other side of the aisle, is seen as an unforgivable weakness. Anyone who would command respect from their core constituency must lead in this way or they will quickly lose their respect and support. Frankly, this is particularly a problem on the right, but the left is a culprit just as much in more subtle ways. There is little doubt that this has become the nature of political culture in this day and age.

Real power resides in the art of persuasion, not in the stubborn and harsh refusal to compromise. Persuasion happens when one side recognizes and respects the other side's interests with true empathy, and thus is able to make ones own interests seem to coincide in a desirable way where they once did not seem so. A statesman has the breadth of mind to reach a reasonable compromise which supports a good number of one's own interests while supporting a good number of the other side's interests as well. Another way of looking at this is, a statesman is able to lose well, to lose some battles while winning the more important ones. A statesman recognizes the interests of the opposing side as the mother lode of success, and is careful to treat these interests, though not his own, with tremendous gravity and respect.

However, in our general political discourse, virtually every issue is painted as an urgent life-threatening, do-or-die thing, and failure or even slight compromise spells the end of the United States of America as we know it. There is no middle ground, no negotiation; no compromise is possible at all. Statesmanship does not seem to be possible because the constituency demands otherwise.

Let's look at a few examples. (Remember, I am not looking at whether you or I agree with one side or the other on these issues, I am using them as examples of ossification in public discourse.) In economics, those on the right would like to see a fairly pure laissez faire free market system, with little or no government intervention. Most on the right seem unwilling to acknowledge that a lack of government intervention and oversight contributed to the market excesses that gave us the current economic crisis. We may be able to talk about this, but a conversation requires a willingness to listen to reasonable opposing viewpoints and includes the possibility of persuasion. I do not sense this possibility in many of my friends on the right. To them, anything besides pure free market economics is socialism
On the other hand, it is a legitimate concern when the federal government begins to take significant ownership in private companies such as GM. We are not a socialist state and such a move stirs true fears that the administration has no grasp of the implications of what it is doing. Again, it is difficult to raise such a point with my friends on the left, although the culture of the left has not yet ossified with as hard a resistance to questions about its economic ideologies and actions as the right. I believe this has little to do with statesmanship, and everything to do with a lack of clear thinking about the issue on the liberal side of the aisle.

On social issues, let's take the example of abortion. I have friends on the right who would not blink an eye to call Obama a "baby-killer", and if you challenge this at all you must be someone who supports baby-killing as well. It doesn't do to remind them that Obama has said he would like to see abortions reduced or eliminated; if he doesn't reverse Roe v. Wade then he is a baby killer. People on the left are equally clueless about the power and centrality of this issue to people on the right. Taking the perfectly reasonable assumption that an unborn child is a real human being, isn't it reasonable to assume that abortion is murder? If people on the left aren't even going to try to realize the power of this issue, how can they hope to speak persuasively to the interests of those on the right in a constructive way?

We are in a time when I think we can say that respect for our leaders has largely died. If you say, I respected Reagan, or, I respect Obama, then you are part of the problem. Respect is tested when an honorable man with somewhat different viewpoints than your own is in office; it is possible to respectfully disagree. There is an increasing pattern of disrespect and even hatred for leaders on the opposite side of one's aisle. President Bush was vilified to the point that he couldn't even speak or walk without being viciously ridiculed no matter what the message. President Obama can't even address students with an innocuous "do good in school" message without being compared to Hitler and Stalin and accused of brainwashing our youth. No leader is perfect, and we all have genuine disagreements with what they are doing and how they are going about it, but if we are going to have civil discourse then there has to be a level of civility. In my opinion this is entirely missing. There are certainly ways to persuasively and intelligently disagree with policies without this kind of puerile and hostile disrespect. What do we think we are going to accomplish this way? It is similar to Arab terrorists thinking they somehow advance their cause by flying planes into buildings; do they think the west is suddenly going to come to their senses and believe in Allah when they do this? Similarly, do we think that our hostility and blatant disrespect is going to influence the other side, or further our interests in any way?

The divisiveness in our current state of national dialog really has very little to do with our leaders, and has much more to do with our citizenry. Our citizenry has been educated almost exclusively on a vocational basis, and our schools and universities are much more focused on producing useful narrowly specialized workers who make enough money to shop than producing intelligent generally educated citizens. The universities are particularly at fault. We are paying for this now in a big way. Few people understand or desire statesmanship, few people understand what they are looking for in a leader or in the nuances of his policies.

The real way to influence is not to vilify leaders, but to approach an area of disagreement with the respect for opposing viewpoints that is genuinely merited, and to respectfully seek compromise solutions that respect the interests of both parties. There is genuine impetus for leaders to seek this, they are not well served by pushing for a selfish agenda by brute force tactics, and the leaders themselves know it well. Wise leaders are sensitive to the need for delicacy, and if they are not wise, they soon will be forced to become so. People on the other side of the ideological aisle can depend on the leader's need to accommodate them. This need to accommodate is a real force, and we should work in concert with that need to see things happen instead of resorting to extreme and untenable agendas and calling political leaders buffoons or Hitlers.

