The Last-Minute God

Do you ever get the impression that God doesn't mind letting you struggle? Perhaps by design ("builds character!"), or maybe just by accident?

Sometimes it can seem like Gods having to scramble a bit to take care of our basic needs? Like he maybe didn't really plan ahead and so like a procrastinating student he's having to cram his Providence in at the last minute, just before your life slides into the brink. That doesn't make much sense to me, but I see it nonetheless. He's the Almighty, with the limitless resources of Heaven at his disposal, and yet he so often seems to delay his care for us until the very last minute. And even then he usually ends up wanting us to do a lot of the heavy lifting. The suspense of following a last-minute God like that can really rattle your nerves.

It drives me crazy, actually. While I'm glad God has cared for me along the way, sometimes I just want to feel SAFE, to feel SETTLED. Instead of worrying about whether he'll come through I'd just like to be able to see that he's already thought through everything I will need.

Seems like he's always been that way. Take, for instance, the day that Jesus ran out of food with all those people. The crowd had gathered, the air was thick with the Holy Spirit and the time must have flown by. Suddenly the day had ended and people were fading fast. Nobody had eaten anything. Jesus turns to his disciples, apparently dumbfounded. Instead of doing something properly Son-of-God like and zapping some rocks into bread, he tries to hand the situation off to his 12 followers. "You feed them", he said (Mark 6). They tried to get him to wrap his mind around the situation. "Eight months' wages wouldn't feed this crowd!"

But Jesus didn't get it. He just wanted to know how much food they did have. He was apparently hoping that the crowd had somehow thought to bring along several thousand picnic baskets. Maybe he was stalling for time. Can you imagine how stupid you feel as a disciple going around asking people if they happen to have a lunch big enough to feed five or ten thousand people?

They came back with one lunch, from a little boy who hadn't eaten it yet. Jesus took the five rolls and two fish and turned his face toward heaven to give God thanks. Have you ever heard someone say thank-you in a way that made it clear that there was more to the story than you'd realized? Jesus gave God that kind of thank-you. And then he started distributing the rolls and the fish, breaking them off. And darned if that lunch didn't keep spreading until baskets of it had been spread throughout the thousands of people who were now watching in stunned silence.

By this point the disciples were the ones who were dumbfounded. They'd just experienced first-hand something that couldn't be explained. They'd handed the boy's lunch to Jesus, they'd heard the thank-you he gave the Father, and then they'd seen those little rolls and the dried fish somehow prove to be sufficient.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have felt like to be that little boy: "That was my lunch that Jesus took. I saw him do it--he broke up those rolls my mom made and started give them to the disciples. And he did the same thing with my dried fish!" The boy who'd probably resigned himself to walking home hungry now discovered what it felt like to be part of God providing more than they could ask or imagine.

What would that have felt like--to have been a first-hand player in a wonderful scene like that? I'm guessing that that little guy was never hungry in quite the same way again. Even if his belly emptied, I'd like to think that his hunger only served to remind him of the fact that food can be stretched to provide what's really needed. In fact he'd probably discovered something that can only be learned when you're hungry. And I'll bet he felt SAFE, even SETTLED; filled with the sense that God really has thought through everything.

All the things I'd like to feel like.

God apparently let him hunger in a way that would let him discover what it felt like to be truly filled.

I'd like to be like that boy when I grow up. In the meantime, here's my lunch, Lord.

Getting "Fed" by Your Preacher

People often talk about the need to feel "fed" by their preachers. Secretly a lot us preacher-types cringe at those conversations, probably for a lot of different reasons.

Sometimes listeners can be "picky eaters" and so no matter what you put on their plates they're going to have low blood sugar by the time they turn on the Sunday afternoon sports on TV. Sometimes we cringe because we wish we had more to offer them--pastors with overflowing to-do lists have to deal with the reality that there simply isn't as much time as there should be to create a truly substantial meal. But sometimes we cringe because those kind of conversations can end up being vague, unhelpful volleys of cliches. What do people really NEED from a sermon?

Obviously, people need the Bible. Without that a preacher is merely slinging anecdotes and illustrations. But just because a preacher refers to a lot of Bible verses or really takes apart all the words in one passage doesn't mean people will walk out feeling fed. The reality is that there are different "food groups" listeners need from scripture, and heaping a congregation's plate full of an unneeded food group can still leave them strangely unsatisfied, even if bloated.

Here are three major food groups people need from sermons:

* Biblical information. What does the Bible say? People need to become familiar with what's in their Bibles. They need to learn important people and events recorded there, they need foundational doctrines presented in it, and most of all they need the simple, over-arching story of a perfect world, ruined by sin that's being reclaimed by Christ in anticipation of the day when all things are made new. If people don't know their Bibles nothing else will make sense.

