I wrote this post from the Atlanta airport during my lengthy layover back on December 22; didn't want to pay $5 for the wifi I needed to publish it on the spot. So I saved it for future publishing. And then I forgot to publish it. So here it is. It's a sequel to my "Jesus is not UPS" post, some further thoughts on the miraculous. Thanks for reading!
Not ready to leave this topic just yet. So what totally and completely befuddles me about people is how quickly things become dull and uninteresting to such adventurous and horizon-chasing creatures as humans. My wife and I are flying back to North Carolina from New Orleans today, and on our first flight, I couldn’t but notice – no one looks out the windows on airplanes anymore. I myself am fascinated by being able to look down on the terrain from 27,000 feet. But to everyone else, boooooorrrrrrrrring. We keep pushing the frontier, inventing things like air travel that, once we get there, give us temporary excitement, maybe a pat on our own back, and then perpetual sighs. So bent on achieving things that appreciating our own achievements is generally avoided for the way that it prevents us from going out and achieving more stuff. Simply perplexing.
Why is a miraculous and all-powerful God such a problem for those who believe and those who do not? Because essentially, we all have the same problem. It’s the Tower of Babel problem. For those who believe, it’s okay to acknowledge his power, but we want those miracles to be our own. And for those who do not believe, but who are fascinated by the idea of the miraculous, attributing the idea of the miraculous to some selfish, presumptuous, power-hungry being means that the miracles can’t be our own. We build towers to say that we built towers. We open savings accounts to say that we built a good and secure life for ourselves. We strive for straight A’s to say we made the Deans’ List. And we get mad when a God who knows better re-routes us.
In actuality, while we try our darnedest to care more about ourselves than about anyone or anything else, no one cares as much about us as the God who created us. Everything he chooses for us is in our own best interest, and everything he encourages us to do, to think, to believe, is for the best life possible for us. The problem is, we don’t know ourselves well enough to know what’s best. What is so fascinating about the fact that God knows the number of hairs on my head is that, well, I don’t (although I do know it’s decreasing…FAST). In the same way, I’d sure like a million dollars, but God knows well enough how quickly my soul would decay upon the reception of that million dollars. The reason for this is simple. It is only in a place of need that we find God. He loves us enough to, rather frequently, give us some life- and soul-saving needs. So in an age when we have forgotten God’s power for the miraculous, or lost hope in his desire to choose miracles for us, maybe we will remember that it is our need for our own personal achievements that has made God’s power so monotonous in our eyes.
As I look back on this year, I can choose to overlook the joy of getting married because God chose to withhold miracles in the deaths of my mom and grandfather. Or I can choose to acknowledge that the value of a blessing isn’t relative to its nearest curses. Or I can go even further and acknowledge that miracles and blessings even show up in the curses. Ovarian cancer typically is unrelenting in a person’s first bout with it. My mom got three bouts, seven years, and getting to see two kids graduate from college and get married. And it sure was hard losing my grandfather just two months thereafter, but I certainly remember standing over his bed in intensive care back in 2006, saying goodbye to him just in case the highly unlikely emergency surgery didn’t do the trick. And you can say what you want about just exactly what or who did the trick, all I know is we got three more years with him.
So yeah, I believe in miracles. And I believe that God the Father conceived God the Son by God the Holy Spirit in the virgin Mary. And I believe that God the Father raised from the dead God the Son by God the Holy Spirit thirty-three years later. And I believe that if you or I or anyone believes any bit of that craziness, it must inform the things that happen in our lives and our world. The humane incarnation of the divine or the divine resurrection of the humane are not the kind of things that happen in a vacuum. They are the kind of things that happen all around us, all the time.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
I, John, am a Material Girl
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.
-Luke 17:26-33
It's interesting that this is the way that Jesus communicates the arrival of the end of the world, that salvation comes for those who look at life as what it is, a detour. It is those who define life as eating, drinking, marrying, doing business, making progress, who are left out of the kingdom of heaven.
But this passage seemingly describes all of us, Christian or not. We are people who get caught up in life on earth, and forget that we are just passing through, that life is but a mist. It's why Christians struggle to understand why marriage does not exist in heaven, and it's why many Christians' visions of heaven include all the things we love about earth, but in greater proportions. We are people in love with the things of earth, with material possession, with what we acquire in these finite days. Simply baffling. The world offers us a lot of things. Many of them we like so much that we'd like to turn around and grab them before leaving this place forever. But would we take just anything the world offers us? Of course not. I'd like to leave grief behind; cancer, too. What we so often fail to acknowledge is that it's all-or-nuthin'.
Perhaps harder for us to understand is that even the good things of this world are the equivalent of a frostbitten toe compared to what is offered in heaven. It's hard for us to imagine how wonderful is the unfiltered presence of God, but it's so good that we wouldn't even be interested in having our iPods, our Wiis, our Facebook news feeds, our houses, our cars, or our savings accounts.
Life on earth is not more than these things. But life itself is. And should we turn to get them when we are called into heaven, we shall end up where our hearts are. Why? Because you know we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.