This complete lack of a willingness on either side to be respectfully aware of the other side's interests and viewpoints, the increasingly hostile form of discourse on virtually every issue, is revealing a society that is diseased and no longer able to productively dialog and peacefully resolve its own problems. When the dialog becomes more shrill and disrespectful, thoughts begin to turn to other means than words to accomplish one's ends. We are fools if we think this is not heading toward some form of violent conflict. It is high time for right thinking people to stand up to people in their own camp and call down the foolish and shrill name-calling, and to work from within to call for statesmanship and effectual negotiation.

So, what should president Obama do in this strange climate? The nation badly needs a 'come to Jesus' speech where he spells out the fears of the right, and how his views really do oppose theirs, but also, how his administration is served by coming to the table to compromise. Bring up some embarrassing quotes of people in his administration, and point out that as the leader, he has no tolerance for such things and how such statements really do hurt his cause. He really needs to make the case that this is more than political rhetoric or bluster. A few examples of how it really has hurt his cause would help make the point.

Abortion really needs to be frankly addressed. Most people on the left do not understand the power and centrality of this issue for a lot of people on the right. Point out that this is not a black and white issue, and we can work toward compromise solutions that really do reduce abortions, which is what everyone wants anyway. The president needs to ask for cooperation in a way that is realistic and doesn't obliterate the interests of the right or the left to come up with ways to reduce abortions going forward. I think this could have more impact on reducing abortions than all of the hard-line legislation and angry pro-life rallies in the world, and it would be coming from a democratic leader! It is a great opportunity for the president to prove himself a statesman in a very important context.

The most important thing the president could do would be to point out that if the nation cannot on the whole agree to a way to have a civil and respectful dialog, then we will continue to have a pattern where those who are temporarily in power have to push as hard as they can while they have power to trample the interests of the other side, because both sides realize there is no room for persuasion, no room for useful negotiation, no room for statesmanship, because there can be no statesmen as long as the people demand harsh stands. Implore everyone on both sides to cry out for intelligence, for statesmanship, for brilliant compromises, and to reject grandstanding fools who play well to the vocal core but are useless to the real problems and solutions at hand.

A far more important question is this: what should YOU AND I do? We need to seek a far more penetrating insight into the interests and desires of those we disagree with, and speak empathetically and persuasively in a civil and respectful dialog. We need to begin to cry out for statesmen, not hard-line opportunistic loud-mouths. We need to realize that civility and respect and awareness of the interests of those we disagree with is the only way we will ever see our own agendas achieved in a sustainable way. We all need to grow up. The cancerous ossification is not in Bush or Obama, it is in each of us. We need the humility to recognize that we are a nation of boneheads, and seek a grassroots transformation to living able thinking minds.

There is no hole in the gospel

2009-06-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

There is a book apparently circulating around my church called "The Hole in our Gospel." The byline is "What does God expect of us?"

First, I want to make it clear that while the author, Richard Stearns, means well, I strongly stand against the message of this book. I will go as far as to say that I think this book is very damaging and its core message is evil.

Let's look at a quote from the book:

"Belief is not enough. Worship is not enough. Personal morality is not enough. And Christian community is not enough. God has always demanded more."

Silly apostle Paul and his crazy ideas about salvation by faith, and living by grace and by the Spirit. Mr. Stearns presents us with a caricature of belief in grace thusly:

"More and more, our view of the gospel has been narrowed to a simple transaction, marked by checking a box on a bingo card at some prayer breakfast..."

He likens belief in grace to a "bingo card" gospel. He says that the true gospel is like this:

"... it first requires that we repent of our own sinfulness and totally surrender our individual lives to follow Christ, but then we are also commanded to go into the world - to bear fruit by lifting up the poor and the marginalized, challenging injustice wherever we find it, rejecting the worldly values found within every culture, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. While our 'joining' in the coming kingdom of God may begin with a decision, a transaction, it requires so much more than that."

I want to remind you that he is saying that there is a HOLE in "our" GOSPEL. It is the title of the book. Essentially, we cannot really call ourselves Christians unless we go to Afica and serve starving orphans and AIDS patients. It is the condition which God requires. It is the GOSPEL. Simple belief in Christ is a fake gospel, the REAL gospel requires you to do some kind of drastic level of sacrifice, all the better if it involves Africa. Somehow all of this heaping guilt and responsibility for all of the world's problems on my shoulders is good news.

Why am I so hot about this? Anything we add to the gospel is evil. Either God saves us and loves us and redeems us by His own work through Christ and the cross only, or it is human work and effort only. It is Christ plus nothing which saves us and gives us the power to do good. The message of this book lays a terrible burden upon Christians that is not really there.

