Hurt

The temptation is to get rid of the object of hurt. The temptation is to remove yourself from a place where you can be hurt again. The temptation is to refuse to care because if you don't care you can't be hurt. It would be nice. It would be great to be insulated from pain. To know that the only person who can let you down is you.

But that is not the way God wants us to be. We recently had someone leave Refuge and say some hurtful things on the way out. He believed he had a legit reason to be hurt, but we cannot think of anything that we could have done. And we may very well have done something... but we might not have. To me, it all comes back to what we do after someone is hurt.

The easy way is to simply be angry, or write that person off. The easy thing is to try to find ways that people in the future can't hurt us again. The easy way is to insulate and isolate. Unfortunately, our friend took the easy way, and that leaves everyone else in the lurch. It leaves us wounded and looking to blame.

And the cycle continues.

We worked through a couple books during our home church phase, "Exclusion and Embrace" and "The Emotionally Healthy Church" and both books talk ad nauseum about taking our issues directly to one another. God created us for community, and community always has the potential to be painful, thorny and uncomfortable. But this is a step God commands us to take as we seek to become better citizens of his kingdom. We are called to confront one another in love. We are called to love in honesty and embrace even when it hurts.

Mine

I am reading a book called "Free of Charge" by one of my favorite authors, and I was just blown away by something I read. Volf said that if all the "Christians" in the United States gave ten percent of their income to the poor, then the poor of the world could be fed. Most Christians believe that we are called to tithe ten percent to begin with, so, basically, if we all did what God has asked us to do... there would no longer be children dying of starvation in our world.





I had to just sit back and think about that for a minute. It is borderline devastating to me. If we were but faithful as the church, then hunger could end.

Hunger could end.

I just honestly am completely shocked by that. The estimation was that something like 165 billion dollars would be raised. I think that would probably be enough money. Even if it wasn't enough to feed everyone, I can hardly imagine the kind of good we could do with that kind of money. We could build humongous crosses and sanctuaries made of glass, we could have sweet flat screens...

Actually, I think some of that crap is exactly why many don't give. We aren't sufficiently inspired by what our money is going to. We see cool stuff, sure it is great to be able to read powerpoint and to have neat crosses. But do we ever see the irony of making 200 foot crosses? The greatest gift given of all time is suddenly turned into a symbol of wasteful spending. As a church, we must stop spending in ways that make sense to the rest of the world, but in generous, lavish ways that only make sense in the economy of God. We should all be ashamed.

Rock Bottom

The question we have to ask as we are approaching the bottom is, what will I do differently now?

I have a friend who was recently kicked out of a treatment program. He came by to talk to me tonight, and he was pretty sad. I could smell the beer he drank earlier, and through tears he told me about his addictive behavior with tramadol. He hasn't ever had to be homeless or live on the streets before, but he is now. As he was sitting in front of me crying, he told me that he didn't want to go through this again.

So I asked him what he was going to change this time around. He said try harder, be more honest, etc. And I think those are good things, but I'm not sure if they are the answer. To me, he needs to be more open to community, allow people to see his weakness, and find ways to let people help him. He needs people to be honest about the way he is acting, but at the same time that will continue to embrace him.

As he was crying he told me that he had really betrayed my trust. I gave him a handheld video game last Christmas, and he confessed that he sold it for some pain pills. I had to resist the temptation to simply say "it's ok," because it wasn't. My feelings weren't particularly hurt, but I was disappointed. However, people from addictive families or that know the behavior will many times simply want to make the problem go away. One of the ways to do that is to say things like "it's ok." But in order to really help people when they do something wrong, we must admit that what they did was certainly not ok. We have to reach for forgiveness, but we can't simply let the wrong go away. Many times that is the worst thing we can do.

My prayer is that he makes different choices this time. I hope that he allows people to be close to him, especially people that just might hurt him. I hope that he perseveres, but also that he realizes that he can't just "try harder" to make it all go away. He has to change his habits.

Spring forward

It seems like things are really revving up now. The weather outside is beautiful, I can wear polos every day to work, and I think the snow is done. I love the new beginnings of spring, and I love that every passing day means football season is one day closer. Rufus has been particularly frisky lately, but I'm hoping that I can take him on bi-daily walks soon. That would be good for both of us...