It's not the stuff itself, but rather a proclivity to preoccupation that dooms us, ultimately. We are preoccupied with immediate things - some material and some immaterial. And the fascination grows and grows with each new iPhone, each new girlfriend, each new career decision. The challenge is that we have been called to live in this material world and not be material girls. How? By acknowledging that the most significant thing to us is a right relationship between creation and Creator, both individually and corporately. When we see God the Father, Son, and Spirit with love, adoration, and worship, all those less important things seem to fade. It is in this way that twelve apostles felt it worthwhile to leave father and mother and comfortable job to follow Jesus, and to not return to those things when he left him to finish the work that he started. And those apostles left us the work to finish, since they didn't see its completion either. And maybe we'll leave the unfinished work to those after us. But maybe we won't. And if that's the case, maybe we'll be fortunate enough to see God the Father, Son, and Spirit with eyes loving, adoring, and worshiping enough to know...He, above all else (life included), is all we need.
-Luke 17:26-33
It's interesting that this is the way that Jesus communicates the arrival of the end of the world, that salvation comes for those who look at life as what it is, a detour. It is those who define life as eating, drinking, marrying, doing business, making progress, who are left out of the kingdom of heaven.
But this passage seemingly describes all of us, Christian or not. We are people who get caught up in life on earth, and forget that we are just passing through, that life is but a mist. It's why Christians struggle to understand why marriage does not exist in heaven, and it's why many Christians' visions of heaven include all the things we love about earth, but in greater proportions. We are people in love with the things of earth, with material possession, with what we acquire in these finite days. Simply baffling. The world offers us a lot of things. Many of them we like so much that we'd like to turn around and grab them before leaving this place forever. But would we take just anything the world offers us? Of course not. I'd like to leave grief behind; cancer, too. What we so often fail to acknowledge is that it's all-or-nuthin'.
Perhaps harder for us to understand is that even the good things of this world are the equivalent of a frostbitten toe compared to what is offered in heaven. It's hard for us to imagine how wonderful is the unfiltered presence of God, but it's so good that we wouldn't even be interested in having our iPods, our Wiis, our Facebook news feeds, our houses, our cars, or our savings accounts.
Life on earth is not more than these things. But life itself is. And should we turn to get them when we are called into heaven, we shall end up where our hearts are. Why? Because you know we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.
It's not the stuff itself, but rather a proclivity to preoccupation that dooms us, ultimately. We are preoccupied with immediate things - some material and some immaterial. And the fascination grows and grows with each new iPhone, each new girlfriend, each new career decision. The challenge is that we have been called to live in this material world and not be material girls. How? By acknowledging that the most significant thing to us is a right relationship between creation and Creator, both individually and corporately. When we see God the Father, Son, and Spirit with love, adoration, and worship, all those less important things seem to fade. It is in this way that twelve apostles felt it worthwhile to leave father and mother and comfortable job to follow Jesus, and to not return to those things when he left him to finish the work that he started. And those apostles left us the work to finish, since they didn't see its completion either. And maybe we'll leave the unfinished work to those after us. But maybe we won't. And if that's the case, maybe we'll be fortunate enough to see God the Father, Son, and Spirit with eyes loving, adoring, and worshiping enough to know...He, above all else (life included), is all we need.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Jesus is not UPS: The Phenomenon of the Human Spirit
Got an e-mail from ONE.org today, an organization that seeks to eradicate poverty and injustice globally through encouraging politicians to make laws that consider those less fortunate. It's a great oraganization, but I was definitely a little surprised by the e-mail's subject line: "The Lazarus Effect." I was further intrigued by an explanation of the phrase: "Our friends at (RED)™ have released a short video called 'The Lazarus Effect'—a film about people with HIV/AIDS who are alive and healthy today because of the miraculous power of antiretroviral medicine."
For a society in which secularism is quickly becoming the new "religion," atheism is becoming more accepted than belief in God because of its plausibility, and science is something people can really believe in for its power and transcendence, there sure is a lot of religious imagery floating around out there. In the TV show LOST, a science fiction thriller, Christian Scripture, messianic figures, sacrifice, and temples are ubiquitous. Or take a look at the movie Donnie Darko (2001). It may be about the scientific intricacies of time travel, but there sure is a strong scent of the predestination/free-will conversation in there too, and even some evidence of the existence of God. Or take this e-mail I received today, wherein supposedly "miraculous" medication is referred to as having a "Lazarus effect" on its recipients.
Now if you would now give me the grace to make some broad sweeping generalizations, I promise I'll clean up the mess later. No one seems to struggle more today with believing in the miraculous than evangelical Christians. Of course, I'm lumping myself in on this one. We who identify as such so often fall into the trap of thinking that everything is about the mind and the heart, and that nothing is about the Spirit. When we who are evangelicals pray for those in our midst who are sick, what do we pray for? "Lord, give the doctors wisdom to do what is possible to remove this cancer." The doctors? I mean, it's encouraged to pray for their wisdom, certainly, but do we no longer believe enough in God's power to heal miraculously to ask for his healing? Really? At the same time, while it seems that the non-religious world believes in the miraculous power of things like medicine (which, admittedly, can't be miraculous because they work within the limitations of scientific laws, but we'll go with it for the sake of argument), submitting to some sort of Godhead seems to be the stumbling block. Yet, the messianic sacrifice is the abosolutely most commonly plagiarized storyline of all time. (See: Cool Hand Luke, The Crucible, The Matrix Trilogy.) For the secular world, it's okay to believe in the miraculous, even to be fascinated by the miraculous messianic story, but to submit one's life to an all-powerful Judge is quite preposterous. The real trick, it seems, is belief in the miraculous and submission to an authoritative God, all in one breath.