* Biblical application. What does this mean I should do? Knowing scripture without knowing how to apply it can sometimes result in disappointingly little life-change. All the bible knowledge in the world will make very little difference if listeners never discover what it will look like for those teachings to be applied to their lives. What do they need to do differently because of what the Bible says to them?

* Biblical self-knowledge. Why do I often resist this? Biblical information and practical application alone won't necessarily bring change to someone's life if their heart isn't open to that transformation. The fact is that as fallen people our hearts instinctively resist receiving God's grace and sharing it with others. Our hearts can unexpectedly spasm, leaving them hardened against God's transformation. Preachers need to help listeners discover some of the more common ways in which the Enemy tricks us into turning our backs on the new life God offers.

These are three of the more common food groups needed in a sermon diet. One of the challenges facing preachers is that no two congregations have the same dietary needs, and and in fact no two listeners in any one church family need exactly the same thing. A preacher offering solid Biblical information may leave people starving for application, or sermons that are rich with application may ring flat if people aren't helped to open their hearts to receive what scripture offers.

Pray for your preacher as he or she plans your congregation's menu.

And then clean your plate when the meal is served.

A Call for You?

Why do you do whatever it is you "do" in life? If you're a student, an executive, a lawnmower repairman or whatever it is...why did you decide to head in that direction? Chances are there may be some pretty good common sense reasons for your choice: a good opportunity, the need to pay bills, maybe the expectations of other around you.

When you become a pastor they don't talk like that. Suddenly the whole "what-to-do-when-you-grow-up" takes on a much more pious tone. You don't merely decide to become a pastor, you discern a call. Sounds a lot more mysterious--kind of like Jake and Elwood Blues deciding to get their band back together in Blues Brothers. That kind of talk is taken as normal for preacher-types, and I've had a lot of conversations where I've told people of the process through which God called me to serve him in full-time ministry.

But to a lot of people that kind of talk would sound funny applied to other jobs or professions. "When did you discern your call to drive that delivery truck?" "When did you discover God was calling you to be a personal-injury attorney? Somehow it seems strange to think of people in other jobs actually being called to those professions.

OK, let me get more specific with you: when did you first realize that God was calling you to (insert your job or school status here)? Chances are most non-minister types would look at me kind of funny in the face of a question like that. People may choose their jobs for an of a number of reasons, but a clear call from God usually isn't very high on the list.

That seems strange to me. The Bible speaks so clearly about God's plans for our lives: Eph. 2:10 reminds us that we are "God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared in advance for us to do". Psalm 139 assures us that "all the days ordained for (us) were written in His book before one of them came to be." If God has plans for every single day of our lives, and if there are some very specific reasons why you and I are exactly where we are--then wouldn't it make sense for us to ask God what He wants us to do? And if we start to get tired of whatever that was, wouldn't it make sense to ask Him again before jumping into whatever comes next.

In our denomination we take a minister's call very seriously. In fact there are pretty tight restrictions placed on people like me who have been called to ministry. I think that's good; if God called me to something I should think twice before jumping into something else just for a change. What if we did that with substitute teachers or computer techs or with oil change specialists?

When Jesus Got Distracted

I grew up with the idea that Jesus was all about the cross. Somehow I got the impression that the events of Holy Week the only real priorities for him. It never really occurred to me to wonder what He'd been up to for the three years of his public ministry before that week, or even the thirty years of his life, for that matter. Seems like a long ramp-up process, especially for the Son of God.

Actually, if you read the Gospel accounts you begin to get the sense that Jesus got off-task quite a bit. He almost comes off as having a little bit of redemptive A.D.D: just when he's working up a good head of steam about our sins...HEY LOOK GUYS, A LEPER! And off He'd go, getting all caught up healing some disabled person or talking about giving a cup of cold water to some poor kid. Fortunately the Apostle Paul was able to cut through these distractions and lay things out decently and in good order in books like Romans and Galatians.

Unless...maybe Jesus wasn't distracted. Maybe He took three years to start rocking things with a quake whose epicenter was located by that empty tomb outside Jerusalem. Maybe He was actually demonstrating exactly what He was doing during His time on earth with us. Making all things new, wiping away every tear from our eyes, letting the dumb start scat-singing with pleasure and the lame start breaking out in some celebrative dance steps. Maybe we needed to see how "distracted" He could get so we didn't freeze-dry His gospel down to four spiritual laws through which we could calculate our salvation. In fact, the Apostle Paul himself did all his theologizing against a backdrop of all creation "groaning as in the pangs of childbirth" waiting for Christ's redemption to be completed.

