Here in InterVarsity-world, we teach our students, particularly our small group leaders, a very straight-forward, systematic way to study Scripture or to lead others in studying Scripture. It's a simple, three-step process: Observe, Interpret, Apply. It can be said in question format too. What is the writer saying? What does the writer mean? And what does it mean for us (individually and corporately)? All of the steps are vital. Without observing what's happening in a passage of Scripture, there's certainly no way you're going to be able to interpret it. Without interpreting what you see, drawing application from those more confusing verses is going to be interesting, to say the least. And without application, we become stale scholars incapable of being propelled into mission by the Holy Spirit's work in and through as we enter into the Scriptures.
For most of my Scripture-studying life, I have made the mistake of sitting in observation and interpretation. It doesn't say anything bad about me, necessarily. I really enjoy thinking deeply about things. I love theory. I love stepping into the shoes of a battered and bruised Paul, or a Jeremiah who is seen as an outcast by his own people, or an old and wise Solomon, and trying to theorize about what is meant by a particular verse. Going even deeper into the endless nerd black hole that is my brain, I was trained as a Greek major to focus in on one measly word and extract a world of meaning from the hundreds of years of linguistic transformation that particular word had gone through when some apostle used it in the first century. I deeply love theology, hermeneutics, exegesis. It's just so much fun!
But application is so significant. Particularly these days. People no longer care, generally speaking (and probably oversimplifying to a fault), about what is true. That's a 20th century question. What is far more compelling to the 21st century mind is not what is true, but what is relevant. So I may be able to spend hours unpacking the meaning of one word, but if I cannot understand myself its relevance for real life, then I definitely cannot invite someone else into my new discovery, no matter how profound or earth-shaking it may be.
But things have changed for me recently. A year of overwhelming grief, emotional outpouring, and soul-baring has totally shifted me. I've realized that, actually, I'm a pretty interesting case. Working through grief has demanded the incredibly daunting task of looking at myself, at my wounds and my pain, as well as at my passions and my loves. And it's fascinating. I'm a weird dude. Some of you maybe have known this for a while already. But I think I'm just realizing it. And so as I have been in Scripture in recent months, I've really had a hard time sticking to the intellectual stuff. Having discovered all these new things about myself, I want to plunge into the application. What does this stuff mean for me? What does it mean for the Church? What is its relevance to the world in which I/we live?
And you know, if this lasted for any duration much longer than a short while, it would be incredibly unhealthy. Noted. But my story has largely taken place outside of myself. By that I mean, I just don't know myself very well. There was a question on my InterVarsity staff application that asked me to rate how well I know myself. I remember knowing myself so poorly, that I'm pretty sure I gave myself the highest rating available. Just never have taken the time to get to know myself. My deeply thinking self has found, um, itself, to be so much less interesting than the things it could be learning about all the other cool stuff in the world. But neither is this approach to things all that healthy either. Ourselves are our lens, our perspective. Any hope to know God will inevitably be through the pain we have felt, or the struggles that we have had, and how God has responded to us in those places in our lives. The same is true corporately. It is through the lens of Israel's pains and struggles that Israel sought to know God. Ever read the Psalms? It is through the exiles, the slavery, the ups and the downs, the good kings (all, like, 2 of them) and the bad kings (the droves of them), the prophecies of judgment and the prophecies of deliverance, that Israel ever really knew God (to varying degrees of intimacy) in the Old Testament. And as we who believe that Jesus was the Messiah to whom all these things from Israel's history pointed, it is imperative to acknowledge that we have been grafted into that people and that name, Israel. And, here goes my word-studying nerd black hole mind again...
...Israel = he struggles or wrestles with God (a basic definition; just be glad Israel isn't a Greek word)
Our very identity as the people of God is to, just as Jacob did before he was renamed, look at the place God has brought us to, and in the moments that we are discontented, to struggle with God over it. And like Jacob, sometimes we leave the encounter with a limp. But that limp does the good work of reminding us that we have experienced the single greatest blessing this life has to offer - discovering the strength and wisdom of the Almighty, so that we can quit trying to act so strong and so wise. After all, acting all the time can just be exhausting.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
My Non-Book Review Book Review: Life of Pi
The best stories speak of life in ways you can understand, by commenting anecdotally on the things you know in your heart to be true, but are so subtle or subconscious that you've never thought of them before. But just as soon as you read these elements of good stories, you say in your heart, "Yes, of course. I've thought that for my entire life, but I've only just now put the thought into words. Or rather, this book has. I should quote this in my blog."