This phenomenon of the human spirit isn't a New Age, postmodern thing. Jesus dealt with the dichotomy in his own time on earth. Take Luke 11:15-16 for instance: "But some of them said, 'He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,' while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven." He had the Pharisees and some others who generally lined up with the former, for whom Jesus' miracles and signs were such a problem and needed to be reasoned away. And he had others who lined up with the latter, for whom a miracle was the only thing they said that they needed in order to believe. How did Jesus respond? He just throws 'em all under the bus:
This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. -Luke 11:29-32
I could spend a lot of time and energy unpacking what Jesus meant here. Instead, I'll point out the two most significant things I see. Jonah was a Jew sent to Nineveh, a Gentile city, and the Queen of the South (of Sheba) was a Gentile who came to hear Solomon, the wisest Jew of all time (until Jesus came) in 1 Kings 10. It is believing Gentiles (Queen of the South and the Ninevites) who will rise up to condemn those who try to fit Jesus into their convenient box. It doesn't matter whether we try to fit him into our miracle-performing box, or our religious box; Jesus is not UPS, and he's not interested in our boxes.
It is the Queen of the South, who humbles herself to receive wisdom from the Lord. It is the Ninevites who receive the miracle of the absolution of sin.
Twice a year, we who believe in Jesus Christ celebrate something miraculous - Christ's birth at Christmas, and his resurrection at Easter. When will we begin to believe that God still works miracles? When will we believe that we worship one God who is the same from beginning to end? The funny thing about all this is that you really have to go against the grain to separate the miraculous and the divine, yet somehow we've done it, and there's contention now between a non-miracle-believing Christianity and a secular world fascinated with the miraculous aspects of the story of Christ. But there's good news. Despite us and our unbelief, God still exists and still is a God of miracles. Our doubts, our boxes, our unbelief and skepticism can't change who God is and what God does.
Though Bing Crosby, Macy's, and mall Santa Claus imposters may make this a little difficult, I still pray that the miracle of the incarnation would pierce the souls of Christians, like myself, who struggle with the whole miracle thing, and the souls of miracle-believing secularists for whom divine power is an implausibility.
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!
For a society in which secularism is quickly becoming the new "religion," atheism is becoming more accepted than belief in God because of its plausibility, and science is something people can really believe in for its power and transcendence, there sure is a lot of religious imagery floating around out there. In the TV show LOST, a science fiction thriller, Christian Scripture, messianic figures, sacrifice, and temples are ubiquitous. Or take a look at the movie Donnie Darko (2001). It may be about the scientific intricacies of time travel, but there sure is a strong scent of the predestination/free-will conversation in there too, and even some evidence of the existence of God. Or take this e-mail I received today, wherein supposedly "miraculous" medication is referred to as having a "Lazarus effect" on its recipients.
Now if you would now give me the grace to make some broad sweeping generalizations, I promise I'll clean up the mess later. No one seems to struggle more today with believing in the miraculous than evangelical Christians. Of course, I'm lumping myself in on this one. We who identify as such so often fall into the trap of thinking that everything is about the mind and the heart, and that nothing is about the Spirit. When we who are evangelicals pray for those in our midst who are sick, what do we pray for? "Lord, give the doctors wisdom to do what is possible to remove this cancer." The doctors? I mean, it's encouraged to pray for their wisdom, certainly, but do we no longer believe enough in God's power to heal miraculously to ask for his healing? Really? At the same time, while it seems that the non-religious world believes in the miraculous power of things like medicine (which, admittedly, can't be miraculous because they work within the limitations of scientific laws, but we'll go with it for the sake of argument), submitting to some sort of Godhead seems to be the stumbling block. Yet, the messianic sacrifice is the abosolutely most commonly plagiarized storyline of all time. (See: Cool Hand Luke, The Crucible, The Matrix Trilogy.) For the secular world, it's okay to believe in the miraculous, even to be fascinated by the miraculous messianic story, but to submit one's life to an all-powerful Judge is quite preposterous. The real trick, it seems, is belief in the miraculous and submission to an authoritative God, all in one breath.
This phenomenon of the human spirit isn't a New Age, postmodern thing. Jesus dealt with the dichotomy in his own time on earth. Take Luke 11:15-16 for instance: "But some of them said, 'He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,' while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven." He had the Pharisees and some others who generally lined up with the former, for whom Jesus' miracles and signs were such a problem and needed to be reasoned away. And he had others who lined up with the latter, for whom a miracle was the only thing they said that they needed in order to believe. How did Jesus respond? He just throws 'em all under the bus:
This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. -Luke 11:29-32
I could spend a lot of time and energy unpacking what Jesus meant here. Instead, I'll point out the two most significant things I see. Jonah was a Jew sent to Nineveh, a Gentile city, and the Queen of the South (of Sheba) was a Gentile who came to hear Solomon, the wisest Jew of all time (until Jesus came) in 1 Kings 10. It is believing Gentiles (Queen of the South and the Ninevites) who will rise up to condemn those who try to fit Jesus into their convenient box. It doesn't matter whether we try to fit him into our miracle-performing box, or our religious box; Jesus is not UPS, and he's not interested in our boxes.
It is the Queen of the South, who humbles herself to receive wisdom from the Lord. It is the Ninevites who receive the miracle of the absolution of sin.