The reason we go to serve, our inner motivation, our belief system and the power which guides us, is all-important. If I go under compulsion that my very redemption, my salvation, my rightness with God, is predicated upon being there, that I am SACRIFICING myself to fulfill God's demands, what kind of person am I to those I propose to serve? I am a resentful selfish do-gooder that comes as an alien whose only real concern is to ease my guilty conscience before God. I do not come to them out of real compassion and concern for their needs, but for myself; it is desperate exercise in self-redemption. There is little joy in that, and if I talk to people who are not believers, is this the message of God to them? Not, I love you, I forgive, I welcome you, I have deep compassion for your hurts and shame, but rather, I need you to press you into terrible service which you cannot conceive of and do not want?

It is a bait and switch tactic isn't it? I utterly reject it. It starts with a fake promise of love and joy and freedom, but ends with burdens more terrible than any religion in history.

I think Paul's writings in the New Testament are clear that belief IS enough. It must be grace that motivates us to good deeds.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Ro 8:1 Nowhere in Paul's seminal books do I see the kind of 'gospel' spelled out that this book implies. I see grace spelled out by Jesus over and over. It starts with ME being the starving miserable rotten sinner, loved and redeemed by Christ, I see a father who always runs to welcome me with tears of joy and quickly clothes me and restores my dignity. Until I am solid in my place as one who is loved unconditionally and truly by the living God, and am comfortable that all of my good deeds are of grace, and that grace is all and in all and every good breath and every secret thought is redeemed and colored by grace, I can do nothing real to serve anyone. Doesn't anyone take the book of Romans and all the parables of Jesus seriously at all? Doesn't anyone shake with fear at all the hard teachings of Jesus about being pure of heart and not even being angry with people? Doesn't anyone believe that the real release is grace and forgiveness and the empowerment of the Spirit?

Do I thus say that we should not serve the poor, that we should just sit in a room in deep inner contemplation of the mysteries of God? Of course not! I say, do NOT mix up the beautiful message of the love of God and redemption for ME with ANY OTHER REQUIREMENT. A little mold ruins the whole loaf.

Why don't Christians defend grace? It is the only thing we really have at all!! It is the only thing we need. It is our only hope of serving anyone. Where is the voice that cries out, there is no hole in the gospel. It is God who saves me, I no longer am required to live up to the standards of religion. By the Spirit we are led by grace and compassion, and the crying need for every person is grace and acceptance and love. I celebrate that I have left the little prison of having to do this or that, small things or great, to earn God's favor. I am loved, now, and forever, and because I am loved with an extraordinary love I am greatly forgiven. I and my beloved do not put conditions of service on our romance. I am beloved. I serve because I love, and I love because I was first loved by Him. There is no greater message. If He, in His wisdom and love, leads me here or there, it is not the spirit of shame and obligation which is going to help me, but I will bear compassion and truth because I have been greatly loved, so I can love greatly. We belittle grace at great peril, but we triumph over every situation when we walk in the Spirit as beloved children. Belief in grace is no bingo card checkmark, it is the warp and woof of the simple Christian life. We are worse than nothing if we try to change that message. We become weapons that beat people into sullen miserable submission if we do not determine to teach nothing but grace.

The gospel is whole, and simple belief is more than enough, it is a great abundance. I urge everyone reading this to step into the light of belief in a real God who really loves you no matter what happens. Stop taking hard verses out of context so that you can interpret them in a hard way against grace. Stop excluding the passages which imply grace out of the picture so you can believe in a difficult and burdensome Christian life. The whole message of Christ obviously centers in forgiveness and grace and love. It is not your service which defines you, it is His love for you which defines you. Don't put the cart before the horse. First, find your treasure, hidden in the field, and then from JOY OVER IT you can make your sacrifices. Don't think that this is all splitting hairs and semantics. The flavor of the pure milk of the word is kindness - drink that, and refuse every condemning voice. Then you will find true compassion and will be a useful vessel to go into the world.

The wild river

2007-12-27T14:16:00.000-08:00

I went down to the wild river today
It is sometimes opaque turquoise, sometimes gray, sometimes blue. It is never the same.
today it was clear emerald green
with a mighty constant roar
and white foam bursting from the stolid rock
standing firm in the wild frothy midst.

The boulders and banks were covered in white snow
with dark green and orange lichen peeking through
and old growth evergreen forest dappled with white
silently and grandly standing watch
pointing courageously into the deep sky.

Behind them stood the frosted silent mountains
And i cried
because this is God's cathedral
this is God's music
this is sacredness
beyond culture and fashion
beyond fear whether I belong here or not
beyond my responsibility to clean it up
O God unnumbify me
awaken me to the grand mystery
of existence.

The Metric System

2007-09-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

My 10 year old asked me my opinion about whether we should keep the English System, or go to the metric system, and I realized I didn't really have an opinion about this. Upon reflection, I decided that I think the English system is the way to go, for these reasons.

