I was talking with a student some time ago. He had just been summarily dumped by his girlfriend and was trying to figure out what it meant to trust the Lord, to recover and heal.
In the mean time, he had been talking with a hallmate about his faith. His hallmate was talking with him about the recent dumping--nothing too intense, just talking about dating and break-ups and how bad they stink. And the student very wisely and gently said, "And you know, I'm just trying to figure out what it means to trust God with something that I care so deeply about."
Last week I posted on the challenge and the call to live out the gospel in real-time. To actually apply the gospel to getting cut-off in traffic or snubbed by a co-worker or be passed over for a position that you wanted. This is the Christ-follower's call to a life of discipleship.
And what this student did--his real-time articulation of his faith-struggles in light of his break-up--that's real-time gospel articulation. That's the work of evangelism.
For too long evangelism has been seen as the work of experts or of presenting an abstract set of principles. What we're seeing in lots of parts of evangelicalism is an over-correction to an evangelism that serves and cares for people (which is clearly vital and has not always been as front-and-center as it should be) but never actually gets around to doing the articulation: this is what is real, this is the life that I'm living, this is why I'm doing what I do.
What must happen in our communities is that we begin to take Jesus seriously. He's invited us to a life that's recklessly different than our culture offers. It's a life of taking up the cross, dying to ourselves, loving others, living as children of God, not caring what the world thinks about us.
And as we do that in real-time, we must also learn this skill of articulation in real-time. We've got to learn how to articulate our faith as it's being worked out in our lives right now. That's our story. It's the one that God in His gracious sovereignty is working out right now. And in His sovereignty, He's put people in our lives to share that story with. This is our privilege and our joy: that we might tell of His work in our lives, even when we're not sure what it looks like yet.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Living out the Gospel in Real Time
The gospel changes everything. This is the strong conviction of all the New Testament writers. That the living God giving us life in his name is the Big Story that gives fullness of life to all of our stories.
And so you get these passages where we're exhorted to "take every thought captive" and "whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord." The point here is not an abstract dogma that we assent to conceptually. It is not a series of rituals or religious exercises that we do occasionally then leave on the shelf.
The work of discipleship is living out this new reality in real-time. That is, everything about our lives and how we interact with the world is understood through the lens of the Christ-with-us reality: driving a car, taking astronomy, raising kids, going to the grocery store, working in cube world.
This is spelled out in a number of different ways in the New Testament:
1. "Jesus is Lord" is not an one of many "lordship" options being offered in the world. When the apostles made this claim in Acts it was in direct opposition to "Caesar is Lord." For the apostles, saying "Jesus is Lord" was roughly the same thing as saying "Bush is president." It is a statement of fact, not opinion. Of course it may be disagreed with, but it cannot be brushed off as merely what works for one person. Either Bush is president or he is not. Either Jesus is Lord or he is not.
This Lordship over all things is the story that we are invited to lean into, celebrate, live out as we think about living out the gospel in real-time. Unfortunately this is often only understood as a "cosmic police officer.". But nothing could be further from the truth. That Jesus is Lord and not Caesar or success or money or popularity or my own desires frees me from the tyranny of all those things so that I might be freed to live as I was made to live--including in healthy relationship with government, success, money, relationships, and my own desires.
2. Not only is Jesus called Lord, we are called sons and daughters of the most high God. We're saints, even when we don't feel very saintly. Our identity is no longer slaves to sin, no longer lost, no longer enemies of God, no longer orphans. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. We have been adopted as God's children. And so we are invited to live out of that in real-time as we are marginalized at work or overlooked for a position we wanted or as things don't quite go our way in a relationship. Our identity is not rooted in those things. "Our life roots are hid with Christ in God" (George MacDonald).
3. The Spirit is always at work around us to invite us to participate in His activity. There is joy in the co-working with the God of the universe. There is life in participating in this perfect story as it unfolds and brings redemption, restoration, healing and life everywhere.
And so we must begin to wake up to the God of the universe inviting us to live out of this Big Story in Real-Time. Not just slumbering from Sunday to Sunday without transformation or change. Jesus is Lord. You are his child. The Spirit is at work all around. That's our story. Let's dig in.
And so you get these passages where we're exhorted to "take every thought captive" and "whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord." The point here is not an abstract dogma that we assent to conceptually. It is not a series of rituals or religious exercises that we do occasionally then leave on the shelf.
The work of discipleship is living out this new reality in real-time. That is, everything about our lives and how we interact with the world is understood through the lens of the Christ-with-us reality: driving a car, taking astronomy, raising kids, going to the grocery store, working in cube world.
This is spelled out in a number of different ways in the New Testament:
1. "Jesus is Lord" is not an one of many "lordship" options being offered in the world. When the apostles made this claim in Acts it was in direct opposition to "Caesar is Lord." For the apostles, saying "Jesus is Lord" was roughly the same thing as saying "Bush is president." It is a statement of fact, not opinion. Of course it may be disagreed with, but it cannot be brushed off as merely what works for one person. Either Bush is president or he is not. Either Jesus is Lord or he is not.
This Lordship over all things is the story that we are invited to lean into, celebrate, live out as we think about living out the gospel in real-time. Unfortunately this is often only understood as a "cosmic police officer.". But nothing could be further from the truth. That Jesus is Lord and not Caesar or success or money or popularity or my own desires frees me from the tyranny of all those things so that I might be freed to live as I was made to live--including in healthy relationship with government, success, money, relationships, and my own desires.
2. Not only is Jesus called Lord, we are called sons and daughters of the most high God. We're saints, even when we don't feel very saintly. Our identity is no longer slaves to sin, no longer lost, no longer enemies of God, no longer orphans. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. We have been adopted as God's children. And so we are invited to live out of that in real-time as we are marginalized at work or overlooked for a position we wanted or as things don't quite go our way in a relationship. Our identity is not rooted in those things. "Our life roots are hid with Christ in God" (George MacDonald).
3. The Spirit is always at work around us to invite us to participate in His activity. There is joy in the co-working with the God of the universe. There is life in participating in this perfect story as it unfolds and brings redemption, restoration, healing and life everywhere.
And so we must begin to wake up to the God of the universe inviting us to live out of this Big Story in Real-Time. Not just slumbering from Sunday to Sunday without transformation or change. Jesus is Lord. You are his child. The Spirit is at work all around. That's our story. Let's dig in.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Doing My Own PR: What I Blog About
"So what do you blog about?" someone asked me recently.
I hesitated, not exactly sure how to answer the question.
"He writes sermon-illustrations," a frequent reader of mine offered. I cringed. Someone gave me a book of sermon illustrations when I came on IV staff. It's terrible, awful, pre-packaged, trite, overly-sentimental, sloppy, thin, and abundantly atrociously grotesquely bad.
All this goes to show what a friend of mine in p.r. once told me: if you don't explain or interpret yourself, others will do it for you. This has pressed me over the past couple of days to think more about how I need to answer the question: what do I blog about?
So here in January at the beginning of the Year of Our Lord 2010, I want to articulate what I blog about.
The time-line of our lives, contexts, culture, relationships, and our internal world all run in one direction. The gospel intersects that line in a nearly infinite number of ways at any given time. I want to pay attention to and live out of the near-infinite number of ways that the gospel intersects my world and our broader world in real-time.
If the Christian story is true, if Jesus really was God-become-flesh and if he really did die for all the brokenness and rebellion in the world and if he really did rise again from the dead three days later, then that changes everything.
To paraphrase a great theologian there isn't any part of the world, our culture, our lives, or our internal world that Jesus does not shout, "MINE!" It's all Jesus' by virtue of his creating it and a second time by virtue of his redeeming it, his "again-making" to quote Julian of Norwich's delightful phrase. And for the most part, we sleep-walk through that reality.
Blogging about the infinite intersection of the gospel in our real-time lives keeps me awake, alert, on tip-toe looking for those realities: in parenting, ministry, Scripture, marriage, coaching kids soccer teams, or following Muslims through airports. The gospel changes everything, in real-time. That's what I blog about.
Or at least, that's what I want to be blogging out. Thanks for those of you who track with me--and even more thanks to those of you who read regularly while occasionally wondering what the heck I'm talking about.
Writing these posts quickens me to the reality of the gospel intersecting my experiences. I hope it might do the same for you.
And if not, maybe I need to hire my own personal professional p.r. guy...or maybe I need to look into writing sermon illustration books.
I hesitated, not exactly sure how to answer the question.