Twice a year, we who believe in Jesus Christ celebrate something miraculous - Christ's birth at Christmas, and his resurrection at Easter. When will we begin to believe that God still works miracles? When will we believe that we worship one God who is the same from beginning to end? The funny thing about all this is that you really have to go against the grain to separate the miraculous and the divine, yet somehow we've done it, and there's contention now between a non-miracle-believing Christianity and a secular world fascinated with the miraculous aspects of the story of Christ. But there's good news. Despite us and our unbelief, God still exists and still is a God of miracles. Our doubts, our boxes, our unbelief and skepticism can't change who God is and what God does.
Though Bing Crosby, Macy's, and mall Santa Claus imposters may make this a little difficult, I still pray that the miracle of the incarnation would pierce the souls of Christians, like myself, who struggle with the whole miracle thing, and the souls of miracle-believing secularists for whom divine power is an implausibility.
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Spreading Fragrances in the Dean Dome
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 15-17)
Tickets to my first Carolina basketball game dropped out of the sky tonight. Delightful. It was a competitive game to see, as the Heels wiped the floor with NC Central 89-42. Bojangles apparently gives out two biscuits for a buck when the Heels strike 100. What about pounding our opponent into submission and winning by 47? No? Oh well.
One of my co-staff with InterVarsity at UNC called right around dinnertime to say she had come across four free tickets and was looking for people to go with her. So my wife and I grabbed our Carolina T-shirts out of the dirty clothes. Can't imagine how awful the 10-foot radius around us must have smelt...probably something akin to what Paul described as "fragrance from death to death."
Since majoring in Greek in college, this passage in Paul's writing has always made my mind leap to ancient Greek religious practice. It's almost certainly why he used such an image, the Corinthians were smack in the middle of Greece. Animal sacrifice in pagan religion was meant to appease the gods. The basic principle was that the pleasant scent of the burning would put the often temperamental gods in a better mood, and perhaps stave off whatever plague or ill-fortune they were planning against you. In a way, it was like ancient Hebrew sacrifices. But in a way, it was not. The Greek gods were selfish, pompous, fickle, and overall, kind of annoying. You had to do things a certain way to keep them on your side. The structure of whole sacrificing system for the Greek gods instilled this conditional, I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine between the gods and the people. Sacrifices to YHWH, God of the Hebrews was intended not to instill some sort of conditional view of God, but rather to teach the people about the gravity of sin. Literally, "the wages of sin is death." Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, while the lambs, goats, rams, bulls, etc. were all models of Christ to come.
So literally here, we are the aroma of the sacrificed Messiah. And the aroma is for God, but in the sight of others, both believers and non-believers. My conviction as I engaged with this passage, particularly as a campus minister working with students to define what it means to be missional on the college campus, is that we draw a very clear line between Community and Evangelism in what we do. According to Paul here, that line is absolutely non-existent. We who are Christians shall be an aroma of Jesus Christ for the smelling of God our Father in the sight of our friends who follow Jesus and in the sight of our friends who don't. This obviously doesn't mean flaunting spirituality or religiosity. Jesus taught people not to pray in public to build one's reputation, and Paul warns against being like those who peddle God's word. (Did they have televangelists back then?) The alternative is to be men and women of sincerity. A noble thought. It is nothing more or less than sincerity to share Christ. And assumedly, it is nothing more or less than insincerity not to.
Tickets to my first Carolina basketball game dropped out of the sky tonight. Delightful. It was a competitive game to see, as the Heels wiped the floor with NC Central 89-42. Bojangles apparently gives out two biscuits for a buck when the Heels strike 100. What about pounding our opponent into submission and winning by 47? No? Oh well.
One of my co-staff with InterVarsity at UNC called right around dinnertime to say she had come across four free tickets and was looking for people to go with her. So my wife and I grabbed our Carolina T-shirts out of the dirty clothes. Can't imagine how awful the 10-foot radius around us must have smelt...probably something akin to what Paul described as "fragrance from death to death."
Since majoring in Greek in college, this passage in Paul's writing has always made my mind leap to ancient Greek religious practice. It's almost certainly why he used such an image, the Corinthians were smack in the middle of Greece. Animal sacrifice in pagan religion was meant to appease the gods. The basic principle was that the pleasant scent of the burning would put the often temperamental gods in a better mood, and perhaps stave off whatever plague or ill-fortune they were planning against you. In a way, it was like ancient Hebrew sacrifices. But in a way, it was not. The Greek gods were selfish, pompous, fickle, and overall, kind of annoying. You had to do things a certain way to keep them on your side. The structure of whole sacrificing system for the Greek gods instilled this conditional, I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine between the gods and the people. Sacrifices to YHWH, God of the Hebrews was intended not to instill some sort of conditional view of God, but rather to teach the people about the gravity of sin. Literally, "the wages of sin is death." Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, while the lambs, goats, rams, bulls, etc. were all models of Christ to come.
So literally here, we are the aroma of the sacrificed Messiah. And the aroma is for God, but in the sight of others, both believers and non-believers. My conviction as I engaged with this passage, particularly as a campus minister working with students to define what it means to be missional on the college campus, is that we draw a very clear line between Community and Evangelism in what we do. According to Paul here, that line is absolutely non-existent. We who are Christians shall be an aroma of Jesus Christ for the smelling of God our Father in the sight of our friends who follow Jesus and in the sight of our friends who don't. This obviously doesn't mean flaunting spirituality or religiosity. Jesus taught people not to pray in public to build one's reputation, and Paul warns against being like those who peddle God's word. (Did they have televangelists back then?) The alternative is to be men and women of sincerity. A noble thought. It is nothing more or less than sincerity to share Christ. And assumedly, it is nothing more or less than insincerity not to.