You know, maybe we don't get distracted enough.

Why I Hate Manna

It’s hard to live one day at a time.

Lately I’ve been feeling that and seeing it in the lives of people I care about. The steady drain of financial suspense. The cold prospect of disease creeping into the life of a friend. The heart-wrenching pain of sudden bad news in lives of friends. And while today seems to have worked out—barely—who knows what will happen tomorrow? That’s what living on manna must have been like (Exodus 16).

It’s not that manna’s so bad, actually. It’s actually amazing if you really think about it. Fed directly by God--how cool is that? Every day there’s a brand new helping of what you need, carefully dished out in the perfect portions designed for you.

It’s not the manna really. Manna is fine, even if it lacks the variety. And it’s not even the “coming from heaven” part of it. Even after all these years of Bedouin backpacking the daily reminder of His presence is still reassuring.

The problem with manna is that it’s all you get. It’s not like you can scare up some nice roasted quail, and you can hardly remember the exotic fruits and vegetables from Egypt. And so when you’re forced to have the same thing day after day after day…well, you begin to discover that you really hunger for more than bread alone.

Just think how nice it would be to have a choice, after all. Choosing another round of manna would be so much more empowering than simply being given it. “What do you feel like for dinner tonight, dear?—Oh…how about some manna this evening?” It’s nice to have some variety on the menu.

But the real problem with manna is that there’s no back-up supplier. It only comes from Him. And while He’s never failed to deliver, He’s also made a point of never giving one extra flake to store away. No matter how careful you might be, it’s absolutely utterly impossible to get any kind of margin for tomorrow. That's got to raise at least a few questions for you. There’s simply no way to get any kind of real security. And so you live from one morning’s manna-gathering to the next, with the nagging realization that if this crazy bread from heaven even thinned out you’d face certain disaster. It’s humbling to feel so dependent. Sometimes manna tastes like eating crow.

And so you hunger, even when your stomach’s stuffed. You hunger in advance for tomorrow because you never know how tomorrow will turn out. You hunger for some of the fruit from the Tree in Eden, back when God first started all these crazy limits on our diet. Sometimes it almost seems like too much.

And yet, by His great mercy, we are not consumed. His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness. (Lam. 3:23)

Sometimes, sitting back after a big meal of--you guessed it—manna, you begin to get a strange sense that maybe it’s supposed to be like this. Your days uncluttered by the hubris that comes from margin, your plans completely aligned with the giver of manna, the Giver of All Good Things. You realize you have exactly what He wants you to have, no more and no less. Relying not simply on the daily spread of that crazy desert bread, but relying even more on the character of the One who gives that manna. He is good, you’ve discovered.

No one would ever choose to live on manna. Maybe that’s why God doesn’t give us the choice. He gives what we hunger for even while depriving us of what we want.

How to be miserable.

I've been thinking about happiness this week, preparing for this Sunday's "How to be Miserable". (Now there's a sermon title that'll really pack 'em in!)

Our country has always been based on "the pursuit of happiness". That little phrase would have been remarkable in the 18th century. Not many monarchs at the time were staying awake wondering whether their people were happy. As long as they had bread--or cake, in the case of the French--why bother?

There are some interesting assumptions in the phrase "the pursuit of happiness". First of all, what makes us think that happiness should actually be a right that we should expect to pursue? Should happiness be considered essential, or is it merely a kind of icing on our cake? But even more striking is the assumption that happiness is something that we can identify, set our aim toward, and pursue. It assumes that you and I have a pretty good idea what will make us happy, and if only given the chance to pursue them we can be happy.

But what if happiness wasn't something we could engineer ourselves? What if being happy was actually more like sneezing? If you've ever been stuck mid-sentence, your face contorted by a sneeze that wasn't quite ready to launch, you know how hard it can be to force something like that. Sometimes we're the most miserable when we're busy trying to be happy.

People often turn to the Bible to find happiness. The problem is that the Bible seems to take its time getting around to issues of happiness. Along the way there's an awful lot of taking up one's cross, dying to self and even having to rise again with the crucified savior. The Bible's picture of fulfillment often seems to be anti-happiness: turning the other cheek, giving up one's cloak, forgiving the very people who made us unhappy in the first place.

Here's the secret. While the Bible seems pretty nonchalant about happiness, it is much more serious about something else: joy. Joy is what can come when you've been so thoroughly filled by Something so completely satisfying that one's level of happiness becomes less and less important. Joy is what Paul bubbled with when he wrote to the Philippians about how it didn't really matter whether he lived or died, he just wanted to serve Christ. (He almost sounded a little Buddhist at that point, except you can tell that he cared more deeply than any respectable Buddhist would allow.)