I just finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which took, well, not long at all for a man as busy and slow-reading as myself. I spent about two and a half weeks on the first 180 pages. And I read the last 150 last night. Couldn't put it down. And I wouldn't want to bore you with a book review that would critique the story and suck all the life out of it. I give it a 10 out of 10. That's all you need to know. Looking for something to read? I would suggest Life of Pi. There, book review over. But I do want to share with you a passage from the book that has been nearly life-changing for me these last few weeks. As I described above, it's one of those passages that made me say, "But of course! I've always known that! Now I finally have words for that thought!" For context, Pi, the main character and narrator, is the son of a zookeeper. He actively practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. His fascination with animals and God often intersect, helping him, ultimately, to better understand people, and God. It's an intriguing read. And the following passage has stayed with me since I read it on page 31, the very day I started reading the book.
Indeed, the self is an interesting thing. We Christians like to dismiss it. Selflessness is a virtue. Nietzsche considered that to be the worst thing about Christians - the dismissal of the self. Ayn Rand, too, thought it was despicable, not specifically the Christians but altruists altogether, to consider selflessness a virtue. I do believe that Nietzsche and Rand and all the rest who despise the Christian/altruistic view of the self as despicable have indeed misinterpreted things, skewed them to fit an agenda. The Scriptures don't actually encourage selflessness. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, for instance. Well if we didn't care about the self at all, we certainly wouldn't make very good neighbors.
It's just that the self has a right place and a wrong place. The self is a gift given to us. For people who were created in the image of God, the self is always going to be the most accessible image, however incomplete it may be, of the image of God. Placing the self as an incomplete but accurate image of who God is would be placing the self in the right place. Assuming that everything we do or think is the image of God - now, that would be taking the matter too far. We are not God, though we often would prefer it. But we must humbly acknowledge that everything that is good in us is probably a reflection of God's person, given to us out of his overwhelming love. He could have created us to be completely different, separate, opposites of him. But as with humans and animals, only certain things are separate and different between us and God. Other things are quite similar.
The fault of the anti-altruists - Nietzsche in particular - is that they liken Christianity to Asceticism. Asceticism is not the Christian calling. Self-denial is not good. Self-oppression is not virtuous. Self-destruction is not noble. The Scriptures do not call for that. It is because we know the love which God has had for us that we even know how to love those around us. It is because God has forgiven us that we know how to forgive others. It is because God has placed joy in our hearts that we desire for others to know true joy. It is because Jesus died on the cross for us that we wish to live sacrificial lives on the behalf of others. And it is because Jesus rose again that we know life after death is available to us, and it is precisely because it is available to us that we desire it to be available to others. If we eradicate the self, we eradicate all the memorials of what God has done, for it is our own souls that are the grounds for those memorials. Destroy the self, and you destroy all the memories of God's good work - the change and tranformation He has worked out in our lives.
Indeed, often we go astray, and we do what we do with housepets and zoo animals - we describe God in human terms, in a human perspective, with human limitations. We limit the limitless. In the dangerous task of using the image of God that is ourselves to understand better who God is, we must acknowledge that he is so much bigger, better, and more holy. In myself, I see a minuscule piece of who God is. By getting married, I see in my wife another minuscule piece of who God is. Throw in our church community and our students in InterVarsity, it's a lot less minuscule, but still minuscule. Throwing in nature around us helps too. Throwing in church cultures from around the world, the picture gets a little clearer. But regardless, ourselves, our spouses, our churches, our communities, our cultures - all of them are clouded over by sin, which prevents us from fully being able to see who God is through who we are.
The bottom line is this: God is who He is. Flat out. Nothing can give us a complete, holy picture of who He is, except for Him. So the self can only go so far. The self is how we remember what God has done. It is how we respond to what God has done. But it is only God Himself who can reveal Himself truly to us. And, you see, He's thoughtful like that. For God is very big. Let's give thanks that He's actually kind enough to reveal Himself in small bits so our heads and hearts don't explode.