Let's suppose that when measuring temperature, the normal range of air temperature in Degrees Fahrenheit at normal human occupied geographies is between 0 and 100. Just go with me. In Celsius that would be -18 to 37 degrees. There are roughly 55 degrees celsius in that range, a little over half the increments in fahrenheit. So, the normal range of temparature that humans deal with on a day to day basis is better mapped with more increments and more positive regular numbers by Fahrenheit.

This is true across the board. What is the metric equivalent of a gallon? There isn't one! Who honestly ever talks about decaliters or centilters or whatever? The arbitrary division of basic units by 10 doesn't map well to human experience. The units in the English system arose organically over time to measure things that human beings actually do. It is a bit of a mess, but it makes sense to us because there are units for things that we actually need units for. If you go into Canada, they measure distance in Km, but land is still sold by the acre. Why? It makes more sense to measure land that way than by the square meter or square Km.

The metric system was created by some scientists in the absence of thinking about how well it mapped to most of human experience. It is a wonderful experiment but I think the resistance to it is more than simple inertia; there is a reason that in some places like the US it is very much persisting.

Light has no speed

2007-08-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

This is truly a random insight. I'm sure a real physicist will tear this down in a few seconds, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
=========================
If you mess with the math a bit on the equation e=mc2, then space and time at the speed of light shrink to nothing, and the person’s mass and energy expand to infinity.

If this is so, then from light’s perspective, its speed is infinite. Why then does light seem to have a measurable speed?

or, if the speed of light is a constant, meaning that if a ray confronts someone going the opposite direction, and its speed is the same for them as someone going the same direction as the ray, then it is that their concept of distance and time changes to keep the speed of light constant.

So from the perspective of the ray of light, its speed is infinite; that is, it gets from point a to point b instantly with no lapse of time whatsoever.

So the measurers of the ray’s speed relative to the light may “clock” it at appr 186,000 miles /second, mathematically from the light’s perspective it must move instantaneously, and the measurers must be at a complete standstill.

Thus from the light’s perspective, it is nonsensical to think of “measuring” its “speed”; it exists simultaneously at all points along its path between wooden statues of men. How long does it take a bridge to travel from one end to its other end? it exists simultaneously at both ends, its speed is infinite. It makes no sense to discuss its speed.

That is why it is perhaps wrong to call light a wave or a particle. A wave requires a substance through which to move; this is the antiquated idea of ether. Nor is it a particle. Radiation must be simply a bit of the "E=mc2" stuff liberated suddenly into 2 or three dimensions, existing simultaneously in all points, perhaps increasing its length or volume for some reason over time to give the illusion of speed.

For the light, which is "E=mc2" stuff liberated suddenly into 2 or three dimensions, to exist at all, it must exist over time. I believe it is this which gives it the illusion of speed.

now if E=mc2, then matter is energy kind of balled up; yet if we have knowledge of the things existence at all, something has radiated from it to speak of it to our senses.

Thus I theorize that what they are measuring is not light’s speed, but similar bursts of radiation reverberating at different times along the path of the light’s path. That is, it exists in its entire volume through time, existing simultaneously along its entire path, and perhaps its speed is simply its length growing longer through time. It really has no SPEED, only length through time. It is a particle of the "E=mc2" stuff whose mass is liberated or simultaneously spread. There is obviously no difference between what we arbitrarily call "matter" and "energy"; it is the same stuff occupying a different sphere of influence.

Why is m so much smaller than E? it is the same stuff, somehow trapped into a smaller sphere of existence. Yet even at that, it is the same thing, having simultaneous existence along all paths of influence. C, the supposed velocity of light, is simply the rate of increase of the liberated "particle"'s influence over time. It is not traveling, it is growing, its mass spread over a larger sphere over time.

Why does it do this?????!!!!!!

yet how can light be such and yet have a "wavelength" such that we seem to be able to measure a doppler effect if the source of the radiation is moving away from us or toward us?

It must be some kind of shape or wavelet pattern which exists throughout the liberated "E=mc2" stuff's volume simultaneously over time, perhaps really having to do with its rate of volume increase over time. However, its rate of volume increase must be "c", the supposed speed of light. The difference would be the distance gained and the time interval awaited to achieve its gain.

C = Volume of influence increase /time elapsed to acheive its increase.

If the "E=mc2" stuff (let's call it "Q") changes its volume of influence ("I") at the rate of C, then what would be observed as a shorter wavelength increases I at shorter intervals of time, faster, than Q which is observed as having a longer "wavelength". Time elapsed is "T".

So, C = I/T; I = CT; T = I/C

ha ha, I've solved the puzzle of what time actually is! At least in terms of physics.

So, Q = E = mc2

Q = m(I/T)2

Q/(IT)2 = m

wow! the mass of something is really nothing more than its substance Q spread over its sphere of influence over time.