Our nation has unprecedented freedom to pursue our own personal happiness. I don't think it's helped very much. From what I can tell, people who "have it all" don't seem to be enjoying life any more than people who have much less. They just experience their frustration while living in bigger houses.

Most of my personal fantasies still tend to aim towards "having it all", but God's helping me get over that. He's steadily weaning me from happiness and whetting my appetite for joy. On the days when I cooperate with him, I find the strangest thing happen: pleasure.

I enjoy that.

I'm Good!

“I’m good.”

We say that sometimes, usually when someone asks if we need help. Sounds a little presumptuous, but it seems to work with current slang expressions. I may stumble noticeably, my friends turn and ask if I need any help, to which I respond: “No, I’m good.”

It’s ironic, of course, because usually if someone has reason to ask us this it means we’re actually not doing very well. We rarely announce our “goodness” when we successfully step over a curb in a parking lot and enter a store without incident. It’s not until we trip over that curb that it even occurs to us to announce our self-sufficiency to our fellow shoppers. It’s only when we’re obviously having trouble that we feel the need to proclaim our goodness.

Actually, the expression “I’m good” probably means something quite the opposite. It probably means something like “Even though I’m having trouble, I’d still rather handle things on my own.” Or more succinctly: “(I’d like to think that) I’m good!”

I think there are a lot of people in the bible who would understand this. I think of Nicodemus in John 3, discreetly searching out Christ under the cover of night. Something’s not quite right, so he seeks Jesus’ word on becoming acceptable in God’s eyes. Jesus flatly informs him that he must be born again. Nicodemus briefly ponders the cost of surrendering a lifetime of religious celebrity; the price is too much to ask. “I’m good,” he tells the Messiah, as he scurries back into his night.

Or the more candid approach of the Rich Young Ruler in Luke 18. “What must I do to be good”, he asks Jesus. Give away all your riches, Christ tells him. He, too, slinks away: “That’s OK--I’m good.”

It’d be nice to think that God will simply accept us as we are: not perfect, but certainly not bad. But we have to do a few theological acrobatics to get this to happen. Claiming goodness involves somehow lowering the bar of God’s standards until we can easily clear it. We re-phrase “be perfect as your Father in Heaven in perfect” until it sounds like “be a little better than other people you know.”

Contrast this with the Philippian jailor, as found in Acts 16. He’s in trouble. An earthquake has broken open his stronghold and now the prisoners entrusted to him are now free to escape. This is not good. In his mind he already hears his death sentence pronounced: his life for theirs. In his panic he turns to Paul and Silas: “what must I do to be saved?”

Now, I must tell you: I find this question a bit curious. Where I grew up the word “saved” was usually reserved for conversations involving a specific understanding of Jesus’ role in covering the guilt of our sins. In the middle of what’s probably the worst crisis of his life this jailor is calling a quick time-out to discuss Paul and Silas’ theory of the atonement? I don’t think so?

It’s probably fair to say that whatever the jailer meant by the word “saved” must have extended much further than clarifying his doctrine of justification by faith. This was a big question he was voicing.

However, I think I know what he’s wasn’t saying at that moment: “I’m good”.

There’s something that happens when someone suddenly discovers their complete inability to make their life “good”. That may come in a jailer’s crisis, an adolescent discovery or maybe in mid-life changes, but however it happens it involves a surrender of everything to the One who can actually make things happen well.

Announcing “I’m good” is probably forgivable when I stumble a little. After all, it’s just a figure of speech. But a day is coming when those words will take on a lot more meaning. On that Day every single stumble I’ve ever made—including the big ones—will be inventoried for public display if needed. I wonder if I’ll cringe as I realize how long that list really is. But as everyone’s attention turns to that list, someone will hold up nail-scarred hands reassuringly.

“It’s OK”, he’ll declare. “He’s good.”

Who would notice?

Question: If our church were to suddenly disappear overnight, who besides our members would notice? Would we be missed enough to suggest that Christ was really doing something in our community through us?

Answer: We'll talk more at The Gathering this Sunday morning.

Voluntary Stress

Been thinking about monkeys this week. They seem to keep coming up in conversations.

A long time ago someone once explained to me how a monkey trap works. The trap consists of a hollow gourd, attached by a stout rope to a tree or some other immoveable object. The gourd contains something that will draw the interest of the monkey (some food, a trinket or some other kind of monkey bling), which can be seen through a small hole just large enough for a monkey to insert its hand through. The aforementioned monkey comes along, notices the bait and reaches for it, squeezing its hand to get it through the hole. Once it's reached inside it quickly clutches whatever it was that had drawn its interest. However it they try to remove its hand it discovers that its clenched hand can no longer fit out the hole. As long as the monkey clings to the bait, it's stuck, although it could easily escape were it to let go of the bait. The monkey is now facing the difficult dilemma of choosing between freedom or the chance that it can somehow get that bait out of the gourd.