Friday, October 9, 2009
What Happens When You Give an Ill Recluse a Microphone in Front of 300 People?
My first blog post in two and a half weeks, that's what. Has it really been that long? What a blur. The good Lord knows I've had plenty to blog about. Sorry for holding out on you, blogosphere and faithful readers. I've been off-campus for quite a while now, not able to muster the energy for much more than moving from one piece of furniture to another. Not much sunlight, and definitely not much social interaction. Yet despite an entire month of very limited social interaction, my beloved student leaders and co-workers with InterVarsity at UNC offered an opportunity for me to join four of our students in offering some personal sharing at Large Group last night. The topic of the night was, "Where is God in the midst of suffering?" After much prayer, I felt like I needed to do it.
Wrote out some notes ahead of time, avoided them like the plague (not something I've been very adept at recently) when the spotlight was on. The Holy Spirit gave me the good gift of divine revelation in the heat of the moment. Microphone on. Knees wobbly from a combination of intense hunger (my appetite is never good before speaking in public) and unbelievable bodily fatigue. To be honest, I wasn't in the mood for new revelations, unprocessed nuggets of "wisdom." Earlier in the day would've been great, you know, when I had some time to turn my word vomit into an eloquent presentation. But I was not meant to be eloquent on this night. I was meant to be real and honest.
And this is my now-slightly-more-processed nugget of divine revelation. Back in 2002, when Mom had her first bout with cancer, I noticed that when everyone was freaking out (What if she dies? What will life be like without her?), I was calm. I told myself, and my family, "It's okay, she's gonna be alright, God will take care of her." I believed that. And hey, not bad for a 16-year-old, if I do say so myself. In 2006, for round 2, I had a similar approach, this time even more confident given the 100% success rate Mom had at beating cancer into remission. At 21 years, I was still apparently optimistic in times of crisis. August 2009 punched a serious hole in all my optimism. And here's my wonderfully divine revelation. My "optimism," my "faith," that Mom was going to be okay was actually based on an inherent lie. In 2002, it was based on relative inexperience of serious tragedy. It wasn't based on "God is good," or "God is Healer." It was based on, "There's no way God will let her die this soon." In 2006, it was based on my very limited experience of serious tragedy avoided. "If not 2002, why 2006?" In 2009, I didn't have time to feign shallow, essentially faithless optimism. "Your mother is sick" was immediately followed by, "It's probably a matter of weeks," and "There's not really anything we can do at this point in time." Her liver was failing before we even knew she had cancer again.
And God was gracious that way. Actually, these last few weeks of rest and retreat, though certainly rife with cabin fever, have shown me a number of ways that God has been gracious through all of this. He used Mom's desire to carry this alone to prevent me from going back to my "That can never happen/It will be alright" optimism. He has used this mono to give me the time and space to rest and reflect, to get to know him, and myself, a whole lot better. And he went ahead and let me have all the symptoms, with the exception of spleen-explosion, just to make sure I didn't try to go back to work too soon. And these are just a couple examples out of many ways that the Lord has been gracious through the last two and a half months. And now, praise and thanksgiving be to God alone, my strength (when I am strong) is based on a faith that God is working for the good of those who love him, and my weakness (when I am not strong) is always welcome before a God who can and will be my strength at all times. I have accepted weakness these last few weeks as I lay ill in bed. I have accepted weakness as a part of me, perhaps for the first time in my life. And letting go of my compulsion to feel (to myself) and appear (to others) strong has been one of the most freeing things I have ever experienced.
The centerpiece of all this is the beautiful fact that God's approach to suffering is not an empty "It will be okay." Nor is it a heartless "I will use this for the good of the Kingdom." Though it definitely will be okay (in the eschatological end, or new beginning, however you look at it) and it most certainly will be used for the good of the Kingdom. But God's response is not primarily utilitarian. I like this now disbanded band, Clem Snide, despite their lead singer Eef Barzalay's decidely bitter approach to religion. No sense in letting differing ideologies ruin my taste in music. In their song, "God Answers Back," Barzalay sings from the perspective of God...
I need you just as much as you need me
And the flower-loving bees
Your blood will color every sunset
Your tears will help me grow some trees
It's an ugly image of a primarily utilitarian deity. Utterly incomparable with my Heavenly Father, Creator, and Lord. My God's primary response to suffering is sympathy, literally. It's a Greek word, directly transliterated in the English language. Sumpatheia literally is "suffering with." God's first order of business when suffering was first experienced by human beings was to set in motion a historical chain of events that would make room for God to incarnate himself in human form in his Son, Jesus Christ, so that he could lead a life decidely different from ours in that it was righteous, but decidedly similar to ours in that he experienced immense suffering. Our shed blood isn't for coloring sunsets, nor our shed tears for growing trees. To my knowledge, suffering entered a world in which those things already existed. Our shed blood and shed tears are a) generally quite miniscule in comparison to Christ's, and b) simply ways that God colors not sunsets but our character, and ways that God grows not trees but our likeness to his own righteous self. Redemption carries a delightful exchange rate: we give over our suffering, we receive back eternal life in the future that is without suffering, and abundant life in the present that understands suffering's laughably temporary sting.
Well, this sofa's getting a bit dull. To the recliner I go...