My math ability stops about right here, unfortunately, although I know there are some great and profound things to be discovered beyond this point in manipulating the equations.

This doesn't seem to make sense when you stand back and look at what it is saying, but how else can you interpret it all?

The real problems are these:
1. what exactly is “influence” ?
2. what is this “Q”? expressed mathematically, it is I think this fervor over new “particles” is perhaps wrong; these are all just different manifestations of Q, which can only be understood in the framework of these equations; that is, they are Q influencing in differing ways.

The real problem becomes, exactly what is "influence"? m and E are really nothing more than differences in the amount of influence.

influence indicates relationship, and relationship is meaningless without some common ground of interpretation. In other words, light has "speed" only because the instruments measuring its presence are not influenced at one point in time, and become influenced at another point in time.

Perhaps influence can be understood as a portion of Q changing its I when it resonates with another portion of Q encountering it.

Hallowing

2007-08-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

O God, teach what it means to hallow Your name
so many of the problems in my life stem from this
that my heart
from which flows all the streams of life
hallows the wrong things
and these things
having inadequate glory
produce no real hallowing
thus I know nothing in the now
of the hallowed.

O God, teach me the passion of hallowing Your name
show me substance to turn aside to
to snatch my heart from sin
to crush my heart with repentance
seeing not the horror of my guilt
but the hollowness of my life
We are worse than sinful
we are boring and colorless
but more, yes, there is the shame of it all
hiding under dark bushes
sewing leaves
that cannot hope to cover our vast guilt
our colorlessness
our straw-stuffed shirts.

Yet denouncing straw
does not change the soul
nor point to a greater glory
O God I seek Your face
Your presence
the presence
of the source of all souls
all minds all poetry all passion
all creation
mystery above all mysteries
I am weary of what is called "worship"
I seek God, the God who is real.
Yet I bow in humility
(as if I am so holy and so wise)
to participate in the community
of those who believe
to sing a song of praise
in the assembly
to remember Your excellence together
O God let hallowing increase
not mere singing
not mere dancing
not mere praising
dead repetition
no but hallowing
holy anger
holy fear
bowing the knee deeply
before Him who is greater
and far more humble
than we could ever know
more like a child
filled with more wisdom
power beyond the wildest imagining
of any technology
all good things find their meaning and source and end
in You O God
and I bend the knee
You are greater than me
greater than all
I know not what I have done
nor Who I seek
nor the place I am entering
I enter silent
with head bowed
if there is grace to enter
it is not of my merit
there is little of the child in me
little of the sage
there are a thousand turnings
to the whispers of the serpent
wrapped up around my soul
a thousand half eaten apples
lay strewn about my feet
millions of useless fig leaves
poorly sewn in haste in the dark
and wonder of wonders
it is YOU coming to seek me
calling my name
O God, do not ask what I have done
You know what I have done
I am so deeply sorry
Lord, I do not deserve these skins You offer
I am unworthy of this blood shed on my behalf
So I am thankful so thankful
I hallow this gift
treasure beyond treasures
to secure a wealth
beyond the resources of all all the universe combined:
to know the Maker of it all,
to whom it is nothing but a whim of imagination
called into existence with a word
Yes
I hallow this gift
wracked with weeping sobs
I offer my shamed and guilty self
on the altar
if You should accept me
and I kiss your feet
weeping
I cling to You
my only hope
and
my best hope
I hallow You above all creation.
So help me God.
AMEN.

vanishing point

2007-08-20T22:34:00.001-07:00

Here is another for your enjoyment.
====================================
What are we doing with our heritage?
unmoored from transcendent purpose
we flounder in a world of increasingly meaningless
and more importantly unrelated information.
Our scholarship is only something to keep us occupied
we seek not truth but tenure
not wisdom but vocation
not understanding but a field of study.
We move about in unrelated tiny boxes
because we have eliminated transcendent space
between our worlds
that is, faith in a transcendent God
in whom all things find purpose and inception and end.
We scoff at teleology
and become rootless meat machines
afraid to do more than build a better refrigerator.
Like a vanishing point in a renaissance painting,
we need a focal point beyond and outside of our tiny dimensions
to give focus to the art of being and living
to bring perspective to the relationship we have
to others
and to the world around us.
Without it, our science will be nothing more than utility,
and the understanding that brought us the utility we now have
did not come from seeking utility,
but from seeking knowledge,
and the utility was subsequent.
It is perhaps easier to catch a butterfly,
not by chasing it or shooting it,
but by being near it and letting it alight on you.
We have no perspective of the relation between art and science,
because we allow no transcendent reality
to give focus
to bring relation between the two.
There can be no comprehensivity
without transcendence,
and transcendence is a messy world,
too scary for an existentialist subjective empirical society.
If we cannot all agree on it
it must not be real,
so let us go on seeking a better job
piercing ourselves to be more shocking more legitmate
more real
perhaps another deluge of information
will ease the pain of this fear and drown out the awful mystery of existence.