I find that fascinating. I guess I'm intrigued by the simple idea of a monkey voluntarily holding its hand in the trap that will lead to its capture. Perhaps the fact that I'm not a monkey leaves me with a little bit of a cavalier attitude the plight of the monkeys.

But it does make me wonder how often I allow myself to get stuck by clinging to something that's simply not worth it. Not to get all Buddhist about this, but there's something here that's worth more thought. That's probably how most of my temptations work. That's the dynamic behind most church fights, in my experience. I suspect that a large percentage of my stress comes from various gourds into which we've inserted our clenched fists. My life is blissfully free from major crises right now, and I find it disconcerting to think about how much of my stress might be considered voluntary.

How about you? How much of your stress is self-inflicted?

Why I Don't Wear Tights

I’ve been thinking about superheroes lately. This Sunday our church is doing a special family service using that theme and it's gotten me thinking: it’d be pretty cool to be a superhero.

When I was a kid I used to imagine being able to fly, or having a special bat-cave for all my space-age electronic crime-fighting stuff. Actually, I probably would have settled for figuring out how to get my mom’s picnic blanket to flutter when I draped it over my shoulders. Superman’s cape always fluttered straight out behind him but even when I ran my fastest mine always seemed to just hang there. I guess I must not have run very fast, at least not while trying to watch my cape over my shoulder at the same time.

While I have very little interest in parading around in tights (no…strike that, pretty much NO interest in that sort of thing) I still probably harbor some latent desires to have superpowers. To be able to zoom overhead when everyone else has to wait in traffic, or to be able to hear or see through walls to know everything that’s going on. To be a super-pastor, or a super-dad, or even a super lawn guy on the weekends. That’d be pretty cool.

But, alas, I’m not. I don’t have any ability that couldn’t also be found in some other guy. Instead of Mr. Incredible I’m probably more like Mr. Forgettable. On a good day I qualify as normal.

I wonder if that’s how Simon Peter looked at himself. A blue-collar Budweiser kind of guy, working The Deadliest Catch with his brother and their buddies. Voted by his classmates Most Likely to Get in a Fight. And yet Jesus picked him out, invited him to sign on for a whole new life. Peter apparently didn’t buy the whole idea at first: “Get away from me—I’m a sinful man.” But eventually Peter began to realize that Jesus’ call was not based on what Peter could do, but on what Jesus could do through Peter.

The result was amazing. In less time than it takes Brett Favre to retire a few times, Peter became a disciple, cast out demons, walked on the waves he used to fish, faced the wrath of the Jewish authorities, sold out his savior to save his neck and then discovered what grace really felt like. On Pentecost morning a stone-sober Peter blazed with such passion they thought he was drunk. At least until 3000 of them came forward for his altar call.

Peter is one of my heroes. I think he’s super, actually.

If that’s what Jesus saw in that fisherman, I wonder what he sees in me?

And what do you think He sees in YOU?

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.

"Numb"--the new Guilty?

Guilt is out. That’s so Bible Belt Fundamentalist. People just aren’t into it like they used to be.

Guilt used to be stock in trade for clergy types in my trade. Churches thrived on guilt: even a marginally-effective speaker could whip up a deep sense of insufficiency and soon trigger an urge to tithe or serve or pray or even just not think about sexual things or any other Very Bad Pleasures. For preacher, but also for parents and other authority figures, guilt was the fire alarm lever you could pull to get everybody’s attention. That's when Chuch Lady was born.

Guilt doesn’t seem to carry the weight that it used to. People just aren’t interested. Trying to trigger guilt today can feel like trying to offer someone a really good deal on an AM car radio.

And you know…I think that’s probably a good thing. Guilt-induced goodness isn’t really goodness. Ultimately it’s more like a fear response. And it’s kind creepy to think that people in my profession could actually end up bullying people into adopting a certain lifestyle. Shame on you/us…

So, it’s probably a good thing that we’re so much less into the whole guilt thing. How much better for people like us to live without the constant burden of a guilty conscience. To just let us be free to be loved by God, to enjoy the healing and the wholeness that He offers. A big improvement, right?

It would seem so, at least. And yet…my sense is that the majority of us still somehow consider ourselves 2^nd rate followers of Christ.