Wrote out some notes ahead of time, avoided them like the plague (not something I've been very adept at recently) when the spotlight was on. The Holy Spirit gave me the good gift of divine revelation in the heat of the moment. Microphone on. Knees wobbly from a combination of intense hunger (my appetite is never good before speaking in public) and unbelievable bodily fatigue. To be honest, I wasn't in the mood for new revelations, unprocessed nuggets of "wisdom." Earlier in the day would've been great, you know, when I had some time to turn my word vomit into an eloquent presentation. But I was not meant to be eloquent on this night. I was meant to be real and honest.
And this is my now-slightly-more-processed nugget of divine revelation. Back in 2002, when Mom had her first bout with cancer, I noticed that when everyone was freaking out (What if she dies? What will life be like without her?), I was calm. I told myself, and my family, "It's okay, she's gonna be alright, God will take care of her." I believed that. And hey, not bad for a 16-year-old, if I do say so myself. In 2006, for round 2, I had a similar approach, this time even more confident given the 100% success rate Mom had at beating cancer into remission. At 21 years, I was still apparently optimistic in times of crisis. August 2009 punched a serious hole in all my optimism. And here's my wonderfully divine revelation. My "optimism," my "faith," that Mom was going to be okay was actually based on an inherent lie. In 2002, it was based on relative inexperience of serious tragedy. It wasn't based on "God is good," or "God is Healer." It was based on, "There's no way God will let her die this soon." In 2006, it was based on my very limited experience of serious tragedy avoided. "If not 2002, why 2006?" In 2009, I didn't have time to feign shallow, essentially faithless optimism. "Your mother is sick" was immediately followed by, "It's probably a matter of weeks," and "There's not really anything we can do at this point in time." Her liver was failing before we even knew she had cancer again.
And God was gracious that way. Actually, these last few weeks of rest and retreat, though certainly rife with cabin fever, have shown me a number of ways that God has been gracious through all of this. He used Mom's desire to carry this alone to prevent me from going back to my "That can never happen/It will be alright" optimism. He has used this mono to give me the time and space to rest and reflect, to get to know him, and myself, a whole lot better. And he went ahead and let me have all the symptoms, with the exception of spleen-explosion, just to make sure I didn't try to go back to work too soon. And these are just a couple examples out of many ways that the Lord has been gracious through the last two and a half months. And now, praise and thanksgiving be to God alone, my strength (when I am strong) is based on a faith that God is working for the good of those who love him, and my weakness (when I am not strong) is always welcome before a God who can and will be my strength at all times. I have accepted weakness these last few weeks as I lay ill in bed. I have accepted weakness as a part of me, perhaps for the first time in my life. And letting go of my compulsion to feel (to myself) and appear (to others) strong has been one of the most freeing things I have ever experienced.
The centerpiece of all this is the beautiful fact that God's approach to suffering is not an empty "It will be okay." Nor is it a heartless "I will use this for the good of the Kingdom." Though it definitely will be okay (in the eschatological end, or new beginning, however you look at it) and it most certainly will be used for the good of the Kingdom. But God's response is not primarily utilitarian. I like this now disbanded band, Clem Snide, despite their lead singer Eef Barzalay's decidely bitter approach to religion. No sense in letting differing ideologies ruin my taste in music. In their song, "God Answers Back," Barzalay sings from the perspective of God...
I need you just as much as you need me
And the flower-loving bees
Your blood will color every sunset
Your tears will help me grow some trees
It's an ugly image of a primarily utilitarian deity. Utterly incomparable with my Heavenly Father, Creator, and Lord. My God's primary response to suffering is sympathy, literally. It's a Greek word, directly transliterated in the English language. Sumpatheia literally is "suffering with." God's first order of business when suffering was first experienced by human beings was to set in motion a historical chain of events that would make room for God to incarnate himself in human form in his Son, Jesus Christ, so that he could lead a life decidely different from ours in that it was righteous, but decidedly similar to ours in that he experienced immense suffering. Our shed blood isn't for coloring sunsets, nor our shed tears for growing trees. To my knowledge, suffering entered a world in which those things already existed. Our shed blood and shed tears are a) generally quite miniscule in comparison to Christ's, and b) simply ways that God colors not sunsets but our character, and ways that God grows not trees but our likeness to his own righteous self. Redemption carries a delightful exchange rate: we give over our suffering, we receive back eternal life in the future that is without suffering, and abundant life in the present that understands suffering's laughably temporary sting.
Well, this sofa's getting a bit dull. To the recliner I go...
Monday, September 21, 2009
Spiritual Lessons of Mononucleosis
TMI Disclaimer: this blog post may contain way too much information about my recent medical history. TMI is usually a line of which I am entirely oblivious, my sincerest apologies in advance.
The human body is a curious thing. Turns out that headache and the night sweats were the first of several symptoms of mononucleosis, which I tested positive for last week. Since then, I have developed the worst sore throat of all time, a full-body rash, and most recently, an overproduction of saliva. That makes sleeping an interesting endeavor. When my pride gets over the fact that I will drool, and drool a lot, I guess I will then be able to sleep. Until then, you can go ahead and count insomnia among my symptoms as well.
What we misunderstand about diseases is that we assume it's these sorts of things that diseases cause. That's sort of it, but not exactly. Actually, the headaches, the rash, the drooling tendency, are my body's response to my disease's inherent badness. Ah yes, immuno-response. Please forgive my love-hate relationship with immuno-response. I mean no harm. It's just a little bittersweet, that's all. I know that I have so much, shall I say, snot and spit, in my head for a very good reason. I have something in my body that is destructive and dangerous, and so my body is trying earnestly to create more fluids so that it can expel the virus through said fluids. That it gives me a sore throat and makes me drool is mere happenstance.