I just finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which took, well, not long at all for a man as busy and slow-reading as myself. I spent about two and a half weeks on the first 180 pages. And I read the last 150 last night. Couldn't put it down. And I wouldn't want to bore you with a book review that would critique the story and suck all the life out of it. I give it a 10 out of 10. That's all you need to know. Looking for something to read? I would suggest Life of Pi. There, book review over. But I do want to share with you a passage from the book that has been nearly life-changing for me these last few weeks. As I described above, it's one of those passages that made me say, "But of course! I've always known that! Now I finally have words for that thought!" For context, Pi, the main character and narrator, is the son of a zookeeper. He actively practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. His fascination with animals and God often intersect, helping him, ultimately, to better understand people, and God. It's an intriguing read. And the following passage has stayed with me since I read it on page 31, the very day I started reading the book.
Just beyond the ticket booth Father had had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
But I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthromorphicus, the animal as seen through human eyes. We've all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is "cute", "friendly", "loving", "devoted", "merry", "understanding". These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and children's zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those "vicious", "bloodthirsty", "depraved" animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.
Indeed, the self is an interesting thing. We Christians like to dismiss it. Selflessness is a virtue. Nietzsche considered that to be the worst thing about Christians - the dismissal of the self. Ayn Rand, too, thought it was despicable, not specifically the Christians but altruists altogether, to consider selflessness a virtue. I do believe that Nietzsche and Rand and all the rest who despise the Christian/altruistic view of the self as despicable have indeed misinterpreted things, skewed them to fit an agenda. The Scriptures don't actually encourage selflessness. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, for instance. Well if we didn't care about the self at all, we certainly wouldn't make very good neighbors.
It's just that the self has a right place and a wrong place. The self is a gift given to us. For people who were created in the image of God, the self is always going to be the most accessible image, however incomplete it may be, of the image of God. Placing the self as an incomplete but accurate image of who God is would be placing the self in the right place. Assuming that everything we do or think is the image of God - now, that would be taking the matter too far. We are not God, though we often would prefer it. But we must humbly acknowledge that everything that is good in us is probably a reflection of God's person, given to us out of his overwhelming love. He could have created us to be completely different, separate, opposites of him. But as with humans and animals, only certain things are separate and different between us and God. Other things are quite similar.
The fault of the anti-altruists - Nietzsche in particular - is that they liken Christianity to Asceticism. Asceticism is not the Christian calling. Self-denial is not good. Self-oppression is not virtuous. Self-destruction is not noble. The Scriptures do not call for that. It is because we know the love which God has had for us that we even know how to love those around us. It is because God has forgiven us that we know how to forgive others. It is because God has placed joy in our hearts that we desire for others to know true joy. It is because Jesus died on the cross for us that we wish to live sacrificial lives on the behalf of others. And it is because Jesus rose again that we know life after death is available to us, and it is precisely because it is available to us that we desire it to be available to others. If we eradicate the self, we eradicate all the memorials of what God has done, for it is our own souls that are the grounds for those memorials. Destroy the self, and you destroy all the memories of God's good work - the change and tranformation He has worked out in our lives.
Indeed, often we go astray, and we do what we do with housepets and zoo animals - we describe God in human terms, in a human perspective, with human limitations. We limit the limitless. In the dangerous task of using the image of God that is ourselves to understand better who God is, we must acknowledge that he is so much bigger, better, and more holy. In myself, I see a minuscule piece of who God is. By getting married, I see in my wife another minuscule piece of who God is. Throw in our church community and our students in InterVarsity, it's a lot less minuscule, but still minuscule. Throwing in nature around us helps too. Throwing in church cultures from around the world, the picture gets a little clearer. But regardless, ourselves, our spouses, our churches, our communities, our cultures - all of them are clouded over by sin, which prevents us from fully being able to see who God is through who we are.
The bottom line is this: God is who He is. Flat out. Nothing can give us a complete, holy picture of who He is, except for Him. So the self can only go so far. The self is how we remember what God has done. It is how we respond to what God has done. But it is only God Himself who can reveal Himself truly to us. And, you see, He's thoughtful like that. For God is very big. Let's give thanks that He's actually kind enough to reveal Himself in small bits so our heads and hearts don't explode.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Kicking Off Lent by Kicking Out Our Idolatry of Now
Welcome to Lent. I guess we don't really "kick off" Lent. We kick off football games and school years. Lent we more mozy into without an ounce of excitement. Nonetheless. Come mozy with me.