"He writes sermon-illustrations," a frequent reader of mine offered. I cringed. Someone gave me a book of sermon illustrations when I came on IV staff. It's terrible, awful, pre-packaged, trite, overly-sentimental, sloppy, thin, and abundantly atrociously grotesquely bad.
All this goes to show what a friend of mine in p.r. once told me: if you don't explain or interpret yourself, others will do it for you. This has pressed me over the past couple of days to think more about how I need to answer the question: what do I blog about?
So here in January at the beginning of the Year of Our Lord 2010, I want to articulate what I blog about.
The time-line of our lives, contexts, culture, relationships, and our internal world all run in one direction. The gospel intersects that line in a nearly infinite number of ways at any given time. I want to pay attention to and live out of the near-infinite number of ways that the gospel intersects my world and our broader world in real-time.
If the Christian story is true, if Jesus really was God-become-flesh and if he really did die for all the brokenness and rebellion in the world and if he really did rise again from the dead three days later, then that changes everything.
To paraphrase a great theologian there isn't any part of the world, our culture, our lives, or our internal world that Jesus does not shout, "MINE!" It's all Jesus' by virtue of his creating it and a second time by virtue of his redeeming it, his "again-making" to quote Julian of Norwich's delightful phrase. And for the most part, we sleep-walk through that reality.
Blogging about the infinite intersection of the gospel in our real-time lives keeps me awake, alert, on tip-toe looking for those realities: in parenting, ministry, Scripture, marriage, coaching kids soccer teams, or following Muslims through airports. The gospel changes everything, in real-time. That's what I blog about.
Or at least, that's what I want to be blogging out. Thanks for those of you who track with me--and even more thanks to those of you who read regularly while occasionally wondering what the heck I'm talking about.
Writing these posts quickens me to the reality of the gospel intersecting my experiences. I hope it might do the same for you.
And if not, maybe I need to hire my own personal professional p.r. guy...or maybe I need to look into writing sermon illustration books.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
God's Hope Meets Our Brokenness
Three weeks ago we kicked off a series in our large groups on campus asking the question how does God meet us in the midst of our brokenness? I've really enjoyed giving this series of talks.
The first week I talked about the fact that God uses prayer and Scripture as means of grace. These are some of the primary vehicles that God uses to meet us in the midst of our struggles. I challenged students to take their next step in spending regular time in Scripture and prayer with the Lord. For many of them, that means spending just two or three days a week, maybe 15-20 minutes a day with the Lord. And I encouraged them to celebrate that.
I've had several follow-up conversations with students asking some of the same two questions. I thought that the questions they've raised with me might be beneficial here:
1. "I want to spend time with God, but it feels odd/weird to set a specific time--too formal or structured. Why do I need to do that? I like just talking with God throughout my day."
The issue here is one of quality of interaction. It's one thing to interact with someone at church or during the work day. But if you really want to get to know someone or have a serious or in-depth conversation, you create intentional space to do so: coffee or a meal. The same thing is true with God. Of course we can talk with God at any point during our day. But it's an entirely different level of interaction to carve out intentional space to be with God, to listen and to speak. A real-time encounter with God requires real, intentional, time.
2. "What do I do?"
I get this question from first-timers and from folks who have tried to set aside intentional time before to be with God and don't feel like they're getting anything out of it. There's no one-size-fits-all formula for quality time with God (I'd encourage everyone to take the Sacred Pathways test to find out how God's wired you specifically to meet with him) but here's what I do:
Two props: a journal and a Bible (not important in that order). I journal every single day that I spend time with the Lord, all of my prayers. Not everyone digs writing, but I think most of us need some way to process the stuff that's in our heads. I'm a big external processor, so I pretty much have to either journal or verbalize it--given those options, using a journal keeps me from getting strange looks at Barnes and Noble.
Journalling helps to slow me down. I'm a fast processor, and part of the challenge for me in spending time with God is to be less efficient, more open, more lingering. I could pray faster if I just did it in my head. But journalling forces me to slow down, to be rather than just get it done.
First off, I do a verbal vomit in my journal of anything I'm thinking about coming into my time with God. This helps me to bring it before Him and it frees me up to receive whatever He has for me during this time--whether it relates to my issues or not. I usually do this in five minutes or less.
Then, I read a passage of Scripture. I'm always working through a book of the Bible (context is key). I usually read one NIV (or NRSV) sub-heading a day, almost never more than a chapter a day. I was working through Luke for a while. I'm switching to 1 Peter because I might be using that for Small Group Leader Training that I'm doing in May. If you're just getting started, I'd encourage you to start with a short New Testament book (Phillippians, Ephesians, or 1 John).
I try to do good Inductive Bible Study: Observe (what does it say?), Interpret (what does it mean?) and Apply (what does it mean for me?). I'm looking for a word, a phrase or an image that seems particularly striking--you can see some of that in a couple of last week's posts.
I then take that word, image or phrase and try to use that to frame, color, or shape my prayer time back in my journal. Last week I journalled for a while about the whole "healed on the way" image. I prayed for myself using that language as much as possible in the various places where I know that I need healing. I usually will then take that image or word or phrase and pray it for other situations or people that I'm praying for. This integrates my prayer life and my time in Scripture in a more cohesive way rather than segmenting the two.
It's always tricky to talk about this stuff, simply because everyone's different, but maybe this will spark some other thoughts for those of you who struggle to do this or need some help getting started. These are just some thoughts for folks who might be asking some of these same questions. If you've got other questions that I might be able to help with, please do ask!
The first week I talked about the fact that God uses prayer and Scripture as means of grace. These are some of the primary vehicles that God uses to meet us in the midst of our struggles. I challenged students to take their next step in spending regular time in Scripture and prayer with the Lord. For many of them, that means spending just two or three days a week, maybe 15-20 minutes a day with the Lord. And I encouraged them to celebrate that.
I've had several follow-up conversations with students asking some of the same two questions. I thought that the questions they've raised with me might be beneficial here:
1. "I want to spend time with God, but it feels odd/weird to set a specific time--too formal or structured. Why do I need to do that? I like just talking with God throughout my day."
The issue here is one of quality of interaction. It's one thing to interact with someone at church or during the work day. But if you really want to get to know someone or have a serious or in-depth conversation, you create intentional space to do so: coffee or a meal. The same thing is true with God. Of course we can talk with God at any point during our day. But it's an entirely different level of interaction to carve out intentional space to be with God, to listen and to speak. A real-time encounter with God requires real, intentional, time.
2. "What do I do?"
I get this question from first-timers and from folks who have tried to set aside intentional time before to be with God and don't feel like they're getting anything out of it. There's no one-size-fits-all formula for quality time with God (I'd encourage everyone to take the Sacred Pathways test to find out how God's wired you specifically to meet with him) but here's what I do:
Two props: a journal and a Bible (not important in that order). I journal every single day that I spend time with the Lord, all of my prayers. Not everyone digs writing, but I think most of us need some way to process the stuff that's in our heads. I'm a big external processor, so I pretty much have to either journal or verbalize it--given those options, using a journal keeps me from getting strange looks at Barnes and Noble.
Journalling helps to slow me down. I'm a fast processor, and part of the challenge for me in spending time with God is to be less efficient, more open, more lingering. I could pray faster if I just did it in my head. But journalling forces me to slow down, to be rather than just get it done.
First off, I do a verbal vomit in my journal of anything I'm thinking about coming into my time with God. This helps me to bring it before Him and it frees me up to receive whatever He has for me during this time--whether it relates to my issues or not. I usually do this in five minutes or less.
Then, I read a passage of Scripture. I'm always working through a book of the Bible (context is key). I usually read one NIV (or NRSV) sub-heading a day, almost never more than a chapter a day. I was working through Luke for a while. I'm switching to 1 Peter because I might be using that for Small Group Leader Training that I'm doing in May. If you're just getting started, I'd encourage you to start with a short New Testament book (Phillippians, Ephesians, or 1 John).
I try to do good Inductive Bible Study: Observe (what does it say?), Interpret (what does it mean?) and Apply (what does it mean for me?). I'm looking for a word, a phrase or an image that seems particularly striking--you can see some of that in a couple of last week's posts.
I then take that word, image or phrase and try to use that to frame, color, or shape my prayer time back in my journal. Last week I journalled for a while about the whole "healed on the way" image. I prayed for myself using that language as much as possible in the various places where I know that I need healing. I usually will then take that image or word or phrase and pray it for other situations or people that I'm praying for. This integrates my prayer life and my time in Scripture in a more cohesive way rather than segmenting the two.