Now, of course, none of this is all that interesting to you. Unless you're one of those bioscience types. I'm not. But it's taught me something very intriguing about Christ, in particular his Body, the Church, Christian community, what have you. It's taught me, namely, that community is something that not only has needs, but more specifically, it is something that needs healing. Bodies need healing. His Body is no different. Mono has taught me that at the very worst, significant pain comes with the Body's process of healing (like my sore throat), and that at the very best, mild annoyances are sure to be a side effect as well (like me drooling all over myself). What do we need healing from? You name it. We're people. We're people with bodies that suffer pain and sickness all the time; we're people with spirits that come together into community, forming one Body, the Body of Christ, and all of our spiritual germs intermingle and create all kinds of baggage and mess. Of course, we should not think for even one moment that God did not intend it to be this way. Sometime, after all of these mono symptoms blow over, I'll feel great, like a new man, and I will be so grateful for my health. In the same way, our messy, complicated, dysfunctional, heavy-laden community is a beautiful process for us in making a broken and sinful people whole and perfect again. It's wonderful, beautiful, and it looks something like this...
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. -Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 19-22, English Standard Version
And that is why the community must be made perfect. It houses the Spirit of the Living God. It would be irreverent to offer anything less than something radiantly beautiful, flawless, and exquisite. We just have to acknowledge that at times it will be painful and annoying. And that sometimes we will just have to drool in our sleep. Or, maybe that's taking the metaphor too far? Maybe next time we'll spend more time unpacking the hidden significance of my full-body rash. Whatever the people want!
The human body is a curious thing. Turns out that headache and the night sweats were the first of several symptoms of mononucleosis, which I tested positive for last week. Since then, I have developed the worst sore throat of all time, a full-body rash, and most recently, an overproduction of saliva. That makes sleeping an interesting endeavor. When my pride gets over the fact that I will drool, and drool a lot, I guess I will then be able to sleep. Until then, you can go ahead and count insomnia among my symptoms as well.
What we misunderstand about diseases is that we assume it's these sorts of things that diseases cause. That's sort of it, but not exactly. Actually, the headaches, the rash, the drooling tendency, are my body's response to my disease's inherent badness. Ah yes, immuno-response. Please forgive my love-hate relationship with immuno-response. I mean no harm. It's just a little bittersweet, that's all. I know that I have so much, shall I say, snot and spit, in my head for a very good reason. I have something in my body that is destructive and dangerous, and so my body is trying earnestly to create more fluids so that it can expel the virus through said fluids. That it gives me a sore throat and makes me drool is mere happenstance.
Now, of course, none of this is all that interesting to you. Unless you're one of those bioscience types. I'm not. But it's taught me something very intriguing about Christ, in particular his Body, the Church, Christian community, what have you. It's taught me, namely, that community is something that not only has needs, but more specifically, it is something that needs healing. Bodies need healing. His Body is no different. Mono has taught me that at the very worst, significant pain comes with the Body's process of healing (like my sore throat), and that at the very best, mild annoyances are sure to be a side effect as well (like me drooling all over myself). What do we need healing from? You name it. We're people. We're people with bodies that suffer pain and sickness all the time; we're people with spirits that come together into community, forming one Body, the Body of Christ, and all of our spiritual germs intermingle and create all kinds of baggage and mess. Of course, we should not think for even one moment that God did not intend it to be this way. Sometime, after all of these mono symptoms blow over, I'll feel great, like a new man, and I will be so grateful for my health. In the same way, our messy, complicated, dysfunctional, heavy-laden community is a beautiful process for us in making a broken and sinful people whole and perfect again. It's wonderful, beautiful, and it looks something like this...
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. -Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 19-22, English Standard Version
And that is why the community must be made perfect. It houses the Spirit of the Living God. It would be irreverent to offer anything less than something radiantly beautiful, flawless, and exquisite. We just have to acknowledge that at times it will be painful and annoying. And that sometimes we will just have to drool in our sleep. Or, maybe that's taking the metaphor too far? Maybe next time we'll spend more time unpacking the hidden significance of my full-body rash. Whatever the people want!
Friday, September 11, 2009
My Godsend of a Headache
Thought I would let that last post sink in a bit. I've heard from people who didn't even know Mom that my tribute brought them to tears. The post was more for my own sake than anyone else, but I'm glad that the blogosphere made it possible for you to read it as well.
Now, some time removed from all that happened, it's been hard to plug back into life and ministry. Coming off my second week back in ministry with UNC IV, I wish I could say I'm loving life, feeling great, and fully recovered from all that my family and I went through last month. But that would be a bald-faced lie.
Truth be told, after one week of work, a huge headache came on that has now been plaguing me for an entire week. I've had a fever, inexplicable fatigue, a sore throat, and I've woken up every night this week freezing cold but soaked in sweat. My doctor attributes it to stress, but ordered a brain MRI for me yesterday just to be safe. The results are pending.