Some of you (myself included) will be walking around this evening with a cross of black ashes on your forehead. Some of you, if you're not a Christian, will be wondering why those crazy Christians are walking around with a cross of black ashes on their forehead. Some of you, if you are a Christian, will be wondering why all the crazy Christians are walking around with a cross of black ashes on their foreheads. I've never done the ashes thing before. I've never been in a church tradition liturgical enough to do an Ash Wednesday service. But now I'm a practicing Anglican, so ashes here I come.
Lent is a weird thing. For 46 days (I think that's right; don't quote me), people of faith in Jesus Christ look toward the crucifixion of their Lord. We focus on sin, grief, confession. We spend 46 days in a state of emotional downturn. We stop saying "Alleluia" in church. We remember that we are dust, and that to dust we will return. For a month and half. Is it all really that necessary? Well, I won't say it's necessary. I haven't done it ever before in my 25 years. And I think I've always had a sufficient understanding of Easter. But man, I think it can be hugely beneficial for a lot of reasons; I'll focus on one.
We are people of immediacy. Gone are the days when people pray for one thing for an entire lifetime, much less for more than a few weeks. People throughout the history of Judaeo-Christian faith give us an example that we can never achieve because of our idolatry of Now. Abraham prayed for how many years that he and Sarah could have a kid? Moses never got to see the one thing he spent his entire life pushing for. Solomon saw some great things in his life, got to see and experience one of the few and far between periods of peace and progress in the history of Israel. And he wrote a great book, Proverbs, to set up his son to carry on the greatness for many more years after his death. And what happened? Dude squandered it all. Solomon also left us with Ecclesiastes, documenting his long struggle with feeling like all his efforts in labor were pointless. These faith ancestors of ours were surrounded by the disappointment of working hard for a lifetime and not knowing if it's really worth it all.
Me? When I pray for something starting today, if I don't have it by next week, I move on. That's a clear "No" from God. Simply ridiculous. Selfish. Shallow.
The fact of the matter is that we are all people full of disappointment whose chief aim in life is not to show the world how disappointed and unfulfilled we are. But God responds to our long periods of disappointment, to our lives that often feel wasted, with an offer of eternal fulfillment, joy, and life abundant. We may spend 46 days looking toward the cross with grief in our hearts, but it's so that we can enjoy the resurrection basically until Christmas. An illustration of how pathetic death is compared to life within the gospel of Jesus Christ. A feeble illustration, yes, but it'll do for now.
Some of you (myself included) will be walking around this evening with a cross of black ashes on your forehead. Some of you, if you're not a Christian, will be wondering why those crazy Christians are walking around with a cross of black ashes on their forehead. Some of you, if you are a Christian, will be wondering why all the crazy Christians are walking around with a cross of black ashes on their foreheads. I've never done the ashes thing before. I've never been in a church tradition liturgical enough to do an Ash Wednesday service. But now I'm a practicing Anglican, so ashes here I come.
Lent is a weird thing. For 46 days (I think that's right; don't quote me), people of faith in Jesus Christ look toward the crucifixion of their Lord. We focus on sin, grief, confession. We spend 46 days in a state of emotional downturn. We stop saying "Alleluia" in church. We remember that we are dust, and that to dust we will return. For a month and half. Is it all really that necessary? Well, I won't say it's necessary. I haven't done it ever before in my 25 years. And I think I've always had a sufficient understanding of Easter. But man, I think it can be hugely beneficial for a lot of reasons; I'll focus on one.
We are people of immediacy. Gone are the days when people pray for one thing for an entire lifetime, much less for more than a few weeks. People throughout the history of Judaeo-Christian faith give us an example that we can never achieve because of our idolatry of Now. Abraham prayed for how many years that he and Sarah could have a kid? Moses never got to see the one thing he spent his entire life pushing for. Solomon saw some great things in his life, got to see and experience one of the few and far between periods of peace and progress in the history of Israel. And he wrote a great book, Proverbs, to set up his son to carry on the greatness for many more years after his death. And what happened? Dude squandered it all. Solomon also left us with Ecclesiastes, documenting his long struggle with feeling like all his efforts in labor were pointless. These faith ancestors of ours were surrounded by the disappointment of working hard for a lifetime and not knowing if it's really worth it all.
Me? When I pray for something starting today, if I don't have it by next week, I move on. That's a clear "No" from God. Simply ridiculous. Selfish. Shallow.