It's always tricky to talk about this stuff, simply because everyone's different, but maybe this will spark some other thoughts for those of you who struggle to do this or need some help getting started. These are just some thoughts for folks who might be asking some of these same questions. If you've got other questions that I might be able to help with, please do ask!
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sound Byte from "Now What?"
[Below is a sound-byte from my talk that I'm giving tonight wrapping up our first seven weeks of large group talks calling people to "raw, intentional, transformational relationships." I'm in a hurry, so this is just copied-and-pasted from my manuscript, forgive the weird formatting, it makes sense to me when I'm up front!]
Another obstacle to genuine initiation of relationships: time.
This is far and away the most consistent conversation I've had with people over these past six weeks as we've talked about cultivating real relationships--no one has the time.
Here's the deal: Busyness is the breeding ground for loneliness
For many of you, you’re so busy and so caught up in all this other stuff that you don’t have any time for real relationships. You’re super-stressed out with school and maybe work and all that you’ve got on your plate and you’ve got this meeting and that meeting and you can barely keep up
And one of the things that these past several weeks have exposed to many of you is that as much as we love
what’s fundamentally true about UNC culture is that it is sick.
It is a sick culture that is so wrapped up around academic success and social polish that if we allow it to, it will destroy every single one of us. There are tons of organizations on campus here at UNC, but very little true community.
And all the forces on campus press us into conformity—all the pressures on campus press us to fit in, to go with the flow of academic success and social polish and these two forces are not very amenable to raw, intentional, transformational relationships.
Academic pressure for success does not allow for the time that is required for the development of real relationships. Social polish does not allow for the vulnerability required to move past the surface
And for some of you tonight your first step of repentance might be to repent of your busy-ness that is literally killing you right now.
GOING TO GET CRAZY:
That might look like cutting back on the number of organizations that you’re involved with, quitting a job or cutting back on hours,
this might look like changing your major and your career plans because you’re realizing that it’s just not honoring to God or blessing you or the people around you to continue in the path you’re in now--you're so wrapped up in your major or your plans that it's consuming everything in your life
but what if God's priorities are more about who you're becoming and the relationships that you're forming than what you're doing? What if a life lived without real relationships is a clear sign that you are not in God's will for your life?
That’s repentance, changing your course, realizing your going down the wrong path. That’s the life-blood of the walk of a Christian.
CRAZIER:
When we don’t have time for people, we still seek community because we're hard-wired for it—so today we replace it with virtual community:
Facebook and IM work well if they supplement face-to-face relationship but they are terrible first-options for community.
What if you committed for the rest of the semester to cut your Facebook time in half, your IM time in half and instead of spending 6 hours a week in cyber-community you spent 3 hours and the other 3 hours you initiated coffee or lunch or dinner with two or three relationships you’ve wanted to pursue or that you’ve let drop this semester because you “have the time?”
What if you decided to fast from Facebook entirely for the next couple of weeks in order to create space for real relationships?
Monday, August 10, 2009
Real Men's Community: What Gets Proverbial Butts in Gear
So we talked last week about men's community--how dysfunctional we tend to be, and what it might look like to live beyond the crisis of the week.
This week, I have some fresh rants for the guys to think about (and you know who you are), along with those of you who care about us guys.
So when guys do get around to getting together in some sort of intentional, regular gathering for spiritual/real life conversations, there seems to be one of two roads it goes down.
The first is the check-in. This group is laid back, over coffee or breakfast or lunch. This is a great place for men to start. Most of us are pretty inept at talking about stuff like marriage or parenting or our spiritual lives, so this (again, especially for college guys) is a really helpful place to begin.
The second road in evangelical spirituality is a little more aggressive: it's the 'accountability group.' This is a group of guys who are regularly checking in on a pre-agreed-upon list of areas in their lives where there is an ongoing struggle to resist sin or an area where apathy has set in and there's a desire to get the proverbial rear in motion.
The problem with this meeting, as good as it is to be honest about where we need help, is that it's not actually helping to solve the problems that many of us guys have. Let me explain--and here I'm borrowing heavily (aka flat-out stealing) from my favorite ministry-type book that I've read in the past five years, How People Grow.
We learn internal disciplines/boundaries/motivations starting externally--from our parents in childhood. As kids, our parents are supposed to set regular, good, healhty limits on us. Those limits over time become internalized and if all goes well, we grow up to be healthy adults with a reasonable amount of self-control/motivation--mitigated, of course, by our own innate wiring (the "nature" part).
Of course, all doesn't always go well. And so sometimes, often in fact, we need a fresh run at someone helping us with boundaries from the outside in order that we might learn them internally in a particular area of our lives.
But the weekly accountability group doesn't do this as well as it might. Because all it is in many cases is just a fresh recitation of the law: did you or did you not measure up this week to these standards?
And if someone fails, we pat them on the head and tell them to do better next week. But if they could do better on their own next week, they wouldn't need the accountability group. The point is, they need more help than just a weekly check-in because they don't have the internalized discipline to do better on their own. That's why they're struggling.
What we need is community. Real-time, real-life, "I'm struggling today, can you remind me that I do/don't want to do this" conversations that overflow from the island of just a meeting into every day life.
What we need is guys who we can call on the way home from work when we're spent who can help us to remember that loving our kids matters. What we need is guys we can call when we're struggling, right then, right at that moment, who can talk us down off the ledge, call us to purity, to grace, to love, to life.
What we need is Christ-centered-community-in-real-time. Real relationships that really intersect our lives at the points of struggle, apathy, joylessness, and even and especially celebration.
Alas, that so few of us have it.
This week, I have some fresh rants for the guys to think about (and you know who you are), along with those of you who care about us guys.
So when guys do get around to getting together in some sort of intentional, regular gathering for spiritual/real life conversations, there seems to be one of two roads it goes down.
The first is the check-in. This group is laid back, over coffee or breakfast or lunch. This is a great place for men to start. Most of us are pretty inept at talking about stuff like marriage or parenting or our spiritual lives, so this (again, especially for college guys) is a really helpful place to begin.
The second road in evangelical spirituality is a little more aggressive: it's the 'accountability group.' This is a group of guys who are regularly checking in on a pre-agreed-upon list of areas in their lives where there is an ongoing struggle to resist sin or an area where apathy has set in and there's a desire to get the proverbial rear in motion.
The problem with this meeting, as good as it is to be honest about where we need help, is that it's not actually helping to solve the problems that many of us guys have. Let me explain--and here I'm borrowing heavily (aka flat-out stealing) from my favorite ministry-type book that I've read in the past five years, How People Grow.
We learn internal disciplines/boundaries/motivations starting externally--from our parents in childhood. As kids, our parents are supposed to set regular, good, healhty limits on us. Those limits over time become internalized and if all goes well, we grow up to be healthy adults with a reasonable amount of self-control/motivation--mitigated, of course, by our own innate wiring (the "nature" part).
Of course, all doesn't always go well. And so sometimes, often in fact, we need a fresh run at someone helping us with boundaries from the outside in order that we might learn them internally in a particular area of our lives.
But the weekly accountability group doesn't do this as well as it might. Because all it is in many cases is just a fresh recitation of the law: did you or did you not measure up this week to these standards?
And if someone fails, we pat them on the head and tell them to do better next week. But if they could do better on their own next week, they wouldn't need the accountability group. The point is, they need more help than just a weekly check-in because they don't have the internalized discipline to do better on their own. That's why they're struggling.
What we need is community. Real-time, real-life, "I'm struggling today, can you remind me that I do/don't want to do this" conversations that overflow from the island of just a meeting into every day life.
What we need is guys who we can call on the way home from work when we're spent who can help us to remember that loving our kids matters. What we need is guys we can call when we're struggling, right then, right at that moment, who can talk us down off the ledge, call us to purity, to grace, to love, to life.
What we need is Christ-centered-community-in-real-time. Real relationships that really intersect our lives at the points of struggle, apathy, joylessness, and even and especially celebration.
Alas, that so few of us have it.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sources of Misery Part 1: The Greener Grass in the Rear-View Mirror
It seems to me that one of the chief causes of misery for many people is the condemning of the present by comparing it to an overly-romanticized remembrance of the past.
For some people, the grass is always greener in the rear-view mirror. They complain mightily about how things were at their old job, church, neighborhood, or simply at an earlier season in life.
But in Christ, the past is not ours. Not ours to overly-glorify. Not ours to regret. Not ours to cling to. In Christ, the past is His. His to redeem and make to serve our good.
The present is the only place where we can fully experience and know God's work. Being awake to the wide-awake real, the real presence of Christ in real-time, exactly where we are--that is the invitation of God to his children.