I think most of us recognize that we’re sinners, at least technically. Most weeks we miss at least one or two of those Ten Commandments—even if we can actually remember what they actually are. That means that we’re sinners on some level. But that doesn’t mean we have to get all fire-and-brimstone about it, right?

And yet, no matter how we may shrug off the idea of feeling guilty for having made some bad choices or for having had too much of the wrong kinds of fun at an earlier stage in life, something inside of us still feels like we need to ratchet our expectations for God down a notch.

I hear it in the awkward wisecracks when someone attends a worship service for the first time, as if they half suspect that the place will be struck by lightning because they showed up. I hear it when someone first begins some position of leadership or authority—almost as if it was some kind of inside joke for someone like them to be considered for any kind of “advanced” Christian role. And I think I hear it when someone cringes at the prospect of praying out loud in a group. If someone like me prays out loud, everyone will hear God not answering!

Seem that no matter how we may shrug off the idea of feeling guilty for having made some bad choices or for having had too much of the wrong kinds of fun at an earlier stage in life, something inside of us still feels like we need to ratchet our expectations for God down a notch.

So, here's the weird situation I think we find ourselves in: we no longer buy the idea of guilt, but we still somehow feel like we need to give ourselves some sort of spiritual “time out”. Like people like us need to make sure that we don’t expect too much from God too fast. Better to keep ourselves on the sidelines for the first little bit. The first few months…or years…or decades. Maybe I’m crazy, but those all sound like symptoms of what we used to call guilt.

We don’t feel guilty as much any more. Maybe that’s good. But I’m not sure we feel all that innocent, either. That doesn’t seem right. If anything we're spiritually numb. What are we missing?

Why Pray? (a better response)

(OK, so not all Calvinist jokes are funny...)

If God has everything in our lives already laid out, then why pray?

Seems to me the question can be re-worded as "why get emotionally involved in something whose outcome is largely predetermined?" (Although that's admittedly a bit clumsier.) God invites us to pray, but he also assures us that He's already previewed and edited the events that will unfold. Clearly the point of such prayers would not be for information (God smacking his forehead as he discovers needs of our He would otherwise have missed). Instead it must have more to do with His desire for us to approach life somehow connected to Him, like branches to a vine.

But still...why whip up a sense of urgency praying over needs which will come as no surprise? It seems that predictability doesn't really have to stifle our emotional involvement or our desire to share something with someone we care about. It happens whenever we gather with friends to watch an old movie. We still turn towards each other at the scary scenes and we still laugh together at the funny parts. Not because anything was NEW, but because it was IMPORTANT to us. Redundancy doesn't really get in the way when something is important. That's why I still laugh at old "Airplane" scenes. Just as we turn to each other when a re-run moves us to laughter or fear, so God also wants us to turn to Him when something powerful moves us in life.

Can we change God's plan? It seems that we can, judging from some of the examples in the Bible. Look at Abram negotiating with God over the future of Sodom. Or look at almost anything in the minor prophets. To what extent is God's logic fuzzy enough that He can handle multiple scenarios, or to what extent is God simply pre-aware of just how we'll change our mind, having seen this movie before? I don't really know. And I'm not sure I need to.

Why Pray?

A friend emailed me with a valid question: if God has our days all planned out...why pray?

I responded promptly, sensing the importance of the question. I told him that the moment I read his email I knew that this was my moment: that I was MEANT to offer him a helpful, insightful response.

And then I didn't. (psych!)

In Step?

I wonder if Jesus became easy to overlook after a while. Maybe that's why He spent so much time in the gospels trying to help his disciples get at least a little clue.

To cut to the chase, I suspect I overlook him. Not in a larger cosmic sense, so much. My belief in Christ is pretty settled and I've arranged a lot of my life's furniture around Him being in the house. But sometimes I wonder how much I still miss.

For this week's sermon I've been thinking about Galatians 5:25: "since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." That comes at the end of the passage listing the whole cornucopia known as the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, and a number of other traits I'd like to see more of. Ever since Jesus returned to the Father, he deputized the Spirit to be His presence. And it sounds like that Presence is planning on being present every step of the way, like He's planning on walking me through the various experiences each day brings.

As much as I'd like folks to think that I live in constant communion with my Savior, I have to admit that His interventions still tend to catch me by surprise. You know, since I'm periodically straightened out by the Spirit, maybe I should try to periodically stay straight with Him.

So...makes me wonder how much more easily all this love-joy-peace etc. might come if I were to check in every step or so. I'd probably stumble a lot less.

Worrying Like an Atheist

If I was an atheist I'd be worried.