The fact of the matter is that we are all people full of disappointment whose chief aim in life is not to show the world how disappointed and unfulfilled we are. But God responds to our long periods of disappointment, to our lives that often feel wasted, with an offer of eternal fulfillment, joy, and life abundant. We may spend 46 days looking toward the cross with grief in our hearts, but it's so that we can enjoy the resurrection basically until Christmas. An illustration of how pathetic death is compared to life within the gospel of Jesus Christ. A feeble illustration, yes, but it'll do for now.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Anointed by Mud
So it's been a loooong time since I've stopped here and written. The beginning of a new semester is certainly no coincidence in that. But man, there's a personal side to it too. January and February have been a good time for me to begin processing things, and with an August-thru-November like we had, I might be there a while. The weird thing is that in the midst of where I am personally, things in ministry at UNC have been, well, as good as one can imagine. Students are praying like never before, inviting like never before, and the Spirit is seemingly at work like never before. We've seen two students come to know the Lord for the first time, some who are new to faith beginning to take it seriously, and some who have just been gone for a while come back to Jesus. And we've seen students who a year ago had serious issues with that word which seems to have become a dirty one - evangelism - embracing it as a lifestyle. In InterVarsity, we like to talk about transformation, and it abounds right now in the UNC-Chapel Hill chapter.
But the trickiness of it all is that ministry is what I do, but it is not who I am. While things are going really well on-campus, I can't deny that I still feel a bit like the man born blind in the 9th chapter of John's gospel on the personal front. Well, except for my under-developed left eye, my eyesight is just dandy. But I feel like a man emotionally born blind. I've always been one to opine before I emote. That's just kind of the way I've been wired. Not unlike many men I suppose. But man, last fall called for a different John Farmer. If all I can do is opine about last fall, I would certainly be able to do nothing but spin myself into a cycle of clinical depression, I'm pretty sure. Losing two of the closest people in your life - I think you can guess my opinion on that. But I needed to learn, and learn fast, how to emote. Not how to deal with emotion - that's quite a different thing. I've always dealt with emotion - hey John, stop it! That's what my inner monologue has always sounded like. I haven't needed to deal with emotion; I've just needed to do the messy business of simply emoting.
The process went through the end of 2009 without so much as one discovery about myself or about how I'm taking things. But January and February have been a bit different. And I'm realizing that it is very deeply a spiritual process. Because emotionally, I was born blind. Fortunately, I was born into the church, and my blind self has been laid in the shadows of the temple just like this man, where Jesus would find me. And he definitely found me found me back in middle school, when the gospel became clear and real to me. But he's constantly finding me again. See, we're not fortunate like the miracle-recipients of the gospels, who seemingly had one or two needs - blindness, paralysis, a hemorrhaging problem. (Kidding.) But seriously, we're all incredibly needy. And we're in a cycle of Jesus finding us in the pit of despair in a lot of different ways throughout our lives. Well, this spiritual process of getting emotional eyes has been largely non-epic. We have this image of Jesus' miracles being these epic displays of power, like scenes from a movie except not. But no, dude took dirt, added spit, making mud, and anointed the blind man with it. That's not the way Spielberg would have written it, I'm pretty sure.
Imagine what it was like. You're blind. Can't see. You've functioned primarily out of your sense of hearing your entire life. So this man comes up to you, and seems intent on healing you. So you're listening really well to hear how exactly he's gonna do it. You hear him spit. Confused yet? You hear him bend down, and you hear him taking his fingers and stirring together his spit with the dirt like it's a milkshake or something. I'm questioning his wisdom by now. And then you hear him take a dollop of the newly made mudshake onto his finger. You feel the warm sensation of the mudshake on your eyes. When this crazy lunatic who just slathered spit-mud on your eyes tells you to go wash yourself in the pool, do you do it?
Here's where the blind man has an advantage on me. He's been aware of his need for sight for all his life. People like me, who think we have it all together, we want to say to Jesus when he does weird things to heal us, "No, I'm fine, you keep your spit to yourself." But the blind man is no fool; if it has even a chance of giving him sight, he's gonna do it. So he goes and he washes, and in faith receives his sight.