This is true even and especially when the present takes us away from a place or a time that we have loved. To hold a glorious season of the past loosely unto releasing is almost as hard for some of us as letting go of past mistakes. But both are ours only for the giving over to God, not ours for the hoarding.
In the end all of our story must be handed over Jesus. And in the end, this present moment is the sphere and realm of the work of the Holy Spirit. We can either receive that gift or reject it because it does not live up to the measure of what we had experienced in the past.
But to reject this day and all that it has to offer us is finally to reject the work of God in real-time. To reject this day's work, people, challenges, chores, and recreation is to miss the myriad opportunities to explore the un-discovered continents of God's grace and love that are available to us each day.
Time to stop looking in the rear view mirror. The grass probably wasn't as green as you remember it anyway.
For some people, the grass is always greener in the rear-view mirror. They complain mightily about how things were at their old job, church, neighborhood, or simply at an earlier season in life.
But in Christ, the past is not ours. Not ours to overly-glorify. Not ours to regret. Not ours to cling to. In Christ, the past is His. His to redeem and make to serve our good.
The present is the only place where we can fully experience and know God's work. Being awake to the wide-awake real, the real presence of Christ in real-time, exactly where we are--that is the invitation of God to his children.
This is true even and especially when the present takes us away from a place or a time that we have loved. To hold a glorious season of the past loosely unto releasing is almost as hard for some of us as letting go of past mistakes. But both are ours only for the giving over to God, not ours for the hoarding.
In the end all of our story must be handed over Jesus. And in the end, this present moment is the sphere and realm of the work of the Holy Spirit. We can either receive that gift or reject it because it does not live up to the measure of what we had experienced in the past.
But to reject this day and all that it has to offer us is finally to reject the work of God in real-time. To reject this day's work, people, challenges, chores, and recreation is to miss the myriad opportunities to explore the un-discovered continents of God's grace and love that are available to us each day.
Time to stop looking in the rear view mirror. The grass probably wasn't as green as you remember it anyway.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Purpose of Disappointment
A couple of weeks ago I posted about disappointment--how it seems to be necessary for maturing in our relationships with one another (I used my inability to build a real rocket ship for my son Davis as an example) and how it also seems necessary in terms of our relationship with God.
As I've been thinking about this over the past couple of weeks, it seems that a critical function that disappointment plays in our relationships both with people and with God is this: disappointment forces us to relate to the person or God as they really are.
This place on earth where this plays out with most relentless predictability is in marriage.
We come into marriage with an overly-glorified picture of who this person is. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't bother to get married to them in the first place. We always marry a person who is part real, part illusion. The percentage of "real" and "illusion" vary by personality and temperament.
Then the honeymoon is over. And the reason that's a cliche in our culture is for this very reason--you hit disappointment.
But the only way for their to be any real relating (and not a plastic, fake relating) is for the honeymoon to eventually be over. That's when the real intimacy begins. As long as you are attempting to be married to an illusion rather than a real person, true intimacy is impossible.
Unfortunately, at this stage there are paths other than intimacy that many people choose: going-through-the-motions or divorce. Many never make it to anything resembling real real relating, real intimacy. I'm just on the beginnings of the road myself.
It is easy for our picture of God to be either overly militant or (more likely in our time) overly drowsily grandfather-ish. We would like for God to pat us on the head and grant us what we'd like and not bother with us in too many other ways.
But to relate to God as a real Being, not as a product of our own illusions and wish-fulfillment, means that we must at some point bump up against something that is solidly "Other." God is not at our beck and call. He is Reality; so very real that we barely exist compared to him. And he cannot be used, manipulated, or controlled. He must be related to as a Person, not a vending machine in the sky.
Sometimes that Other-ness is hard to accept and costs us a great deal of pain and sadness. Often, just like in marriage, people take the two diminishing-returns paths: going-through-the-motions faith or divorce.
But to persevere through this pain of disappointment is the path to life, to real intimacy with God and with all that he has made for us to enjoy. The fires of disappointment burn us. But they also burn off much that needs to die if we are to make our way through to the High Country, to life in the Land of the Trinity.
As I've been thinking about this over the past couple of weeks, it seems that a critical function that disappointment plays in our relationships both with people and with God is this: disappointment forces us to relate to the person or God as they really are.
This place on earth where this plays out with most relentless predictability is in marriage.
We come into marriage with an overly-glorified picture of who this person is. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't bother to get married to them in the first place. We always marry a person who is part real, part illusion. The percentage of "real" and "illusion" vary by personality and temperament.
Then the honeymoon is over. And the reason that's a cliche in our culture is for this very reason--you hit disappointment.
But the only way for their to be any real relating (and not a plastic, fake relating) is for the honeymoon to eventually be over. That's when the real intimacy begins. As long as you are attempting to be married to an illusion rather than a real person, true intimacy is impossible.
Unfortunately, at this stage there are paths other than intimacy that many people choose: going-through-the-motions or divorce. Many never make it to anything resembling real real relating, real intimacy. I'm just on the beginnings of the road myself.
It is easy for our picture of God to be either overly militant or (more likely in our time) overly drowsily grandfather-ish. We would like for God to pat us on the head and grant us what we'd like and not bother with us in too many other ways.
But to relate to God as a real Being, not as a product of our own illusions and wish-fulfillment, means that we must at some point bump up against something that is solidly "Other." God is not at our beck and call. He is Reality; so very real that we barely exist compared to him. And he cannot be used, manipulated, or controlled. He must be related to as a Person, not a vending machine in the sky.
Sometimes that Other-ness is hard to accept and costs us a great deal of pain and sadness. Often, just like in marriage, people take the two diminishing-returns paths: going-through-the-motions faith or divorce.
But to persevere through this pain of disappointment is the path to life, to real intimacy with God and with all that he has made for us to enjoy. The fires of disappointment burn us. But they also burn off much that needs to die if we are to make our way through to the High Country, to life in the Land of the Trinity.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter Bodies Meet Wireless Internet
So if you look at the various post-resurrection stories in the gospels, they're kind of all over the place. They tell different interactions with Jesus, scattered across different circumstances and contexts over the span of a couple of weeks.
But they all insist on a couple of things: first, that the disciples actually saw Jesus and secondly, that it actually was Jesus. Not a ghost. Really him.
Only he passes through walls and appears in rooms. What's up with that? How can the gospel stories insist upon a physical resurrection while at the same time granting these funky, ghost-like qualities?
The issue here is one of reality and solid-ness. I sit here on my couch. My couch and I are similarly real and similarly solid.
But I walk through the newly installed wireless internet signal that's being beamed around my house courtesy of my brother-in-law because the wireless signal, while real, is less real than me or my couch. It is permeable, easily disrupted.
So it is with the risen Christ. He is able to pass through walls not because he is less real and more ghost-like, but because he is so very real that everything that we experience as "solid," even the most solid things that we can imagine, are barely real.
Jesus moving through walls is like an airplane flying through a cloud. It is no big deal. His resurrection body is so incredibly real that everything here on this earth is vapor-thin in comparison.
In C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," the grass is so real that it hurts the feet of the visitors to heaven.
As it was with Jesus, so it will be with us. What we know and experience as reality here is only a shadow of what reality is, reality as we'll finally experience it when all things are made new. What seems real now will be shown for what it really is--passing, fragile, momentary. We will be as He is. Solid. Real. Eternal. I can't wait.
But for now, I'm pretty pumped about my wireless internet. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with my wife while blogging? Not sure it gets any better than that: "Hey Ty! Move that bus!"
But they all insist on a couple of things: first, that the disciples actually saw Jesus and secondly, that it actually was Jesus. Not a ghost. Really him.
Only he passes through walls and appears in rooms. What's up with that? How can the gospel stories insist upon a physical resurrection while at the same time granting these funky, ghost-like qualities?
The issue here is one of reality and solid-ness. I sit here on my couch. My couch and I are similarly real and similarly solid.
But I walk through the newly installed wireless internet signal that's being beamed around my house courtesy of my brother-in-law because the wireless signal, while real, is less real than me or my couch. It is permeable, easily disrupted.
So it is with the risen Christ. He is able to pass through walls not because he is less real and more ghost-like, but because he is so very real that everything that we experience as "solid," even the most solid things that we can imagine, are barely real.
Jesus moving through walls is like an airplane flying through a cloud. It is no big deal. His resurrection body is so incredibly real that everything here on this earth is vapor-thin in comparison.
In C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," the grass is so real that it hurts the feet of the visitors to heaven.