By definition, an atheist lives with the conviction that there is no one "out there" watching over him/her, much less our world as a whole. It's like a cosmic remake of the Home Alone movies--we get to stay up as late as we want and eat junk food, but when the bad guys show up we're on our own. While atheism has its appeal, in the face of problems like a recession, crime, personal struggles and the garden-variety aches and pains of life I think overall I'd prefer to have a deity on the job somewhere.

This is not to say that we should get to choose our divinities, I'm just noting the advantages and disadvantages of the various worldviews. In the long run there definitely is something to say for the Providence of God, even if His overall purposes can be a little hard to figure out. If I was the only one in charge of my world, I think I'd have reason to be worried. Fortunately, that's not the case.

Which brings me to my main point here: why, then, do I still worry? Why do I allow myself to get wrapped in knots as if my own efforts were needed to get all things to work together for good? And why do I periodically wake up during the night thinking that if I could somehow strain toward success I could make things in my world go more smoothly? Seems like there ought to be a lot more days when I feel like a spiritual lottery winner.

Fact is, I still end up worrying like an atheist. I believe...but God help my unbelief.

Fortunately, God's wired an automatic warning signal into me that can prompt me to re-align my worldview. To remember Him. It's called stress, and when it works properly it leads me to pray.

And I think it's working.

Should God Be Reasonable?

Should God make sense?

This week I've been thinking about some of the less-conventional aspects of the Holy Spirit's work: at least as seen from my Midwest-America, western-European sort of perspective. You know--the whole idea that He might lead people to speak in tongues, break out in prophecies or produce some flat-out miracles.

The God I grew up with was fairly predictable. That was nice, you could count on Him to be reasonable. Later on some friends introduced me to a God who couldn't always be figured out. That sort of stuff always bothers me.

A big wild card in this, of course, is the fact that we human beings ourselves have a tendency to distort things...and that's not God's fault. Just because some wacky things can end up happening in Jesus' name doesn't mean that Jesus is necessarily signing off on every spectacle.

And yet...well, "Aslan is not a tame lion", as the story goes (if you've read the Chronicles of Narnia). I wonder how often I accidentally limit some amazing things God would love to do, just because of the narrowness of my expectations. Actually, push-come-to-shove, I'd rather expect too much from God rather than too little. I'm adjusting.

To be honest, though, Mr Beaver's little grin makes me nervous ("No, he's not safe...but he's good, I tell you.")

Nervous, but I'm intrigued.

The Spooky Side of God

In the Christian sub-culture I come from we never really talked much about the Holy Spirit. As someone once said, our Trinity involved the Father, Son and the Holy Scriptures. Sure, we read about the Spirit in the Bible, but the sense I picked up was that the Holy Spirit was like a volcano that had largely gone dormant, except for an intermittent trail of smoke to serve as a reminder of another time. Fire and brimstone may have flowed freely during the early years of the church, but most of that lava had long since cooled, I was assured. Things were stable now.

Over time I met other believers who seemed to talk about the Spirit all the time. These Christians prayed for anointing, they spoke in tongues, they told of prophecies and healings and other wonders unheard of in my childhood world. Basically, they freaked me out. While their sense of expectancy jarred my assumptions about the Spirit’s dormancy, I sometimes got the sense that they had somehow found a magic lamp that could produce a miraculous genie when rubbed in a certain manner.

I’ve now pendulum-swung in my relationship with God enough that I’m familiar with—and also uneasy with—both sides of this contrast. And in both of them I see a common, often unacknowledged struggle: we don’t know what to make of a God who promises to be incarnate among us. Each Christmas we sing about Immanuel God-with-us but we’re not quite sure what to make of it when God actually shows up.

The disciples had the opposite problem. They were scared to death that their Immanuel would leave them. Whenever He would hint of his return to the Father a deep panic would rise up within them. How could He could leave them. That’s when Jesus began to get very specific about the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Without bothering to get into the Trinitarian complexities of it all He simply assured them that He would be with them always, to the very end of the age. He would come in the person of the Paraclete: the come-alongside-to-help-and-guide-you person in the Trinity. (You’ll notice that most New Testaments translations struggle to translate that word, and with good reason.)

So…here we are, with Jesus Christ alive and well and still bringing his changes in our world. Still bothering all the right people and soothing all the wrong ones, just as he did back then. He’s still here, through His Spirit.

I wonder how He reacts to some of the troubles we have with His Spirit? Does he grieve when we pronounce Him dormant, no longer needed for spiritual warfare today like He was in the New Testament? Does He bristle when we start creating instruction manuals spelling out techniques for getting Him to do certain tricks and wonders? (“Rub the lamp with this kind of motion and then genie will come out—just watch!”)