Whatever we choose to believe or ignore,
I have news for you,
there is a transcendent reality,
a personal God
beyond our tiny fears of what "personal" may reduce Him to,
and if you want to scoff at me
for focusing my life
outside the flat dimensions
of my existential reality
that is your business,
but I will say something for your sake
of the Medieval fresco your life has become.
Let us jump out the frame together
into the dangerous joy of a common faith
and put our lives together
into focus and relationship.

journal selection

2007-08-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a selection from one of my journals; I hope someone enjoys it.
=============================
You are no theory
no mere unmoved mover
no mere philosophical necessity
You are the God who is REAL
the God of truth
the God who must be
the God who is my great and lasting passion
mystery of mysteries
hidden yet inevitable
perfect perfect perfect
is every thought
every time
every mercy
every revelation
every hidden thing
O O O O O
perfect and wonderful!
What is all of this You have done?
I will arise in wonder
and say I am in awe
of the great and beautiful mystery
of the gift of existence!
O whose hand has set this seed to take root
and to reach limbs high to the sky?
O whose hand has set matter and energy spinning
in what mystery of time and space and thought?
O who has plumbed the depths of reality
to understand the handiwork
of the God who is REAL?
Who arises to wonder?
Who arises to worship?
Arise all of you arrogant fools!
We all know nothing
but by the grace of the Almighty God of reality
Your ways are perfect from beginning to end Lord
I know nothing of what You will do!
But I know You are real
and I do fiercely and deeply love You
and I will say with my whole soul
that You are a God of excellence and splendor
a God of truth and reality
a God mystery and revelation
a God of surprises and present power
a God to whom creating the universe was but a trifle
but who will spend eternity in speaking wonders
to His bride in whom He has set autonomy and eternity
yet so as not to know all
in order to long for and ache and thirst
for God
as a lover for the presence of her love!

So do I long for You Lord
I lift my hands from the miry pit
and arise to triumph
in praise to You.

Richard Dawkins

2007-07-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

I realized after my last post that I have been thinking about Richard Dawkins a lot. If you haven't heard of him, you can read some quotes by him here.

As a Christian and a convinced member of the design science camp, you would expect that I would be feeling something negative toward these views. I admit that I don't think I could be close friends with someone that seems to breathe hatred towards me on account of my most cherished beliefs. However, in some ways we are far more alike than would be obvious at first glance.

Here is a man who is agreed with me on a very fundamental point: there is such a thing as truth! He is totally convinced that I am wrong, that my world view is absolutely askew. I am totally convinced that he is wrong, that his world view is completely off base from the root. We disagree on everything except for this: there really is some objective truth, a reality which explains existence.

It is actually refreshing to see someone who has firmly established in his mind that there is a true explanation for existence, and is willing to say so. I think the truth gets clouded and damaged when people try to be "tolerant" and "open-minded". I want to slap some people and say, "DAMN IT! WAKE UP! You can't believe everything, you fool!" I can absolutely guarantee you that Richard Dawkins is not open-minded, and I applaud him for it. I have spent a great many years forming my beliefs and thoughts, and I am not about to easily give over to every stupid whim of an idea that floats along. Open-mindedness usually means you hold no opinion dear and so you have not questioned things deeply enough on your own to hold your own thoughts. Richard Dawkins holds his own thoughts and so do I. We will probably never come to any agreement whatsoever, because I am completely and utterly convinced that he is WRONG. I flagrantly and proudly and abundantly proclaim that he is wrong, just as he does to me.

I'm not saying I "believe" he is wrong - that is a terribly wrong use of that word. I am saying that he IS wrong. Belief does not mean, I kind of weakly hope that my vague thoughts about the nature of reality are true, but I'm not sure. Belief means, I am thoroughly convinced that my view of the world is true. I have thought about this, read many books, reflected on many ideas, and fought and worked to understand TRUTH. You are going to have to work very very hard if you are going to convince me otherwise, and I guarantee you that you are not going to be able to persuade me on fundamental points. I believe what I believe, and I believe it very strongly and very deeply. I believe it, not because it is comforting or helpful or because I was raised that way. I hate these reasons for "believing" something. I believe it because I am greatly seeking truth. TRUTH.

There is actually truth. There is a real explanation for existence. No one is going to get anywhere in their life work if they have not become convinced on this particular point, and strangely, on this point, Richard Dawkins and I are on the same page. There is truth.

I think that is all I want to say with this post: doesn't anyone really believe in anything any more? We seem to live to only keep from offending one another, and this is a really weak basis for living. Offend me! I will love you for it. We may disagree, but that doesn't mean I don't respect you for having the courage to actually think deeply enough about the world to have something you can disagree with me about. I think we can be civil and strongly be convinced of what we do actually think the world is made of.