As it was with Jesus, so it will be with us. What we know and experience as reality here is only a shadow of what reality is, reality as we'll finally experience it when all things are made new. What seems real now will be shown for what it really is--passing, fragile, momentary. We will be as He is. Solid. Real. Eternal. I can't wait.
But for now, I'm pretty pumped about my wireless internet. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with my wife while blogging? Not sure it gets any better than that: "Hey Ty! Move that bus!"
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Processing Criticism
A couple days ago I had a hard-but-good conversation with a student. He struggled to trust me. We talked it out, worked through some good stuff.
However, in the process it became clear that his issues weren't his only, but also those of some friends of his. Some folks (not sure how many or who) had met with me and felt like I had "mass produced" answers to their questions or issues that they were dealing with. They had felt like I was overly-intense and pressed and offered too much before they really trusted that I was for them and understood them.
I have spent probably overly-much mental/emotional energy thinking about this conversation over the past couple of days. Here's a little glimpse into my inner-world churnings of how I process criticism: the good, the bad, the ugly.
1. The Scripture has nearly nothing about the value of defending/vindicating yourself and a TON to say about the importance of being teachable, being willing to hear a rebuke or corrective word. I want to be able to hear hard things, even when they feel hard or unfair or whatever. This seems to me to be most of the point of Proverbs.
2. I tend to take criticism of this sort more personally because it hits the core issue in my life: people-pleasing. I want people to like me. Hearing that people have met with me and come away not liking me doesn't make me happy. I expend a lot of time and energy and effort trying to keep people happy with me. When that doesn't work, I get upset.
This, of course, is sin. God has been good to put me in a job where it's impossible to please everyone all the time. Criticism forces me to face this idol down and call it what it is: death.
3. But while my job isn't people-pleasing, all ministry is inherently built on relational trust--it is the currency of my work. If I'm losing trust with people, then I cannot do the good work of speaking the gospel to people and have them hear it. This is not good.
4. But the problem isn't only "functional" (i.e. "I want to do a good job") it's also relational: I genuinely DO care about my students. I want them to be listened to and taken seriously. One of my core principles in ministry is that I think many if not most people go their whole lives without anyone taking them seriously enough to really listen to them. If nothing else, I can give them that gift. To have people feel like I haven't done that hurts me. It's what I want to give to them.
5. I hate it when I've met with people older/wiser than me who haven't listened to me all the way or who I've felt have launched into sermon #63 on whatever the issue is that I'm dealing with.
6. Ergo, I don't want to hear a students' issue with their boyfriend for 3 minutes and then pull out MY sermon #63, the Alex Kirk treatise on dating, that I then launch into for 45 minutes. I want to take this person, their struggles, and what the Holy Spirit is doing right now, in real time, much more seriously than that. I don't want it to be about me sounding infinitely wise while steamrolling people and not taking them seriously.
7. But the Scriptures do have things to say about the wisdom of those who are older and have gone before us. I DO have good things to offer students about dating/roommate problems/knowing God's will/decision making/other college student issues because God has taught me a lot about those things through the years. I want to offer those things when I can, but again, not in a heavy-handed, rushed sort of way.
8. This conversation wasn't just about this student. It was these other people that he had talked with, too. How many people? Who are they? Would they be willing to talk with me about it? Can I make it right? Do I need to be reconciled? Are there many, many more out there who feel like this? Is my approval rating actually more like G.W.'s than I would imagine?
9. I say I care for my students (see #4 above) but do I really? What is my motivation? Am I over-eager to impress or direct or sound intelligent?
10. I think that this happens more often with students that I have one-time meetings with. If someone wants to meet with me and talk about a specific issue, I assume that they trust me (ish) and want to really deal with it. With those people, since it is just a one-time meeting, I think I tend to be more aggressive/directive and offer more of my own thoughts. I think that the people I meet with weekly I have a more process-oriented approach. I know that we have more time, more space and that we can cover the ground over the course of a couple weeks or a semester.
But all that is just my own self-evaluation. Is that really true? Does it matter?
These are all the bases that I've circled (and circled and circled) over the past couple of days. I think that this morning the Lord finally broke the vicious circle. But this post is long enough for one day already.
However, in the process it became clear that his issues weren't his only, but also those of some friends of his. Some folks (not sure how many or who) had met with me and felt like I had "mass produced" answers to their questions or issues that they were dealing with. They had felt like I was overly-intense and pressed and offered too much before they really trusted that I was for them and understood them.
I have spent probably overly-much mental/emotional energy thinking about this conversation over the past couple of days. Here's a little glimpse into my inner-world churnings of how I process criticism: the good, the bad, the ugly.
1. The Scripture has nearly nothing about the value of defending/vindicating yourself and a TON to say about the importance of being teachable, being willing to hear a rebuke or corrective word. I want to be able to hear hard things, even when they feel hard or unfair or whatever. This seems to me to be most of the point of Proverbs.
2. I tend to take criticism of this sort more personally because it hits the core issue in my life: people-pleasing. I want people to like me. Hearing that people have met with me and come away not liking me doesn't make me happy. I expend a lot of time and energy and effort trying to keep people happy with me. When that doesn't work, I get upset.
This, of course, is sin. God has been good to put me in a job where it's impossible to please everyone all the time. Criticism forces me to face this idol down and call it what it is: death.
3. But while my job isn't people-pleasing, all ministry is inherently built on relational trust--it is the currency of my work. If I'm losing trust with people, then I cannot do the good work of speaking the gospel to people and have them hear it. This is not good.
4. But the problem isn't only "functional" (i.e. "I want to do a good job") it's also relational: I genuinely DO care about my students. I want them to be listened to and taken seriously. One of my core principles in ministry is that I think many if not most people go their whole lives without anyone taking them seriously enough to really listen to them. If nothing else, I can give them that gift. To have people feel like I haven't done that hurts me. It's what I want to give to them.
5. I hate it when I've met with people older/wiser than me who haven't listened to me all the way or who I've felt have launched into sermon #63 on whatever the issue is that I'm dealing with.
6. Ergo, I don't want to hear a students' issue with their boyfriend for 3 minutes and then pull out MY sermon #63, the Alex Kirk treatise on dating, that I then launch into for 45 minutes. I want to take this person, their struggles, and what the Holy Spirit is doing right now, in real time, much more seriously than that. I don't want it to be about me sounding infinitely wise while steamrolling people and not taking them seriously.
7. But the Scriptures do have things to say about the wisdom of those who are older and have gone before us. I DO have good things to offer students about dating/roommate problems/knowing God's will/decision making/other college student issues because God has taught me a lot about those things through the years. I want to offer those things when I can, but again, not in a heavy-handed, rushed sort of way.
8. This conversation wasn't just about this student. It was these other people that he had talked with, too. How many people? Who are they? Would they be willing to talk with me about it? Can I make it right? Do I need to be reconciled? Are there many, many more out there who feel like this? Is my approval rating actually more like G.W.'s than I would imagine?
9. I say I care for my students (see #4 above) but do I really? What is my motivation? Am I over-eager to impress or direct or sound intelligent?
10. I think that this happens more often with students that I have one-time meetings with. If someone wants to meet with me and talk about a specific issue, I assume that they trust me (ish) and want to really deal with it. With those people, since it is just a one-time meeting, I think I tend to be more aggressive/directive and offer more of my own thoughts. I think that the people I meet with weekly I have a more process-oriented approach. I know that we have more time, more space and that we can cover the ground over the course of a couple weeks or a semester.
But all that is just my own self-evaluation. Is that really true? Does it matter?
These are all the bases that I've circled (and circled and circled) over the past couple of days. I think that this morning the Lord finally broke the vicious circle. But this post is long enough for one day already.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Mercy-Moment Flare-Ups
So I don't really have any mercy gifts. None. Some people love stuff like spring break Habitat projects. Nothing exhausts me more. I'd rather do door-to-door contact evangelism in downtown Baghdad than do a service project over spring break.
I'm so negatively mercy-gifted that people who have mercy gifts who are close to me end up losing their mercy gifts. I'm like a mercy-gifts black hole. I suck them away from people.
But I was in a leadership class several years ago when a professor pointed out that Jesus was a mercy-gifted leader. So I've been in mercy-gifted rehab for the past couple of years, trying to cultivate mercy a little more intentionally.
This might explain what happened to me yesterday at church.
During the course of a sermon from Ephesians 5 on the importance of obedience in the area of sexual immorality, our pastor cited the issue of child sex trafficking as evidence of how broken our world is sexually.