So yeah, receiving emotional sight has been a spiritual process. The more I understand about the person of Christ, the more I have eyes to see what is happening in my heart after a hard fall. I'm glad to be back to blogging. It's always a good way for me to process things, to share things, and to invite others into my process, if it's actually interesting to them - to you. When asked why the man was born blind, Jesus says, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." That's always at the root of our needs. We live in a broken world, a world broken by us no less, and we all as a result have immense needs. But a redemptive God shows the world where the true source of redemption is through powerful works of healing in those who come to him in faith - who in faith can admit their needs, who in faith confess that Jesus can heal them, who in faith believe that whatever weird way Jesus chooses to heal them is just fine. So I'm glad to be back to blogging to share this process so that maybe the works of God might be displayed in me too. There's no point to our suffering if the power of Christ over suffering is not displayed in us.
But the trickiness of it all is that ministry is what I do, but it is not who I am. While things are going really well on-campus, I can't deny that I still feel a bit like the man born blind in the 9th chapter of John's gospel on the personal front. Well, except for my under-developed left eye, my eyesight is just dandy. But I feel like a man emotionally born blind. I've always been one to opine before I emote. That's just kind of the way I've been wired. Not unlike many men I suppose. But man, last fall called for a different John Farmer. If all I can do is opine about last fall, I would certainly be able to do nothing but spin myself into a cycle of clinical depression, I'm pretty sure. Losing two of the closest people in your life - I think you can guess my opinion on that. But I needed to learn, and learn fast, how to emote. Not how to deal with emotion - that's quite a different thing. I've always dealt with emotion - hey John, stop it! That's what my inner monologue has always sounded like. I haven't needed to deal with emotion; I've just needed to do the messy business of simply emoting.
The process went through the end of 2009 without so much as one discovery about myself or about how I'm taking things. But January and February have been a bit different. And I'm realizing that it is very deeply a spiritual process. Because emotionally, I was born blind. Fortunately, I was born into the church, and my blind self has been laid in the shadows of the temple just like this man, where Jesus would find me. And he definitely found me found me back in middle school, when the gospel became clear and real to me. But he's constantly finding me again. See, we're not fortunate like the miracle-recipients of the gospels, who seemingly had one or two needs - blindness, paralysis, a hemorrhaging problem. (Kidding.) But seriously, we're all incredibly needy. And we're in a cycle of Jesus finding us in the pit of despair in a lot of different ways throughout our lives. Well, this spiritual process of getting emotional eyes has been largely non-epic. We have this image of Jesus' miracles being these epic displays of power, like scenes from a movie except not. But no, dude took dirt, added spit, making mud, and anointed the blind man with it. That's not the way Spielberg would have written it, I'm pretty sure.
Imagine what it was like. You're blind. Can't see. You've functioned primarily out of your sense of hearing your entire life. So this man comes up to you, and seems intent on healing you. So you're listening really well to hear how exactly he's gonna do it. You hear him spit. Confused yet? You hear him bend down, and you hear him taking his fingers and stirring together his spit with the dirt like it's a milkshake or something. I'm questioning his wisdom by now. And then you hear him take a dollop of the newly made mudshake onto his finger. You feel the warm sensation of the mudshake on your eyes. When this crazy lunatic who just slathered spit-mud on your eyes tells you to go wash yourself in the pool, do you do it?
Here's where the blind man has an advantage on me. He's been aware of his need for sight for all his life. People like me, who think we have it all together, we want to say to Jesus when he does weird things to heal us, "No, I'm fine, you keep your spit to yourself." But the blind man is no fool; if it has even a chance of giving him sight, he's gonna do it. So he goes and he washes, and in faith receives his sight.
So yeah, receiving emotional sight has been a spiritual process. The more I understand about the person of Christ, the more I have eyes to see what is happening in my heart after a hard fall. I'm glad to be back to blogging. It's always a good way for me to process things, to share things, and to invite others into my process, if it's actually interesting to them - to you. When asked why the man was born blind, Jesus says, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." That's always at the root of our needs. We live in a broken world, a world broken by us no less, and we all as a result have immense needs. But a redemptive God shows the world where the true source of redemption is through powerful works of healing in those who come to him in faith - who in faith can admit their needs, who in faith confess that Jesus can heal them, who in faith believe that whatever weird way Jesus chooses to heal them is just fine. So I'm glad to be back to blogging to share this process so that maybe the works of God might be displayed in me too. There's no point to our suffering if the power of Christ over suffering is not displayed in us.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Why I Believe in Miracles, and Why It Matters
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.
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 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.
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