In times past I have lamented that there is really nothing permanent in life. Relationships change, bodies grow or shrink, people get sick or well, my eyes get worse all the time... but as I'm thinking about the seasons of the world, i am realizing that God loves a great story. And if there were only permanence in our world, there would be no real stories.

Stories are great because they (hopefully) show us characters as they go through struggles and successes. They show us people like us that wish things were better, people that sometimes screw up, and people that persevere. I think God has infinite patience, but also a touch of ADD. In order to keep the story moving, God institutes a natural ebb and flow of life. He puts borders on our days, weeks and years. He gives us morning, spring and dusk.

I think, someday in a galaxy far away, God will maybe cease certain changes. He will get rid of death and illness. But I think he may keep good changes. He will encourage our spirits to grow, for us to play, he will continue seasons and times. And I think we will all appreciate the changes and patterns. Maybe we can learn to do that a little here and now...

The Glory of God

I have a lot of ill feelings about the title of this particular post. Not because I have an issue with the concept behind it. Not at all. I have an issue with the shoehorning that has been done with that phrase ever since Calvin decided that God was incredibly selfish and Piper decided that in God's case, selfishness is good. But I don't think that is true.

I think God emptied himself, he gave of himself, he died on a cross. I think God doesn't really care about himself except as far as it is good for others. I see this primarily in the cross, but if Jesus is our best idea and representation of who God is and what he does, then the cross is the ultimate expression of that.

So, according to those guys above, God was so concerned with glorifying himself that he began things by creating beings that were capable of not glorifying him. Then he proceeded to humble himself to their level, die a cursed death and be buried in a borrowed grave because he was so concerned with his own glory. Then, instead of making his resurrected state undeniable, he only showed up to a limited few, and expected these broken, stupid fishermen to carry his glory to the nations. Now, he makes his residence in sinful, gluttonous, lying, lustful people. All to glorify himself...?

Now, the immediate reaction is generally incredulity, because we have always been taught that this is why God did all those things. For his own glory. We have been taught that it is ok for God to break his own rules. But why? By that same criteria, would it have been ok for Jesus to rape women, because they couldn't love anyone more worthy? Or would it have been ok for Jesus to steal from people, because their money is best used in his hands?

God and Jesus are worthy of all the glory, but I think it is partly because the triune God has been so unassuming of it. God has put aside all that is rightfully his because he wanted to be known, to be known and loved. And those things can only be done freely. And if God made his presence known in an undeniable way, then freedom would have been denied. God doesn't require glory because he loves glory, but he will ultimately be glorified because he is love. Love conquers all, and I believe very strongly that God would tarnish his own glory in order to save his beloved creation, what else is the cross?

Malaise

Maybe not the exact feeling, but I have just had a general feeling of... blah today. Malaise isn't exactly right because I don't feel ill or anything, I just don't feel like doing anything.

I had several tasks I needed to do today, sermons to write, things to work on, people to email, etc. But I just couldn't muster the motivation to do any of them. I ended up just reading updates on comic books that I never kept up with when I read comic books.

But I guess all that is ok. Was that why God took a day off after the first six? He had just done some pretty fantastic work, and he just kind of felt... blah? Probably not, but I like to think about it anyway. We have all gotten to the point that we have elevated God above personhood. Despite the fact that one of the defining characteristics of the Christian God is that he is a personal being, we often times want to make God seem so much above personal characteristics that he is completely unapproachable and nearly unknowable. All that is a different story for a different day though. I have too much malaise for that today.

Weird

So at my friends' wedding this past weekend, I was standing in the drink line. They had an open bar that night, and most of the people in their 20s were taking full advantage. So this guy I met about an hour earlier sidles up next to me and starts yacking in my ear.

His name was Paul, and he was a tall blond guy, and he was pretty strange. He had clearly had quite a bit to drink, but not so much that he couldn't confess some very strange things to me. He started telling me that he was a bad guy (his words), and that he was going to do some bad things after the wedding. He rambled on about some money and going to a certain part of town. The weirdest part of all this to me? He prefaced it all by confirming that I was "a preacher" (again, his words). I told him that I was in ministry, and then he began to dump his sins on me.

