Getting What You Want

Sometimes it’s not good to get what you ask for.

As a boy, a friend of mine loved to visit his big sister at the deli where she worked.  Sometimes she’d fix him a treat; one day it was a bagel with cream cheese.  He loved it.  On his next visit, hoping for the same treat, he asked his sister for “a bagel with sour cream”.  She looked at him quizzically and began to suggest that perhaps he meant cream cheese, but he was quite insistent on his order.  Eventually she toasted a bagel, topped it with sour cream and handed it to him.  His face scrunched into a grimace as he suddenly realized his mistake.  Humbled, he asked for a bagel with cream cheese.  

Sometimes getting what we ask for isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  We insist that we want sour cream on our life’s bagels, only to finally get our request and discover that that wasn’t really what we wanted.  Sometimes getting what we’re asking for can leave a sour taste in our mouths.

The Bible is full of examples of people with gagging on their sour cream.  Just ask Jacob, scurrying into the night having snagged the birthright he’d never use. Or Samson, blind (literally) in his pursuit of Philistine pleasures. Or just ask David, finally having enjoyed the friend’s wife he’d been longing for.  Perhaps you can tell similar stories from your life:  times when you tried to force a pleasure or an achievement or make a purchase even though others questioned whether your choice was wise. 

God created us to be hungry--but for things that only He can satisfy.  What have you been hungry for lately?

The Faith of Atheists

I could never be an atheist. It would take way too much faith.

To be fair, I’ve really got to respect people who are so deeply committed to their faith position, even if I don’t happen to buy their viewpoint myself. We can all learn from each other, I figure. And besides, it’s inspiring to see someone stake their entire worldview, and even their whole lifestyle, around something that can’t be proven. You’ve got to admit there’s something pretty bold about shaking your fist in the face of millennia of human common sense. That just inspires me. It’s pretty gutsy, actually.

Most atheists I know would never brag about it, of course—which I also respect—but it’s not hard to see how their worldview is based solidly on the kind of faith that can never be proven. After all, how can you prove nothing? How on earth could anybody ever check to make sure that God really wasn’t there? Ultimately it comes down to their faith that they won’t find themselves in line at some Pearly Gates or shocked to discover that they’ve been reincarnated as some lower life form. Like anyone else, they’ve made their faith commitments.

Throughout recorded history civilization after civilization has succumbed to the obvious common-sense assumption that someone or something Greater Than Us was responsible for life in our universe. Granted, folks had a hard time agreeing on just who or what that “Greater Than Us” actually was. While some subscribed to Jehovah, others signed on for Baal or Allah, or the Buddha or the Great Pumpkin or whatever other local deity they chose. But no matter what brand name people happened to choose, virtually everyone agreed that there was someone or something out there--from tribes in Africa to the great civilizations in the Middle East or Asia, to the rise of Judaism and Christianity, countered by the celtic religions in Europe and all the various brands of eastern religion now featured. (And don’t even get me started on the whole pantheon of gods that the Greeks and Romans developed. Personally, I can never keep them all straight.) But the fact is that until the Enlightenment suddenly sprang up a few generations back, everyone just took it as obvious that someone or something was behind the wonders of our world.

And that makes sense to me. All I have to do is spend an evening up in the Sierras gaping at the infinite fog of starlight that has exploded in our little corner of the galaxy and I quickly slide into the assumption that this could not have happened by accident. Call it peer pressure if you want—I’ll admit there probably is something reassuring about knowing that for untold centuries of human civilization everyone has come to the same conclusion that I have. But regardless, I just think it would be hard to be an atheist outdoors.

But that’s why I can appreciate the courage of the staunch minority who in the past few generations have decided to march to a different non-drummer. Recently, as seen from the span of human history, a few bold thinkers have theorized that all those galaxies and constellations have somehow appeared by accident. They point proudly to the theory of evolution as a kingpin in their worldview. I’m no scientist, but my understanding of that theory is that we’re all somehow mutants, having morphed from the first glops of seaweed that washed up on a beach somewhere. Maybe other folks can understand some of these fine points, but I have a hard time grasping this. I’ve known a few mutants in my day (hey, I’ve watched cartoons just like anybody else) and I have a hard time seeing how the continually mutating offspring of the first mutants could result in something like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You ask me, bass guitar licks like Flea’s don’t just happen.

Maybe my problem is with science. Maybe I should put more willing to put my faith in science as a way to figure these things out. But I figure: the best science of the day got us the Flat Earth theory. Then a little bit later the new-and-improved best science of the day got us the Round Earth theory. (Note: at the time of this writing the earth was still round). I just keep looking for someone to take responsibility for that Big Bang. That much noise, somebody had to hear something!