Music and the Long Now

2007-07-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

I read a book a while back that my mind often goes back to, called The Clock of the Long Now. They are trying to build a 10,000 year clock, and the basic idea is to force us to think in terms of the impact of our work and our mistakes in a longer term sense.

We live in a world where the disposability of things is accelerating. Great mountains of work and data from only 20 years ago are unreadable by today's machines, or are readable only with great effort. I've had years of my best work on databases unceremoniously thrown out when new technologies came along. Our work and creative output seems to become obsolete in increasingly small frames of time. We look at culture from "the 70's" or "the 80's" as being hopelessly different and perhaps backwater to our present society. Do things really change that much in 30 years? The American revolution was only about 230 years ago, which in the scope of history is a tiny blip. Yet we look on those times as hopelessly alien and long ago to us, like a completely different epoch. We are surprised when their ideas and work retain their relevance to our society.

The idea that we could do some kind of work which has lasting impact on human history and society seems impossible anymore. Will anything I do today have any relevance at all even 20 years from now? We are at a moment when our information based society needs to address the extreme transience which it fosters.

So the redesign of the web which is much needed and which, perhaps as a futile exercise, I am working on, must address the requirement for permanence and document stability. This is one reason why I like XML and semantic tagging, because documents should be stored in a format which is possible for a machine to dynamically parse, but which a human can read. Any use of XML which violates the human readable part of the equation, as HTML really does, fails. Javascript and CSS get broken every time a new browser version is introduced. The web is impermanent.

But even if this document stability requirement were met, it would mean that our society, our "information society", depends on incredibly complex machines and a vast interdependent web of power and information lines, to exist. We communicate via immensely complex protocols and standards. We live in a house of paper perched on gossamer held together with dabs of glue and tape. We are at home with impermanence. I'm not sure this is bad; I once wrote a series of poems in the sand on the beach which were completely washed away by the tide, and life is surely like that. Perhaps we are wise to embrace this impermanence.

What does all of this have to do with music? Music is a great art form to look at when thinking about the relationship between the extreme present and the long term or even eternal. Beethoven said that music should be at once surprising and inevitable. It is fascinating to me that Brian Eno is on the board of the Long Now foundation, his work is to me pretty much the icon of ethereal impermanent almost ghostly one-time performances. In fact, I think Brian Eno coined the phrase "Long Now". How could MUSIC of all things relate to the long now?

I was thinking that a lot of pop music is very focused on the fashionable and present tense moment. This is not bad or evil, Bach carefully studied the Italian Baroque music of his time and even wrote in the style. Music is a cultural activity, and culture is wed to the present time; in my opinion when John Cage tried to destroy this connection, he ceased making music. (I still find Cage's work interesting, I'm not criticizing his experiment.) The music of Bach survives because there is a depth and a level of architecture and value to his work that transcends the Baroque or the German Lutheran society of his time. Look at the Art of Fugue; Bach wrote this specifically to take couterpoint as far as it could go, to teach future generations what music could be. There is an eternal sense to this music, it is no longer baroque - he wrote it thinking toward the long now. If human society survives 10,000 years, they will find a way to preserve the music of Bach just as we have.

If we are going to build and work toward the long now, we need to determine that we are going to work according to a high and deep aesthetic; the lesson we learn from Bach is that it is not necessarily permanence which speaks to the long now; it is greatness. We build to the long now when we do work that would be tragic to lose.

Science and Religion

2007-07-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

So, I've been thinking about the relationship between science and religion. They seem to be very much at odds; the science-minded among us seem to think that the faith-minded among us are very naive and backward and stupid, while the religious, apart from being very frightened of the science-minded, seem to be content to ignore and belittle their cold and colorless stance. Yet I am noting, perhaps in both camps, at least among the more intellectual circles, a growing interest in finding some kind of common ground. Look at http://www.edge.org - a very anti religious site, which is seeming to come a bit toward a softer stance.

I've been thinking that it would be nice if the two could come to terms in a way that was not insulting either to science or religious orthodoxy. Yes, that's right, religious orthodoxy. When a fundamentalist says that the earth is 6000 years old, this is insulting to science. When Richard Dawkins says "And I am optimistic that this final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue deathblow to religion and other juvenile superstitions" and writes books called "The God Delusion," this is insulting to religion. Yet it is equally insulting to both to think that we can find some vapid happy medium. I can't stand these overly simplified compromises; truth is a very singular thing.

It is the wrong question to ask, is science right, or is religion right? Is there some middle ground? Maybe God caused evolution? I am always irritated and bored by these discussions regardless of your perspective. Who cares if religion or science is right? I don't. I care what is TRUE. People always seem to snicker and shake their heads when I bring this up, as if I am a naive child - the TRUTH is an impossible standard to obtain. In the REAL world we have science and religion. The true thought leaders in these fields were not pioneered by such cowardly thinking; they were pioneered by people who believed in and sought truth. A wreckless and fearless abandonment to the pursuit of truth is the only thing that will really carry the day.