He told the story of the people who started the charity Love146, a charity that works to free girls from the sex trade industry.
Something about the thought of children being sold as sex slaves disturbed me more than anything has disturbed me in a long time. This isn't the first time I've heard someone talk about children being used and abused in this way, but for some reason it really hit home, made me angry.
And as I was sitting there, Sunday morning, in church, surrounded by fairly comfortable people, singing songs and mixing with friends, this really loud internal voice screamed, "what am I doing here?? How can I just sit here comfortably when this kind of thing is happening? When little girls not much older than mine are waking up this morning to a life of misery and exploitation?!?"
I went home, still deeply troubled. As I processed and prayed, I think I came to some clarity:
1. The Lord is sovereign over heaven and earth, and he is not silent and has not abandoned any of his creatures, even those girls. And he is the one who makes all things new, all things right. This is my hope.
Even if I sold everything I had, took me and my family to Thailand and we set up shop rescuing girls from prostitution, the Lord is their hope and my hope.
2. Therefore, worshipping on Sunday morning, taking communion, commemorating that hope and speaking it to the people around me and offering my life to my God is not something I do recreationally. It is vital.
Worship is the end of it all. If I were to move my family over to Thailand and we were to rescue girls, what would be my hope for them? Clearly, that they would know the love of Christ and find healing and freedom to forgive and power to move forward with their lives.
If that's the end I hope for those girls, it is the end that I myself must embody, not neglect. I must not forget that worship is what matters. Freedom and activism is a means to the end of the worship of Jesus, not the end in and of itself.
Worship is not a waste of time. It is part and parcel of healthy and holy activism.
3. Sometimes in the passion of being angry about something far off, you can forget to love those whom God has given you to love in your immediate circle. This is the classic trap for those who are actually activists: they burn themselves out for orphans far off while neglecting their own children who are near.
So I must love my three kids with a reckless, fiery, patient, wise love. This is the place, these are the little people, whom God has given me stewardship of. I must not neglect the love of them for the sake of those who are far off and therefore, in a sense, actually easier to love hypothetically than the cost of loving these little people in real-time, with real cost associated with it.
4. Finally my prayer became a prayer that I read somewhere: I lament that I have only one life to lose for the sake of the gospel. For right now, he has called me to lose that life for his sake on the college campus.
I love it. But there are so many other things that I would love to also lose my life for as well.
I think I need to find a way to express this desire to see girls freed and cared for. Maybe Kelly and I need to find a way to give more money away and work Love146 into our budget. Maybe there's other ways we can work this out.
For now, I have more work to do on the college campus. And I've got to find a way for these pesky mercy-moments to not flare up quite so violently
I'm so negatively mercy-gifted that people who have mercy gifts who are close to me end up losing their mercy gifts. I'm like a mercy-gifts black hole. I suck them away from people.
But I was in a leadership class several years ago when a professor pointed out that Jesus was a mercy-gifted leader. So I've been in mercy-gifted rehab for the past couple of years, trying to cultivate mercy a little more intentionally.
This might explain what happened to me yesterday at church.
During the course of a sermon from Ephesians 5 on the importance of obedience in the area of sexual immorality, our pastor cited the issue of child sex trafficking as evidence of how broken our world is sexually.
He told the story of the people who started the charity Love146, a charity that works to free girls from the sex trade industry.
Something about the thought of children being sold as sex slaves disturbed me more than anything has disturbed me in a long time. This isn't the first time I've heard someone talk about children being used and abused in this way, but for some reason it really hit home, made me angry.
And as I was sitting there, Sunday morning, in church, surrounded by fairly comfortable people, singing songs and mixing with friends, this really loud internal voice screamed, "what am I doing here?? How can I just sit here comfortably when this kind of thing is happening? When little girls not much older than mine are waking up this morning to a life of misery and exploitation?!?"
I went home, still deeply troubled. As I processed and prayed, I think I came to some clarity:
1. The Lord is sovereign over heaven and earth, and he is not silent and has not abandoned any of his creatures, even those girls. And he is the one who makes all things new, all things right. This is my hope.
Even if I sold everything I had, took me and my family to Thailand and we set up shop rescuing girls from prostitution, the Lord is their hope and my hope.
2. Therefore, worshipping on Sunday morning, taking communion, commemorating that hope and speaking it to the people around me and offering my life to my God is not something I do recreationally. It is vital.
Worship is the end of it all. If I were to move my family over to Thailand and we were to rescue girls, what would be my hope for them? Clearly, that they would know the love of Christ and find healing and freedom to forgive and power to move forward with their lives.
If that's the end I hope for those girls, it is the end that I myself must embody, not neglect. I must not forget that worship is what matters. Freedom and activism is a means to the end of the worship of Jesus, not the end in and of itself.
Worship is not a waste of time. It is part and parcel of healthy and holy activism.
3. Sometimes in the passion of being angry about something far off, you can forget to love those whom God has given you to love in your immediate circle. This is the classic trap for those who are actually activists: they burn themselves out for orphans far off while neglecting their own children who are near.
So I must love my three kids with a reckless, fiery, patient, wise love. This is the place, these are the little people, whom God has given me stewardship of. I must not neglect the love of them for the sake of those who are far off and therefore, in a sense, actually easier to love hypothetically than the cost of loving these little people in real-time, with real cost associated with it.
4. Finally my prayer became a prayer that I read somewhere: I lament that I have only one life to lose for the sake of the gospel. For right now, he has called me to lose that life for his sake on the college campus.
I love it. But there are so many other things that I would love to also lose my life for as well.
I think I need to find a way to express this desire to see girls freed and cared for. Maybe Kelly and I need to find a way to give more money away and work Love146 into our budget. Maybe there's other ways we can work this out.
For now, I have more work to do on the college campus. And I've got to find a way for these pesky mercy-moments to not flare up quite so violently
Monday, November 19, 2007
Chapter Retreat Re-cap
It's probably a sign of old age and maturity that on Friday afternoon as the sinuses in my head grew ever-more clogged I realized the wisdom of my wife's appeal to me that driving a couple hours to chapter retreat and then getting no sleep that night would not be a good idea.
So I went down to campus, helped everyone get on their merry way and went home and went to bed early. The next morning I drove a gloriously fall-painted two and a half hours up to Yale, Virginia, and got there before the morning session began.
The seniors who shared over the course of the weekend did a great job blending vulnerability and honesty with the hope of change and the good news of tastes of redemption in the hard places.
The theme of "How to lose your life in 3 days" was expressed thoughtfully and thoroughly by each of the six seniors who shared over the course of the weekend what it looked like for them to follow Jesus into redemption in the midst of their own struggles with control, family, identity, depression, and GPA-drivenness.
I think that the reason why almost everyone likes movies or stories with redemptive themes is because that longing for redemption of those hard times or broken places is hard-wired in our souls. We were made for perfection. We don't have it. And so we long for things to be made right, don't we?
And I appreciate even more so when I hear concrete, real-life stories where that redemption, that making-things-right, is happening in real-time. Often less "neat" than a movie, but all the more real because of it. It anchors me in hope.
Saturday night is men's and women's prayer. We break up along gender lines, sit in a circle, put one chair in the middle, and invite people to get prayer for whatever they need prayer for. Each year incredible stuff comes up during this time: issues with alcohol and drugs, family, guilt from things in the past, sexual sin, loneliness and brokenness and the like. For many, it's the first confession of something they've been dealing with and thus is the first step in the process of healing. We almost always have to cut that time off with more people wanting to talk.
Sunday morning all 142 students packed it up and left. And I left grateful for the good work God's doing in our chapter to press us into deeper places of life and redemption as we lose our lives for him and his sake that we might find them again.
So I went down to campus, helped everyone get on their merry way and went home and went to bed early. The next morning I drove a gloriously fall-painted two and a half hours up to Yale, Virginia, and got there before the morning session began.
The seniors who shared over the course of the weekend did a great job blending vulnerability and honesty with the hope of change and the good news of tastes of redemption in the hard places.
The theme of "How to lose your life in 3 days" was expressed thoughtfully and thoroughly by each of the six seniors who shared over the course of the weekend what it looked like for them to follow Jesus into redemption in the midst of their own struggles with control, family, identity, depression, and GPA-drivenness.
I think that the reason why almost everyone likes movies or stories with redemptive themes is because that longing for redemption of those hard times or broken places is hard-wired in our souls. We were made for perfection. We don't have it. And so we long for things to be made right, don't we?