For years, in moments of crisis, my sister and I have been the solid rocks for our family. I would say that Ashley holds everything together on the logistical, practical side of things. Me, I'm more on the spiritual side of things. To divorce anything from the divine presence of the Lord would be a huge mistake, and I have always felt my role to be making sure we remain centered in the Lord throughout moments of crisis. I think we've always tried to occupy these positions of fortitude outside of ourselves. I know, at least, that I have. Make sure everyone else is good, worry about myself later. And then "later" never actually becomes "now," and eventually just becomes "never." Nothing wrong with that, right? Shoot, that's noble, selfless, righteous. And a little thing I like to call spiritual suicide.
Finally, it's all beginning to catch up with me. And the many attempts the Lord has made to communicate my erring ways to me have failed, so he had to be a little more obvious. Headaches and night sweats it is. Just last week, my co-worker and friend Alex spoke to our students on the story from Mark 2 about the four friends who bring their paralytic friend to Jesus so that he can find healing. There's so many people in the house Jesus is in that they can't get in, and so instead of go in through the front door, they cut a hole in the roof and lower him down on a mat right to the feet of the Lord. He ended his talk with a challenge. There are typically three ways we struggle in regards to this passage, what Alex calls "Mat-independence (I don't need to be on the mat; I'm not paralyzed!)", "Mat-addiction (I don't ever want to get up)", and "The Carolina Way (I need to always be carrying the mat, never lying on it myself, never admitting vulnerability or weakness)." We all had the chance to respond by writing our particular struggle on an index card, and submitting it to a makeshift mat, symbolically submitting it to the Lord. I knew immediately my issue. I wrote on my card, "Time to get up." See, I always think I'm being too weak, too vulnerable, and that I just need to toughen up.
So God performed the reverse Chumbawamba on me. "I get back up! I get knocked down again!" And I could've sworn it was time for me to get up from the mat. But one really awful headache and a week's worth of night sweats later, God's put me right back down on that stupid mat. Doesn't he know that I need to be up and at 'em, ready to serve, ready to carry the mat for some other folks?
Actually, he knows more than I ever could about John Farmer. He knows the number of hairs on my head (significantly lower each and every day), as well as the amount of stress in my head, and the amount of sadness in my heart. And he knows that right here is where I need to be right now. So it seems that Fall 2009 is and will continue to be my lesson in doing ministry without the pretty edifice, and doing life with all my deficiencies visible. Should be fun. I have a feeling the following passage will take on a lot more meaning for me over the next few weeks and months...
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. -Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7-18, English Standard Version
Great, now I have Chumbawamba stuck in my head...
Now, some time removed from all that happened, it's been hard to plug back into life and ministry. Coming off my second week back in ministry with UNC IV, I wish I could say I'm loving life, feeling great, and fully recovered from all that my family and I went through last month. But that would be a bald-faced lie.
Truth be told, after one week of work, a huge headache came on that has now been plaguing me for an entire week. I've had a fever, inexplicable fatigue, a sore throat, and I've woken up every night this week freezing cold but soaked in sweat. My doctor attributes it to stress, but ordered a brain MRI for me yesterday just to be safe. The results are pending.
For years, in moments of crisis, my sister and I have been the solid rocks for our family. I would say that Ashley holds everything together on the logistical, practical side of things. Me, I'm more on the spiritual side of things. To divorce anything from the divine presence of the Lord would be a huge mistake, and I have always felt my role to be making sure we remain centered in the Lord throughout moments of crisis. I think we've always tried to occupy these positions of fortitude outside of ourselves. I know, at least, that I have. Make sure everyone else is good, worry about myself later. And then "later" never actually becomes "now," and eventually just becomes "never." Nothing wrong with that, right? Shoot, that's noble, selfless, righteous. And a little thing I like to call spiritual suicide.
Finally, it's all beginning to catch up with me. And the many attempts the Lord has made to communicate my erring ways to me have failed, so he had to be a little more obvious. Headaches and night sweats it is. Just last week, my co-worker and friend Alex spoke to our students on the story from Mark 2 about the four friends who bring their paralytic friend to Jesus so that he can find healing. There's so many people in the house Jesus is in that they can't get in, and so instead of go in through the front door, they cut a hole in the roof and lower him down on a mat right to the feet of the Lord. He ended his talk with a challenge. There are typically three ways we struggle in regards to this passage, what Alex calls "Mat-independence (I don't need to be on the mat; I'm not paralyzed!)", "Mat-addiction (I don't ever want to get up)", and "The Carolina Way (I need to always be carrying the mat, never lying on it myself, never admitting vulnerability or weakness)." We all had the chance to respond by writing our particular struggle on an index card, and submitting it to a makeshift mat, symbolically submitting it to the Lord. I knew immediately my issue. I wrote on my card, "Time to get up." See, I always think I'm being too weak, too vulnerable, and that I just need to toughen up.
So God performed the reverse Chumbawamba on me. "I get back up! I get knocked down again!" And I could've sworn it was time for me to get up from the mat. But one really awful headache and a week's worth of night sweats later, God's put me right back down on that stupid mat. Doesn't he know that I need to be up and at 'em, ready to serve, ready to carry the mat for some other folks?
Actually, he knows more than I ever could about John Farmer. He knows the number of hairs on my head (significantly lower each and every day), as well as the amount of stress in my head, and the amount of sadness in my heart. And he knows that right here is where I need to be right now. So it seems that Fall 2009 is and will continue to be my lesson in doing ministry without the pretty edifice, and doing life with all my deficiencies visible. Should be fun. I have a feeling the following passage will take on a lot more meaning for me over the next few weeks and months...
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. -Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7-18, English Standard Version
Great, now I have Chumbawamba stuck in my head...
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