Lady Gaga and Finding Your True Self

A friend of mine teaches at a local Christian high school. "What do you think about Lady Gaga, Mr. Jackson?" a student asked him.

Mr. Jackson is not only not particularly interested in pop-culture, he more or less abhors it. I'm not even sure if he knew who Lady Gaga was.

"What do you think," Mr. Jackson responded, pulling out the classic teacher stall-tactic.

"I think she's true to who she is," the student responded, "isn't that a good thing?"

Mr. Jackson commented later that this student had bought the whole package of the culture that skips over the part about dying to yourself in order to truly find yourself. I think most of us would prefer that route.

A year ago this time I was in the process of filling out an application for my new job as an Area Director. Being the external processor that I am, I would have naturally preferred to have been talking about it with just about everyone that I knew.

But I sensed that the Lord was calling me into a discipline that's somewhat foreign to me: the discipline of silence. I sensed that I was supposed to go against my natural grain and share my process with just a small circle of friends.

"When words are many, sin is not absent," declares the writer of Proverbs. In other words, the more you talk, the more likely you are to sin. In our culture's paradigm, this would fit in the category of "in-authentic."

In the case of last year's process, I was not expressing myself freely. I was entering into a discipline practiced by Christians throughout the centuries of shutting up rather than running my mouth. I was cultivating intimacy with the Lord by guarding something that he was leading me into.

Any healthy marriage has things that only the husband and wife share in together. The same is true in our relationship with God. As much as I harp on the importance of community here in Piebald Life land, the danger of co-dependence on people over intimacy with God is a perpetual faith-walk hazard.

We must learn to die to ourselves in order that we might live unto Christ--and therefore find our true selves. Sometimes this means that we embrace activity that is not our natural inclination--like keeping silent about a major life process for us external processors.

While millions follow Lady Gaga on Twitter (#1 most followed, at least for this week), she fumbles around and re-expresses her "true" self about every two to six weeks. Is that really life? Is that really joy? Is that really all that "authentic" after all?

There's a much better way. But it's much harder. I'll be praying that I, along with Lady Gaga, and along with you all, might have the strength of the Spirit to walk in it.

Madonna, Beastie Boys, Jamz, and Avoiding Becoming a Corporate Suck-Up at Corporate

So through some fluke of history, InterVarsity has its' headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. Crusade has Orlando, Navigators has Colorado Springs, we've got Madison. Good thing I didn't choose my employer based on whether or not you could get a direct flight.

So anyway, I was in Madison last week for my Area Director training. I actually love Madison. It's a cool town and I've gone there just about every summer for the past fourteen years for some sort of training.

But given that it's InterVarsity mecca, there's lots of InterVarsity big-wigs around. And given that there's lots of big-wigs around, I found myself hoping to be noticed by those aforementioned big-wigs.

What happens at these training weeks for me is that I insidiously begin to rank my importance based on how pursued I am and who pursues me. After all, the Important People have meetings. And not just meetings but meetings with other Important People.

In my little ledger, you're even more Important if some other Important Person instigated one of those meetings. I found myself delighted by one or two meetings, disappointed to not be noticed by others.

Why do I get around a large group of colleagues and suddenly revert to junior high social dynamics? Why not go all the way and break out some old Jamz and play Beastie Boys on my cd-player boom box? I had terrible hair, braces and glasses in junior high--why does any part of me feel the need to re-live any part of that experience?

And so I found myself confessing and repenting throughout the course of the week of my multi-faceted idol that basically boils down to being addicted to the approval of others and finding my worth and identity in the people I know and the people who know me.

If I do not doggedly repent of this foolishness, I could very well waste the rest of my days chasing after all sorts of approvals and losing my soul in the process.

I hope that some day I can go to a national IV gathering of some sort and be deeply centered in Christ, be blissfully free of the need to be noticed by anyone.

Until then, I'll just be glad for any spiritual discipline that keeps me from reaching for old Madonna cd's.

True Validation and Freedom From Living an Apologetic Life

A couple of years ago I was asked to be a "spiritual consultant" in an ongoing way to a working group of about eight people. The only problem was, I wasn't invited by the people in the working group--I was invited by someone who was overseeing them.

I knew some of these people, didn't know most of them, and I wasn't sure they wanted any of my "help." I was nervous that I'd be perceived as a giant waste of their time. I was talking this over with a friend of mine the week of my first meeting with them.

"Well," he said, "if you go in feeling apologetic for your presence, you'll be completely useless to anyone and it will be a giant waste of everyone's time."

"But," he continued, "I think you've got something to offer them. And if you can go in not seeking validation from them, not apologizing for what you've been invited to go and do, then you could actually be a blessing to them.

"And what this means is that you've got to be able to stand validated by the Lord in front of these people, apart from their approval. Approval might not come from them. And it shouldn't have to. It would seem that God has invited you here. So don't apologize for that calling.

"Instead go in to serve them, regardless of what they're attitude is towards you-- because you genuinely care about God's work among these people and because you absolutely don't need anything from them. You have been validated already by God. What more do you need? You are now free to bless them apart from their opinion of you."

Of course, secular humanists would insist that we simply approve and validate ourselves. This is utter foolishness. From birth to grave, we are hard-wired to seek approval from something/someone outside ourselves. We were meant to find it in our Good Father. Instead, we seek approval and validation in one another, or in our resumes or GPA's or conquests or exploits or, or, or....

But the words of my friend re-centered me on the True Source of my ultimate validation. I am free to be who and where I am not because I'm so worth everyone's approval but because I have been approved already. And that, by the God of the universe.

And so, I am free. Free from living an apologetic life, always trying to prove my worth or validate my existence.