And maybe I’m just a little too common-sense about it all. I suppose any academic discipline can have a bad century now and then. Who knows? Maybe all the pieces did line up just right to enable sea scum to somehow produce Michael Jordan’s dunk shot or whatever magic there is that makes my laptop here come to life when I turn it on.

But it just seems like a long shot to me. Buying into that would take a lot more faith that I seem to have. Rumor has it some guy in Ohio dumped 10,000 dominoes off the roof of a school gymnasium and they randomly formed a perfect version of the Mona Lisa, including getting the smile just right. Call me a skeptic, but I have a hard time with that one, too.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m judging my atheist friends. Most of them are really good people who are genuinely sincere about what they believe. And maybe their faith in science can do for modern medicine what Mother Teresa’s faith did for the poor of Calcutta. What’s not to like about that?

But having said that I also don’t like it when atheists get all fundamentalist on me. Maybe I’m not as smart as they are with their fancy theories about everything, but I can’t help but feel judged when they smile kindly at the fact that I still don’t “get it”. Call me crazy, but I still say the emperor has no clothes.

What I would like to see would be an open-minded kind of dialogue about all of our different kinds of faith. I'm not talking about some kind of evangelistic shoot-out where anybody’s trying to convince me that I should have faith in whatever scientific theories they’re betting the farm on. I’d just thing it’d be interesting to learn from the faith stories of some atheists who’ve been at it a while. How does it feel put your faith in a minority viewpoint? How do you shore up your faith when you have those inevitable moments when you can’t help but wonder whether you may have been put here for a reason? How do you begin to explain your trust in something you could never prove?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing something simple here. But whenever I look for something that would offer a reason to have faith in atheism, all I find is…

…nothing.

In Trouble

Been reading the New Testament book of I Peter lately…part of a sermon series Stan and I are working through here at The Gathering.  Great book, especially for those times when don’t seem to be going like you’d hoped.  The epistle is all about trouble, which is why it can make for good reading during a recession. 

A word about trouble:  there’s a big difference between having troubles and being in trouble.    Having troubles is pretty normal:  you get a bad grade in school, you come down with the flu, you get a flat tire driving home from work.  Most troubles, while annoying, can be fixed pretty easily.  You pull out your spare tire, figure out how the crazy jack works, and make the switch.  Before too long you’re on your way, remembering to wash your hands when you get to your destination.  

Most troubles aren’t really so hard to deal with.

But when you begin to get too many of those troubles it starts to affect your worldview.  You begin to get the sense that everything in your life is starting to fall apart.  You  suspect that even if you were to fix one or two of the problems in front of you there would be two or three other problems that would creep up on you from another side.   You find a sense of futility begins to hang over your efforts—even if you fixed one of your problems you’d still face so many others that it’d hardly make a difference. 

An eerie realization begins to well up inside you:  it’s not that you simply have troubles, you realize that you are now in trouble.   Your struggles have claimed your worldview. 

That’s when you start losing hope.  Hope is the force field that fends off a sense of futility.  When you lose hope, despair slowly seeps into your heart. 

Let’s face it;  many of us today are losing hope, no matter what our current President’s campaign slogan might have suggested. 

The economy is a big part of that, of course.  Not too long ago it seemed like everyone had a lot of money.  In my neighborhood everyone was spending re-fi money freely as our homes quickly doubled in value.  Anyone who wanted a job could find one.  Now today all that has changed, and doesn’t appear to be changing back any time soon.  But our troubles extend beyond the economy:  what are we going to do about health care?  About the incessant conflicts in the Middle East or in Africa?   And what good is it to avoid losing your home if you don’t really like the people you have to share it with?

Many of us know that sinking feeling that comes when you realize that you are in trouble and probably not likely to escape it in the near future.  Our hope shrivels under those conditions.

The epistle of I Peter was written to people who felt much like that.  The letter was probably written around the early 60’s A.D. by Peter, who probably wrote it from the city of Rome.  In any case, the letter was certainly written in the shadow of Rome, as the threat of Roman persecution looms over the epistle from the not-to-distant future.  The letter was written around the time of the Emperor Nero, under whose persecution Peter eventually lost his life. 

To put it simply:  if you were a Christ-follower in the time of Nero you were in trouble. 

As Christians today we face resistance.  Look at the nerve touched by the recent Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad where his mom simply acknowledged that she loves her son.   But that kind of resistance is really pretty minor in the broader scheme of things.

 First-century Christians faced a whole series of very real troubles.  Troubles from Rome, whose leaders figured that they were atheists, with the way they bristled against worshipping the emperor or his pantheon of gods in favor of this curious invisible non-god they claimed to follow.  From the Jews, who resented being grouped by the Romans in the same atheist group, and did what they could to purge their communities of these aberrant Christ-followers.  And often from their families, since in their day the head of a family determined the religious perspective for everyone.  For a person to begin following Christ in defiance of their family was often taken as a rejection of that family.  Family leaders were known to go to extreme measures to keep their pagan family members in the fold, and following Christ often meant losing one’s family. 