All this makes me more and more grateful for the scriptures. I can turn to the scriptures to find out who the Spirit is, what He has done, and from there I can get some important guidance for what He may be up to. With the scriptures I can test the spirits, finding out which voices speak with the dialect of Christ. Unpredictable? Yes. Unfamiliar? No.

I’m so glad the Holy Spirit isn’t a new development—a recent upgrade available only for those who register. He’s guiding, if we’re willing to keep in step.

No really...I mean it!

It always feels really weird to me to have to say something that I’m not sure I really mean. Or maybe that I’m really sure that I don’t mean. It can feel like marveling at the Emperor’s new clothes.

I remember how difficult that was as a kid. Having to say “thank-you” when I didn’t happen to feel very thankful. Having to say “excuse me” when someone clumsy got in my way. Having to apologize to my brother for something that deep-down I figured he had coming.

Sometime I’d try to hold out against these injunctions: “But I’m not sorry!” However, parents have a way of winning these childhood standoffs, and eventually I’d mumble my contrition even as my demeanor glared my dissent.

That always seemed silly. Why say something if you don’t really mean it? What good does it do to insist to Aunt Sally that you really do love her zucchini-and-peanut butter lasagna? Why say it if you don’t mean it? That only makes sense.

But on the other hand, I think there are times when we might not mean something until we say it. While my views on a toxic casserole might not waver, there have been things that I know I didn’t mean until I started to announce them. Take almost anything having to do with real love, for instance. I have shockingly few moments of spontaneous servanthood; usually I have to prompt myself to be helpful or to apologize or even to let someone else go first through a doorway. Those kinds of things just don’t come naturally to me. There’s a sense in which I can still hear my parents’ instructions: “say thank you…say you’re sorry…”.

My point is that sometimes I won’t really feel something until I say it. The very process of going through the motions helps me situate myself in the attitude that I really want to have. Saying I'm sorry helps me be sorry when it doesn’t come naturally. It helps me mean it better, you could say.

I find that the same kind of thing often happens in prayer. Later this morning our congregation, The Gathering, will be holding a special prayer service. Our people will be led in prayer by our worship leaders, in spoken prayers and in some of the songs we sing. Some of our people will choose to pray with special prayer teams positioned around the room. And I’d bet good money that we won’t fully mean many of the things we say to God in those prayers, at least not at the time that we say them. Like telling God we trust in Him, or that we really want to see His will happen in our crisis situations. We’ll likely profess faith that doesn’t ring very true, or ask for guidance when what we really want is for God to take a few pointers from us.

We’ll say things that we don’t really, fully mean. We’ll join with the father before Jesus in Mark 9: “I believe, help my unbelief!”

And frankly, I’m OK with that. While it’d be great to think that our hearts always feel the right things, some of those things won’t fully change until after we hear a loud trumpet blast. And in the meantime, we’re still sinners, and we’ll still have to say some of these things to help us mean them.

Really.

Better Sinners? (Or, the whole point of this blog)

“This time I’m going to do better”.

The words come muttered with determination: filled with equal parts guilt and gratitude. I’ve just sinned. One of my favorite temptations came along, I saw it for what it was, but I let it get me anyway. No major felonies; just a reminder of my messiness. And now afterwards, my conscience feels bruised, my spirit feels sheepish, and I struggle to convince myself that next time I’ll do better.

I remember once as a child asking my parents once if grown-ups ever sinned. I recall them smiling and trying to explain to me that sometimes grown-ups lost their tempers or did things to hurt people. As a pastor and his wife, my parents knew full well the darkness that still lurks in the sunniest Christian adults. But it was difficult for me to imagine the grown-ups in my church still struggling with sin. From my elementary-school perspective, sin was something eventually to be outgrown, along with the need to go to bed at 8:00. I just had to wait.

You know...I’m still waiting.

It helps me to think about the recovery movement. Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups have helped millions come to terms with addictions that won’t go away. The idea is simple: while an addict won’t be done with the addiction in this life, he or she can still become free from it. The addicts learn to allow God to lead them into a new life that is no longer at the mercy of the addiction. A recovering alcoholic will say that while she is still an alcoholic, she has not had a drink in a decade. Still an alcoholic, but a much healthier one. A better alcoholic, one might say.

What if we looked at sinners in the Bible like this? What if Jacob’s history of deception or David’s relapse with Bathsheba or Peter’s denial were somehow part of that same process of God allowing us to hit bottom, acknowledge our helplessness and finally turn to His higher power to be set free? And what if we viewed the Christian community as a network of “sinners anonymous” groups? That'd actually be pretty cool.

Hi...my name’s Ron, and I’m a sinner.