And that freedom is what gives me the strong center from which I can live a life like Jesus did: not to be served by others (including and especially by manipulating them for their approval in order to prop myself up) but to serve, bless, honor and love others---even to consider them before myself.

Rocky Balboa, Tim Keller & "Righteousness" For Parents, Students, Cube-Worlders & Plumbers

I've been listening to some sermons by Tim Keller (aka the only pastor in the world who should ever have 40 points in his sermon--young speakers enjoy the content but ignore the delivery, you can't pull it off like he can).

Last week I was listening to a sermon where he talked about the biblical concept of 'righteousness.' In our culture this word has only negative connotations--i.e. "self-righteous."

But Keller points out that in both the Old and New Testaments, the word "righteousness" has at it's root the idea of being validated or approved of by God. And this deep longing for validation and approval is at work in all of us.

In the first Rocky movie, Rocky says that he fights and he trains not for the love of boxing but 'to know that I'm not a bum.' Rocky can't just work for the joy of the work. He has to work in order to get something else. He seeks validation and justification for his very existence through the medium of his 'work.'

This is how many of us live our lives. We can't rest. We have to justify our existence. And in the West we do this largely through our work.

But what would it mean to have already been 'validated?' What would it mean to be righteous already, apart from having to seek that righteousness or validation through what we do but through what God has freely given to us?

This would free us parents to parent without our very identity on the line as to how our kids "turn out." It would free students to learn and study and excel not out of driven-ness and anxiety but out of a deep confidence and rootedness in who they are because of what God has spoken into and over them.

And it would free all of us in the working world, whether that's ministry or plumbing or cube-world or teaching or yes, even boxing or acting, to do those things for the joy of those things.

We're not grasping/clawing/wishing for our identity to be discovered through success in anything. We have already been given our new names: righteous.

We are free to work and to rest because who we are is not decided by what we do or how well we do. Who we are has already been decided and declared. We have been accepted by our good Father. It is finished and it is very good.

In Christ, we are righteous. That is, we are already validated, approved of, and our existence is justified through nothing other than the good will of our Father who loves us and who gives us work to do not as a false prop and crutch for our souls but as a joy to enter alongside his Spirit.

That's one point (out of the 40) that's worth drilling down into.

The Good News of Our Un-Importance

Yesterday morning my son was throwing an epic tantrum. Something to do with who got to turn on the Christmas tree and a host of other (real and imagined) wrongs.

As his fit reached a fever pitch he screamed, "I'm going to knock over the tree and ruin everything!"

In a rare moment of clear-headed sanity I felt like I was able to speak something that blessed him: "No, son, you can't. You can't ruin everything. You don't have that much power. That's a good thing."

I think all but the most wounded of us and the most power-grasping of us don't actually want the power to ruin everything. And, even though we don't always feel like it (as Davis didn't that morning), it's a good thing that we don't have that kind of power.

God has come in Jesus to make sure that we don't have the last word on anything any more. We don't have the last word on culture, the economy, government, politics, on our marriages or our kids or even on ourselves...especially on ourselves.

You don't have the last word on you. God does. Congratulations, you can't even finally ruin your own life. God's arm is not too short to redeem anything. This is important for the "knowing God's will" conversation, among other things.

We can't ruin everything. And part of my job as a dad is to free my son from the burden of thinking that he can do so. To parent him in such a way that he feels that he could ruin everything would be to curse him with way too much power.

And it would set him up for a lifetime of too much pressure. If he can ruin everything, then the inverse could also be true: it's up to him to make sure that everything goes well. This lie could crush him--and actually probably crushes many of you.

This is the good news for all of us: you can't ruin everything. You are not as important as you think you are. Instead, you are loved far more than you ever hoped or imagined.

Merry Christmas.

Nouns, Verbs, Sobriety, and Finding Out Who I Am

So the question I got last week from an older, wiser man, seemed simple: who are you? But I found it frustratingly difficult to answer. A week later, I still do.

I wonder if at 35 I should have a more concrete answer. And some responses come to mind pretty quickly, but I think that there are some easy ways to go wrong here.

For example, who I am is not what I do. What I do is a title, a job, it's the good work that the "me" performs and it's what I've been called to. But "campus minister" is, in this particular instance, functioning more like an adjective than a noun.

I apologize to you non-English majors who got lost in that sentence, stick with me.

This morning I was trying to answer the question. It won't just go away: who are you? And I came across this from Paul in his letter to the Romans that helped me a bit:

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment... (Romans 12:3)

It seems that humility is simply seeing yourself rightly. It's not thinking of yourself more highly (or more lowly) than you ought. It's dealing with the realities of who we are, not the shadows, smoke and mirrors and play-acting that we so often (or maybe I should say that I so often) participate in.

We think we know ourselves and our stories and that we don't know or understand God. But the reality is, we do not know ourselves nor do we fully understand God. There is mystery to both.

Only God fully knows and understands us. And so the pathway to self-understanding starts outside ourselves, as we delve into the only true mirror that is God, our source, the one who made us and redeems us and sees us fully as we truly are. And as I look to Jesus, I'm starting to catch glimpses and outlines of who I really am.

One day, there's a promise that I'll get a new name, a name on a white stone known only to me and my good Father. That's who I truly am. That's who I'm becoming, by his grace. It's the name that when I receive it my heart will burst with joy and overflow with thanksgiving and be silenced and stilled with awe-struck tears: yes, that is who I am. You know me. You love me. Thank you.

In the mean time, I keep asking, seeking, trying to remain rooted in sober judgment. I am looking towards the one day when I will press through all these adjectives and come out on the other side into the presence of that One Great Noun who will show me who I truly am and who will once and for all give me my true name.