And I appreciate even more so when I hear concrete, real-life stories where that redemption, that making-things-right, is happening in real-time. Often less "neat" than a movie, but all the more real because of it. It anchors me in hope.
Saturday night is men's and women's prayer. We break up along gender lines, sit in a circle, put one chair in the middle, and invite people to get prayer for whatever they need prayer for. Each year incredible stuff comes up during this time: issues with alcohol and drugs, family, guilt from things in the past, sexual sin, loneliness and brokenness and the like. For many, it's the first confession of something they've been dealing with and thus is the first step in the process of healing. We almost always have to cut that time off with more people wanting to talk.
Sunday morning all 142 students packed it up and left. And I left grateful for the good work God's doing in our chapter to press us into deeper places of life and redemption as we lose our lives for him and his sake that we might find them again.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Soundtrack for Emotionally Dysfunctional Griever Wanted
I've always thought that life would be much easier to navigate if it came accompanied by a soundtrack that helped you to know when the big moments were occurring. The music gets louder or more intense or more dramatic and you know to perk up, pay attention, dial in.
Without the soundtrack, it seems so easy to miss the really important stuff. You look back and realize that the moments that most mattered are delighted in more in retrospect than in real-time.
So I'm in my last week of normal campus work. And one of my (many, I'm sure) emotional dysfunctions is that I'm a post-dated griever. In other words, the enormity of my change in work for next fall will hit me sometime in July.
Recognizing this, I'm wanting to be fully present to things this week.
This is my last week of doing what I've done for the past fourteen years: meeting just about every day with students to sort through personal issues, ask big questions about faith and life, point out patterns of sin and brokenness in their lives, celebrate the great things God is doing in and around them, and generally wade into the every-day-ness of their lives looking for how God's at work in them.
It's a great gig. Some days I'll literally have six or seven back-to-back-to-back conversations that run at levels of honesty and transparency and depth of spiritual longings and struggles that some people will never have their entire lives.
But I'm done at the end of this year. And it' s a good thing that I'm moving to--focusing on developing and leading staff across several campuses rather than students at one campus.
But I'm trying to grow up a little bit, trying to figure out how to soak in these last moments on campus rather than realize months from now how much I'll miss the place.
But I don't know how to do that without it feeling forced. Everything seems to collapse into cliche: count my blessings, smell the roses, stop drop and roll. Okay, not that last one, but everything else is what comes to mind. I don't want to try to drum up emotion or invent it, but I do want to feel what there is to feel when it's happening in real-time, not two months delayed.
So I'm not sure what all that means. I'm just praying that this last week on campus will be full of God's grace to help me to enjoy the right moments and to grieve what I'll miss about the place, the people and this specific work.
It would just all be much easier to do if I had that soundtrack.
Without the soundtrack, it seems so easy to miss the really important stuff. You look back and realize that the moments that most mattered are delighted in more in retrospect than in real-time.
So I'm in my last week of normal campus work. And one of my (many, I'm sure) emotional dysfunctions is that I'm a post-dated griever. In other words, the enormity of my change in work for next fall will hit me sometime in July.
Recognizing this, I'm wanting to be fully present to things this week.
This is my last week of doing what I've done for the past fourteen years: meeting just about every day with students to sort through personal issues, ask big questions about faith and life, point out patterns of sin and brokenness in their lives, celebrate the great things God is doing in and around them, and generally wade into the every-day-ness of their lives looking for how God's at work in them.
It's a great gig. Some days I'll literally have six or seven back-to-back-to-back conversations that run at levels of honesty and transparency and depth of spiritual longings and struggles that some people will never have their entire lives.
But I'm done at the end of this year. And it' s a good thing that I'm moving to--focusing on developing and leading staff across several campuses rather than students at one campus.
But I'm trying to grow up a little bit, trying to figure out how to soak in these last moments on campus rather than realize months from now how much I'll miss the place.
But I don't know how to do that without it feeling forced. Everything seems to collapse into cliche: count my blessings, smell the roses, stop drop and roll. Okay, not that last one, but everything else is what comes to mind. I don't want to try to drum up emotion or invent it, but I do want to feel what there is to feel when it's happening in real-time, not two months delayed.
So I'm not sure what all that means. I'm just praying that this last week on campus will be full of God's grace to help me to enjoy the right moments and to grieve what I'll miss about the place, the people and this specific work.
It would just all be much easier to do if I had that soundtrack.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Panacea Wary, Meats and Veggies, and Being un-American
I am panacea wary.
Healthcare, organizational growth, the spiritual life. There isn't just one thing that has to happen that makes everything suddenly come into alignment. Growth in any sector, industry, or the spiritual life is a confluence of lots of factors, lots of small and big decisions.
It is a somewhat common cliche in Christian circles to argue that if we just do X (pray more, focus more on Jesus, worship more fully, read more Scripture) then everything else will come "naturally." We'll be more bold in sharing our faith, for example, or love our neighbors more freely or serve more selflessly if we just do this other, more important thing first.
In reading through the book of Romans, apparently Paul was panacea wary as well.
If any one portion of Scripture makes the main thing the main thing, it has to be Romans 8: forgiveness, worship, the final redemption of all things, help in suffering--it's all there, and it's gloriously epic.
But Paul, contrary to those of us who are tempted to think in terms of panaceas, doesn't stop there. He doesn't just say, "well, that's it, and the rest of your Christian life will naturally flow from there." He spends another seven chapters teasing out the specific implications of all that he unpacks in Romans 8.
And what's striking to me this time through Romans is how much ink Paul spills on applying the work of Christ to the life of the community. Paul word here is ruthless to our American individualism and sense of entitlement and "rights."
Bottom line: we have no "rights" apart from the right to submit to Christ and therefore to our neighbor for whom Christ died.
Paul says: One of you eats meat, the other one doesn't because their conscience won't allow it. So if you're with someone who doesn't eat meat--don't eat it. Why would you do something so stupid as to eat meat if it's going to destroy the faith of someone for whom Christ gave his life?
Put in today's language--why would you consume entertainment or drink alcohol, or do anything in the company of someone for whom doing so would cause them to struggle in their faith? Are you not willing to let go of your "rights" in this particular instance in order to honor someone? Did not Christ give up his "rights" in dying for that person?
Giving up our perceived rights is pretty un-American. I don't know if in the U.S. we'll ever have a wide-spread experience of this in the church.
Perhaps, however, a movement in this direction might be the beginnings of revival: the reckless submitting to one another because we start to believe that life in Christ and the loving our neighbor as ourselves truly matters, in real time, in real life, with real decisions.
Not a panacea, just hundreds, maybe thousands, of small and big decisions to live out the reality of God's work in the world with courage and patience and love.
Healthcare, organizational growth, the spiritual life. There isn't just one thing that has to happen that makes everything suddenly come into alignment. Growth in any sector, industry, or the spiritual life is a confluence of lots of factors, lots of small and big decisions.
It is a somewhat common cliche in Christian circles to argue that if we just do X (pray more, focus more on Jesus, worship more fully, read more Scripture) then everything else will come "naturally." We'll be more bold in sharing our faith, for example, or love our neighbors more freely or serve more selflessly if we just do this other, more important thing first.
In reading through the book of Romans, apparently Paul was panacea wary as well.
If any one portion of Scripture makes the main thing the main thing, it has to be Romans 8: forgiveness, worship, the final redemption of all things, help in suffering--it's all there, and it's gloriously epic.
But Paul, contrary to those of us who are tempted to think in terms of panaceas, doesn't stop there. He doesn't just say, "well, that's it, and the rest of your Christian life will naturally flow from there." He spends another seven chapters teasing out the specific implications of all that he unpacks in Romans 8.
And what's striking to me this time through Romans is how much ink Paul spills on applying the work of Christ to the life of the community. Paul word here is ruthless to our American individualism and sense of entitlement and "rights."
Bottom line: we have no "rights" apart from the right to submit to Christ and therefore to our neighbor for whom Christ died.
Paul says: One of you eats meat, the other one doesn't because their conscience won't allow it. So if you're with someone who doesn't eat meat--don't eat it. Why would you do something so stupid as to eat meat if it's going to destroy the faith of someone for whom Christ gave his life?
Put in today's language--why would you consume entertainment or drink alcohol, or do anything in the company of someone for whom doing so would cause them to struggle in their faith? Are you not willing to let go of your "rights" in this particular instance in order to honor someone? Did not Christ give up his "rights" in dying for that person?
Giving up our perceived rights is pretty un-American. I don't know if in the U.S. we'll ever have a wide-spread experience of this in the church.