Peter was writing to people who not only had troubles, they were in trouble.   No matter where they turned there were forces arrayed that could destroy everything their lives had been based on.  You can easily become paranoid in a situation like that…except that in your case the threats you face are definitely real.   

So Peter opens his letter to these down-and-outs with a boisterous cheer for the “living hope” that they could share together.  (Look at I Peter 1:3-12 sometime).   Notice, though, that Peter is not even pretending that this hope will protect them from suffering.   No, he candidly acknowledges that suffering is coming their way.  Instead he points to something that transcends their suffering.  As big as their troubles might seem, Peter points them to something bigger.    A “living hope”, an un-depreciated “inheritance”, and the snug security that comes from being “shielded” by God’s power during turbulent times.  Peter then offers a very different perspective on their suffering:  instead of being a setback, he interprets suffering as a force that can “purify” the faith through which we ultimately connect to Christ and all these blessings. 

What Peter is doing is offering a contrasting worldview.  Here’s what a worldview is:  everyone has a center to their world, something around which everything else inevitably orbits.  In the first century it may have been Nero or the power of Rome or the all-star team of Greek and Roman gods that needed to be appeased.  Today our worldviews may be a little more difficult to identify, but we still always have something at the center.  It may be a conventional religion of some sort or it may be something less clearly defined.   It may be finances, or recreation or physical beauty or romance or maybe even the right to view oneself as “a pretty good person”.  In any case there is something at the center of each person’s world.  And in the face of insurmountable forces that could easily destroy every other form of security, Peter points his friends toward something unchanging.  He invites his friends to stomp down with abandon on a foundation that even Nero can’t shake.   He’s not trying to promise that painful things won’t happen; he’s helping them discover something that will still stand firm, even if those bad things might happen.  

So how do you tell what’s really at the center of your worldview?   Ask yourself this:  what would effectively end your life if you were to lose it?  Each of us undoubtedly has blessings in our lives about which we care passionately and for which we would grieve deeply were we to ever lose them.  But there is usually one set of blessings which would ultimately prove to be a deal-breaker for each person.  Deep in our hearts we know that if we were ever to lose our (family, middle-class-wealth, good looks, professional success, etc.) we just couldn’t go on.  Life would prove to be pointless if that central blessing were taken away.

What would that “deal-breaker” be for you?  Peter invites us to dare to imagine something big enough to tower over any other dream we might pursue or any other potential loss we might face.   He invites us to look to Christ and ask Him to fill us with the kind of living hope that comes only when you’re solidly based on something that even a recession can’t take away.

“Got hope?”

"Zoom" Adjustments

It’s not easy to live with suspense. I find I talk to a lot of people who are living with a profound sense of suspense: will I lose my house? Will I lose my job? Will I ever find another one? As a church planter it seems like my own life has been up in the air for a long time.

As Christians, of course, we know we’re supposed to pray about these kinds of struggles, and the Bible seems to indicate that prayer should help us discover a certain kind of peace about things. But saying our prayers doesn’t necessarily seem to change how things look, at least right away. And that can be unnerving.

I’m writing these words on my laptop computer, sitting on my patio. One of the things I like about writing on a computer is the “zoom” feature. Sitting here with my laptop on the top of my…uh, lap I find that the text can seem a little bit too small to read easily. I might just crane my neck and try to squint to track whatever it is I’ve just written. But that looks funny and can get really uncomfortable after a while. What works much better is to go to the “View” menu, click “Zoom” and then simply make all the text appear bigger. With a few gestures on the touchpad (or better yet, keyboard shortcuts!) I suddenly find that everything is so much easier to keep in perspective.

Back to the suspense thing. I wonder if there is a “Zoom” feature in our lives that we need to learn to use. Maybe even develop a few keyboard shortcuts for.

Here’s how it seems to work for me. I find that most of my suspense comes from things that await me in my future. Problems that may come up next week, next month or even next year. Sometimes I can even fret on the basis of a career trajectory or retirement plan. Actually I’m a pretty nimble worrier: I can switch almost instantly from worrying about catching a traffic light green to worrying about what I’ll do when I retire several decades from now. Maybe it’s a mid-life thing.

So here’s what I’ve noticed: the Bible speaks very bluntly about our worry, but much of what it says seems to focus on my daily needs. In His pattern prayer Jesus tells us we should pray “give us this day our annual daily bread”. He also cautions us (in Matthew) to let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day, since each day has enough trouble of its own. And after all that’s how the whole manna meal plan worked in the desert; one day at a time.