It was surprising to say the least. But as Paul was having his verbal diarrhea in my direction, I wondered what possessed him to do that. I think deep down, we all want to just bare our dark secrets to people. We want to feel released from our weaknesses and our downfalls. I think Paul wanted to be absolved somehow, for someone to tell him he was ok, and that it wasn't a big deal.

Honestly, I would have loved nothing more than to do that. That was kind of impossible for a few reasons. The first was that I had no idea what he was really talking about. The second, and more important, is that I don't think it works like that. I don't think that we can simply verbally unload our wrongdoings and they go away. It would be great if they did. But I have to believe that Jesus died for a reason. And if Jesus died for a reason, then it was in some way to help people do something that they couldn't do themselves. And if that is the case, then we somehow have to buy into his plan to get the benefits.

We all desperately wish we could just speak our sins and they would vanish. But the clear price of sin is that we have killed our souls. After that, we have a couple options. We can buy into the death Jesus died, and let him take care of our sins, or we can continue to try to get rid of them ourselves. Those are not things you explain to Paul in the drink line at a wedding celebration when he has clearly already had too much. But they are things I can hope and pray that someone will be able to share with him, because I think deep down, we all want to get rid of the terrible weight of our wrong doings.

Love

Robin and I went to a wedding of some our good friends this past weekend. So I had a small role in the wedding, and after my part was done I stood there thinking about what marriage is supposed to be based on. I think it should be based on love, but I think many times we sorely misunderstand what love means and what it is.

Love is not that you think your beloved is always hot, or that you don't ever get annoyed with them. Love is not about pretending that your beloved is flawless. Love isn't about butterflies or good feelings. It isn't always being with that person or even necessarily about respecting that person. It isn't about wanting to start a family or buy a house. Love isn't about Train songs or sex.

Easy enough to say what love isn't, but what is it?

Marital love is covenant. That is all.

Love is about being true to someone even if you don't feel like it that day. Hopefully it starts with some kind of warm fuzzies. Hopefully there are some basic attractions at the beginning, hopefully love songs break out during your first kiss and all that. But that type of infatuation should gradually be replaced by something much more real, and much less emotional. It should be replaced by knowing someone and being known. It should gradually come to realize that the beauty in the beloved was not really ever about the external beauty, but about some internal beauty that was merely shining through in the beginning.

This is why we suck at marriage in our country. We don't recognize the old as it is leaving, and we panic and don't recognize the new as it comes in. We mistake the first types of feelings for real love, but in reality they are mere infatuation. We think that for some reason we should always get tingly, but really we are settling for McDonald's when we are offered prime rib. We just don't have the patience to cook it or to wait for it. We settle for the lesser because that is all that is depicted in crap movies and stupid love songs. We think for some reason that these celebrities who can't stay faithful for a few months are more qualified to speak of marital love than the God who created us all. God loves in the way that we should love, and that is in a covenental type of way.

Artists

I was walking Rufus around the neighborhood thinking about art. I thought about all the best artists, the best poets, the best writers, actors, painters, sculptors, inventors, musicians. Now, because I am woefully ignorant as far as who the best of each of those are, I just thought about a few names that jumped to mind: Leonardo Da Vinci, Robert Frost, Stephen King, Ben Franklin, Michelangelo, Beethoven. The reason those guys are all so great is because they did so many great things. They didn't seem to run out of ideas. Now, that is probably pretty obvious. But then I started thinking about what that means about creation, and by extension the creator.

Typically, Christians get up in arms about the age of the universe. And, I suppose there is good reason. Usually those that get up in arms about it say that they are upset because they want to protect the bible or something like that (does the bible really need protecting?). But I think it could be something else entirely.

There is a particular branch of philosophy, though I'm sure some deny this is a philosophy, called humanism. Essentially, it elevates humanity to the central importance of the universe and considers religion and the supernatural to be absurd, or at the least irrelevant.

Now, what if those three things are all related? What if creation, humanism and a young earth are all the same or a similar discussion?