Let's consider this: what options are available to us, here in the 21st century, to interpret and understand the world? We have science, which believes (yes - BELIEVES) that the universe sprang into existence uncaused, and that life arose purely by the lucky kiss of chance plus time. I think we should all step back and look with honesty, and say, this is absurd. It's OK, it is absurd. Science shoots itself in the foot and loses its credibility when it refuses to admit its weaknesses.

Now, let's consider the considerably murkier waters of religion and metaphysics. The religious believe that an invisible super-intelligent being somehow masterminded all of existence, but remains so elusively invisible that we debate about whether or not He even exists.

Then there are the agnostic among us, who pretend that it doesn't matter and we can't know and perhaps shouldn't pursue this. The strange and mystic thing here is that almost no one really believes this; we all strive to know the answers to these things; we maintain an insatiable curiosity. This is in itself a huge clue to me.

So, no matter what, we are shut up to believing in something which is patently absurd. There is no choice. Life is huge and beautiful and tragic and crazy and impossible to explain. Science is inadequate and religion is just... WILD!

One of the things I love about my faith is that it directly embraces this patent mystery; it demands faith right up front. It out and out admits that it demands belief in outrageous things. This does not make it true, by the way, don't think I am saying that. But it does say things like, God exists, God became a man, that that man's chief play for power was to die, even that somehow God wrote a book, things like that. The religious believer should not and cannot shy away from the fact that he believes in things that are shocking and outrageous.

However, does this mean, that in seeking truth, we only believe the shocking and therefore science is all wrong? How could that possibly be TRUE? Are we to throw all sense out the window? That would be just a little too black and white and simple to really explain the world, wouldn't it? Just as reason alone cannot explain or color existence, so faith alone cannot only guide us. Perhaps God has created nature and given us minds. The scriptures, in all of their admitted strangeness and also their beauty, do not really advocate a 6000 year-old universe or any such thing.

I want to go back to something I said earlier. Religion, and not only religion, but religious ORTHODOXY, is crucial to our pursuit of truth, because if there is a God, surely that God can speak to the humanity He created, and He could speak to people all through the history of mankind. If it is not old religion, it is not ancient wisdom, it seems not to be as good. That is why I say, science and religious ORTHODOXY need to come to terms with their own patent absurdities and their own strengths and come to a place where they are set together without insult in the pursuit of the actual truth which is there.

Human progress is more than technological progress

2007-07-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

Futurists, people who try to imagine what the future will be like, often think in terms of technology. Judging the progress of humanity by technology alone is similar to judging the progress of history by wars alone. We have come a tremendous way in providing agriculture and domesticated animals so that we no longer have to hunt and gather to survive, nor create our own clothing or build our own personal shelters, and we have managed to create tremendous interdependent societies of commerce. Technology has afforded us this.

However, as technology empowers us more and more, the overarching problem facing us becomes less and less one of technical ability, and more and more one of imagination. This is where artificial intelligence research fails; it is not a problem of technology. We are awash in a world of computers and software, in which it is far more important to have imagination than to have better technology. What we really need progress in is culture.

I am a musician, and I find the current state of music culture very deficient. Thank God the music "industry" is faltering, and the internet is affording a new freedom and economy of distribution to emerge. I am eagerly awaiting the effects of the long tail effect (The Long Tail). I have always thought that we have plenty of Bachs and Mozarts and Stravinskys still walking around, but the supposed "market" is now uninterested in their genius; meaning, it won't sell in Wal-Mart. Academic "legitimate" music has evolved into a backwater of hyper-intellectualized bilge that no one, even the composers, wants to really listen to. On the other hand, pop music has evolved into a vapid wasteland of largely repetitive 2 dimensional tripe. What happened?

We have sunk almost all of our societal genius and effort and education into technology and capitalistic entrepreneurialism. (Notice how music is really viewed largely as being a part of "Youth Culture", and intelligent grown men and women are left with dead white-guy music if they want music that is listenable and intelligent.) It is coming time when the champion to emerge in the marketplace will not be the technologist or the venture capitalist, but the one with imagination. The iPhone, for example, is not a triumph of technology, it is a triumph of DESIGN - imagination. Note that the iPhone is an assemblage of a lot of existing technologies, but the assemblage alone would be no triumph at all. It is the tasteful and artful design of the whole which makes it a success.

I am a database designer. People often misunderstand what I do; they think I am a "programmer". Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the careful and insightful analysis of the complex work patterns of people, and the artful production of spare and functional and beautiful interfaces which are at the heart of my work. Thus it is very much true that it is not the technology which drives what I do, but imagination. I believe that more and more, as technology progresses, it will succeed in that it enables us to be more human, more imaginative, more collaborative. More than approaching a singularity in which humanity loses its control and personality, we are approaching an explosion of far greater individual empowerment and creative potential than the world has ever seen. This is a fantastic time to live!