Then it occurs to me, maybe my problem is that I need to set my mental “zoom” to the daily setting, not a weekly or monthly or annual view. And that really seems to help. If I adjust the zoom so all I can see is today, God’s faithfulness seems obvious. “By His great love I am not consumed; His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness” (to borrow words from Lamentations 3). One day’s needs matched up with one day’s grace. Not bad.

But if I zoom back to include more of the future, then suddenly a lot more questions pop up in front of me. Now I'm now faced with 365 days worth of needs pitted against only one days’ grace. I’ve got 365 times more problems than I have grace to deal with them. That looks a lot more dismal. And if I start to think a few decades ahead things can get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly.

So…one of my spiritual disciplines is to learn to re-set my zoom setting to daily more often. And sure enough, I keep finding that His mercies are new every morning, and that each day I’m given my daily bread.

I can live with that.

Fogged In

Faith is the dirty little secret behind Christianity. It suppose it’s necessary, but given the choice I often think I’d prefer an alternative.

Faith can be like the little “donut” spare tire found in the trunk of many smaller cars. When all else fails it’s nice to be able to dig it out so you can keep on moving down the road. But as soon as possible you want to replace it with something that feels a little more substantial.

I’m discovering that much of my ambivalence towards faith comes from a basic misunderstanding we often have about what faith really is. We often tend to look at faith as something we need to do, as if we were the ones doing whatever needed to be done for the object of our faith to be true. When faced with a crisis, we cringe and brace ourselves as we muster up as much God-optimism as we can in order to make sure that His promises still hold true.

Taken this way, faith becomes a verb, an action; like peddling an exercise bike on a generator to keep the lights on. Actually, it’s a form of fear: we worry that if we were to grow tired of faith-peddling the lights of Heaven would dim. If we can only keep “faith-ing” hard enough God will provide what we need from him—working all things for our good or forgiving our sins or guiding us when we face decisions.

It’s strange that we picture faith in that way, because that’s not at all how the Bible describes it. Hebrews 11 doesn’t describe faith as an effort, but rather as a kind of visibility: “Now faith is being…certain of what we do not see.” Faith is an ability to see something that was already there whether we’d spotted it or not.

I live in Northern California, and I enjoy the San Francisco Bay. One of the things I love most about the Bay is the fog that often creeps in. When the fog arrives things change quickly. The city of San Francisco suddenly vanishes, or Angel Island or Alcatraz may turn up missing. Drivers across the Golden Gate Bridge may begin their crossing with no visible proof that the other half of the bridge even exists. Once while sailing I discovered that the city and two prominent islands disappeared around me in ten minutes’ time. That was weird.

People who live in this area have learned to adapt to the fog. There’s no widespread panic because of a missing bridge or misplaced mountain. Folks have discovered that all those landmarks are still there; they’re just temporarily out of sight. They have learned that if they can just be patient for a few hours they will get their bridge back and their mountains and islands will once again return. That’s just how fog works. (Earthquakes, on the other hand, have been known to make lasting changes.)

The principle is this: fog doesn’t change our landmarks; it changes our visibility of those landmarks.

I find that the same principle applies to faith. There are days when God’s hand can be clearly seen in my life. I can bask in His love and my heart is felled with a sense of confidence in His care for me. But there are other days that aren’t like that at all. A fog of doubt or a haze of shame creep in and suddenly all of those spiritual realities seem to have vanished. No matter how hard I may try to muster up the sunny emotions I might have enjoyed before nothing seems to help. All my peace and joy seems to have vanished, like the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

And that’s where a Hebrews 11 kind of faith comes in. Faith is my awareness of the fact that all those things are still there, even when i can’t see them at the moment. It takes a kind of faith to drive across a bridge when you can’t see the other side. It takes the same kind of faith to continue loving a difficult family member, or to continue serving in a ministry role or following a call to a particular ministry, or to continue to fight a chronic temptation.

Taken in a broader sense, our faith doesn’t necessarily change some of our fundamental realities, it only exposes them. My faith doesn’t cause God to be faithful; it simply discovers that He was faithful all along.

Seen this way, faith becomes a kind of imagination; seeing things in the fog. Not fantasy, mentally rearranging the landmarks as I might wish, but a realistic imagining of what I know to be true. When the visibility drops on the Bay I can still visualize where the bridges are and where the islands are located. With the help of my GPS I can still tell how things are laid out, even if I can’t really see.

So also when my awareness of God is obscured. I can picture God loving me or providing for me or forgiving me even when that’s not how it looks because I’ve discovered that those things are really true. With the help of my Bible I can still tell how things really are, even if I can’t currently see.

I’m learning that I don’t have to make God faithful, I simply need to enjoy the fact that He already is. That takes the pressure off, letting Him do most of the work.

And I can handle that.