This is what I think. I think people are so upset about the idea that the earth could be billions of years old because that opens the possibility that God has been doing some other things for billions of years. It opens the possibility that humanity is not the most important thing ever created, or that we are at least not the most central. It opens the possibility that God has created, for lack of a better word, other peoples or races that he also loved. It opens the possibility that God is indeed the most magnificent creator/artist to ever exist, and that God is constantly creating and moving and doing new things.

If a human father can have several children and love them all equally, and if a human mother can remember all the wonderful things about each of her 15 children or whatever, then why couldn't an infinite Being love billions and trillions of created beings in unique and whole ways?

Obviously this is pure speculation, but in my opinion people get so bent out of shape about the possibility of having a very old earth because they start to feel their place in the universe threatened. But if God loves us, and Jesus died for us, then why would we ever think that we were going to lose our spot? And if in the first book of the bible it seems like God is working with some matter or place that already exists, and in the last book of the bible God talks about new creation, new heaven and new earth, then why couldn't God continually be creating new and wonderful things?

Order from Chaos

The beginning of Genesis is a pretty interesting read. Typically Christians have interpreted Genesis 1 to mean that God has created ex nihilo or, from nothing. However, the passage does not explicitly say that. Now, the danger to saying that God did not create everything from nothing is that the earth and all that is would have been co-eternal with God. This leads to a type of dualism which Christians have rejected out of hand since the beginning of our faith. Many other Christian scriptures seem to indicate that God created everything ex nihilo so that doesn't become all that much of an issue.

But I guess the question becomes, what is the point of Genesis 1, if not to say that God created everything from nothing?

Most modern scholars agree that Genesis 1 was probably written during the Baylonian exile, and that it was most likely originally a type of song. It was an affirmation that in a way, God conquered the chaos of a "formless" and "empty" world and injected order and meaning into it. The people were struggling with doubts because their God had failed them. He had let them be conquered by a pagan people, deported and ruled over by a bunch of jerks. Now they needed some reassurance. So the priests, or I guess whoever still had some faith, decided to compose this song. The song affirms that God brought order, love, meaning from the initial chaos that existed in the world. He can bring order, love, meaning to the person's life who is stuck behind enemy lines. He can bring those things to the person who has commited some pretty awful crimes. He can bring meaning to the person who has lived a poor story and the person who has sat on their couch for years.

I think it is all and well to say that God created everything from nothing. And that is spectacular. But to me, it doesn't really help the person who is struggling with alcohol, the guy who is about to be released from prison, or to the mother who just lost her only child. But if Genesis 1 is affirming that God brought something wonderful from the darkness and chaos, then I think that means something to those people. If God can bring meaning and light to a world that was filled with emptiness and darkness, then God can bring peace and love to a situation filled with despair and hate.

Redemption

It was a pretty difficult weekend. To begin, I had two services to speak at. We had a Good Friday service and an Easter Saturday service. In addition, I had to be at work both of those days at 5.30 in the morning. Because of the holiday weekend, we had a lot of special events at work. Then on top of it all, I was really worried about two of my good friends.

But I was talking to another of my friends about the process of redemption. We were talking about how it is hard, and how it hurts sometimes to be going through the process. He recently started dating someone, and we were talking about both of their baggage. In the past, he has really treated women poorly, and one of his deepest longings is to somehow do it right for once.

I think the problem most of us run into with redemption is thinking that it will work out perfectly. We have been fed this idea that fairy tale endings happen sometimes, but really (and this is Don Miller's idea) every story ends with death. We think that somehow at some point, we will get everything fixed and leveled and we will be able to make up for all the crap we have done. But what if we never get it all fixed and leveled, and what if we never get to redeem the idiotic things we have done? What if we just have to accept those things? What if we just have to trust that someone else has already redeemed them for us, and that he alone can get everything fixed and leveled?

The thing is, I really believe that God gives us chances in life to make things up, but many times it is nothing like what we believed or dreamed. Maybe in my life, making things up is helping redeem the sins and faults of my father, loving men that have really screwed up, and helping them to find redemption. What if my weekend was redeemed by refusing to walk away when it was hard? What if my friend's redemption is learning to love because he has hurt and been hurt? What if, in our deepest hurts and weakest moments, God is waiting to redeem in our weakness? What if it is nothing we can do, and everything all at the same time, but maybe in different senses? Or maybe I'm just exhausted and needed to ramble.