Perhaps, however, a movement in this direction might be the beginnings of revival: the reckless submitting to one another because we start to believe that life in Christ and the loving our neighbor as ourselves truly matters, in real time, in real life, with real decisions.
Not a panacea, just hundreds, maybe thousands, of small and big decisions to live out the reality of God's work in the world with courage and patience and love.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Mucking Around in Community
I've had a couple of conversations over the past several weeks about small group Bible studies.
For those of you who aren't dwelling in Christian sub-culture land, small group Bible studies basically are groups of 5-15 people who often meet in houses for Bible study, prayer, encouragement, etc. These are usually organized by churches for the purpose of helping people get to know one another and mature in their faith.
One question that swirls around small groups is style. Are these supposed to be studies, with an emphasis on information? Or are these supposed to be more about building relationships?
I don't think that these two are mutually exclusive. But for my money, if I have to choose between a small group leader who will teach a theology class each week or a leader who knows how to build trust and community, I'll take the community person every day of the week.
On Sunday afternoons in the small group that I lead, I'm all about opening up the Bible together and mucking around in it together. I could do a more heady study, but why? The problem that most people have in my circles is not that they don't know enough. The problem is that none of us actually lives responsive-ly and responsibly to the stuff we already know.
That's where community comes in. All of our lives we are shaped and formed by relationships, for better or for worse: family of origin, who you hung out with in high school, what you did in college, marriage and kids. This is how God designed us.
My goal in small group is for lives to be changed, not for people simply to know more stuff. There's a baseline amount of understanding that needs to happen, but real-life, real-time gospel application happens only in the context of a community that helps us to understand: "what the crap does this actually mean for me Monday in cube world or in the classroom or parenting my kids or trying to be married to this imperfect person sitting beside me?"
If you're reading this thing and you're at all interested in discovering real faith, real Christianity that goes beyond ritual or a sub-culture or a social circle or a country club, please find a church that helps you find real community.
If you don't have anyone that you can talk to that will help you to figure out how Jesus speaks into your life when your marriage stinks or you want to drop out of school and join the circus or when you lose your job or when your kids are driving you towards infanticide, then you haven't really begun to live yet.
For those of you who aren't dwelling in Christian sub-culture land, small group Bible studies basically are groups of 5-15 people who often meet in houses for Bible study, prayer, encouragement, etc. These are usually organized by churches for the purpose of helping people get to know one another and mature in their faith.
One question that swirls around small groups is style. Are these supposed to be studies, with an emphasis on information? Or are these supposed to be more about building relationships?
I don't think that these two are mutually exclusive. But for my money, if I have to choose between a small group leader who will teach a theology class each week or a leader who knows how to build trust and community, I'll take the community person every day of the week.
On Sunday afternoons in the small group that I lead, I'm all about opening up the Bible together and mucking around in it together. I could do a more heady study, but why? The problem that most people have in my circles is not that they don't know enough. The problem is that none of us actually lives responsive-ly and responsibly to the stuff we already know.
That's where community comes in. All of our lives we are shaped and formed by relationships, for better or for worse: family of origin, who you hung out with in high school, what you did in college, marriage and kids. This is how God designed us.
My goal in small group is for lives to be changed, not for people simply to know more stuff. There's a baseline amount of understanding that needs to happen, but real-life, real-time gospel application happens only in the context of a community that helps us to understand: "what the crap does this actually mean for me Monday in cube world or in the classroom or parenting my kids or trying to be married to this imperfect person sitting beside me?"
If you're reading this thing and you're at all interested in discovering real faith, real Christianity that goes beyond ritual or a sub-culture or a social circle or a country club, please find a church that helps you find real community.
If you don't have anyone that you can talk to that will help you to figure out how Jesus speaks into your life when your marriage stinks or you want to drop out of school and join the circus or when you lose your job or when your kids are driving you towards infanticide, then you haven't really begun to live yet.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Putting Christ Back into My Christian Campus Ministry
So you'd think that as a Christian religious professional it'd be easy to keep Jesus in my work.
But it's actually much easier as I meet with students on a daily basis to slouch into giving good advice. After almost fourteen years in this business, I've got some good stuff to say about just about any college student problem.
Boyfriend giving you troubles? No problem! Roommate issues? Go it covered. Family woes? I'm ready to listen. Not sure what to do with your life? Let's talk. The cafeteria giving you some digestive tract issues? Here are some healthy alternatives!
But, as Tim Keller argues, the gospel is not good advice. It's good news. And if it's true that God has come in the form of a person to die for our sins and be raised back to life in order to offer us life, then this news changes everything.
The gospel changes everything. That's a core principle of my ministry and life that I've articulated throughout the years. But I forget it sometimes. And I can get away with it for a short period of time but after a while I find myself tired of the lack of genuine transformational power of good advice.
So I've been turning over a new leaf on campus as I'm meeting with students. I'm either thinking or asking the question: How does the gospel change or apply to this situation right now in real time? How does Jesus speak into this persons life? Or even better--Jesus is already here and at work in this persons life, how do I get on board with what he's already up to?
And of course it's also good medicine--physician, heal thyself. I need the gospel to be changing everything from how I change diapers to how I drive on my commute to how I relate to family, friends, co-workers and students.
The gospel is powerful. If I'm spouting off good advice but not good news, I'm offering people appetizers instead of the seven-course meal that has been prepared for them at great cost to the Lord of Hosts.
So while some Christians lobby to keep Christ in Christmas, for me this year I'm feeling like it's time to put the Christ back into Christian campus ministry....even how I think about digestive tract issues.
But it's actually much easier as I meet with students on a daily basis to slouch into giving good advice. After almost fourteen years in this business, I've got some good stuff to say about just about any college student problem.
Boyfriend giving you troubles? No problem! Roommate issues? Go it covered. Family woes? I'm ready to listen. Not sure what to do with your life? Let's talk. The cafeteria giving you some digestive tract issues? Here are some healthy alternatives!
But, as Tim Keller argues, the gospel is not good advice. It's good news. And if it's true that God has come in the form of a person to die for our sins and be raised back to life in order to offer us life, then this news changes everything.
The gospel changes everything. That's a core principle of my ministry and life that I've articulated throughout the years. But I forget it sometimes. And I can get away with it for a short period of time but after a while I find myself tired of the lack of genuine transformational power of good advice.
So I've been turning over a new leaf on campus as I'm meeting with students. I'm either thinking or asking the question: How does the gospel change or apply to this situation right now in real time? How does Jesus speak into this persons life? Or even better--Jesus is already here and at work in this persons life, how do I get on board with what he's already up to?
And of course it's also good medicine--physician, heal thyself. I need the gospel to be changing everything from how I change diapers to how I drive on my commute to how I relate to family, friends, co-workers and students.
The gospel is powerful. If I'm spouting off good advice but not good news, I'm offering people appetizers instead of the seven-course meal that has been prepared for them at great cost to the Lord of Hosts.
So while some Christians lobby to keep Christ in Christmas, for me this year I'm feeling like it's time to put the Christ back into Christian campus ministry....even how I think about digestive tract issues.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Purity, Integrity, and Post-Dating, Part 2: Adding Angels
It seems that in the Scriptures we're called to look at and take sin seriously--both the ways that we've been sinned against and the ways that we've sinned ourselves. But we never do that as an end, in and of itself.
Looking at the ways that we've sinned and been sinned against is always supposed to be a stepping stone to the need for grace, rescue, forgiveness, and healing--all things that are offered to us at the cross.
In the Luke's account of the resurrection story, the women go to the tomb and they meet a couple of angels who pronounce these glorious words: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen!"
Given how emphatically the New Testament, particularly Paul, emphasizes how we once were dead in our sin but now we have been raised in and with Christ (see Ephesians 2, and Colossians 3, among others) I think that we have a right to take on the angels' words as describing our own situation.
Next time you find yourself either over-infatuated with how you've been sinned against (therefore reveling in your victim status) or overly-fixed on how you've sinned (and stuck in the cycle of self-condemnation and guilt) hear these words of the angels directed to you:
"Why do you look for yourself among the dead? You are not here! You have risen!"
This is the good news of the gospel. We need to hear it. We need to preach it to ourselves and remind ourselves what is true.
And we need to speak it to one another. We need to remind one another over and over again what is true because we have so many other messages coming at us all the time.
This is one of the main purposes of Christian community: to speak the gospel of our "risen-ness" to one another in real-time, in the midst of our everyday lives. We need people that we can call on who will remind us what is true: we are no longer among the dead, we have risen with Christ.
Apart from that, we are barely alive.
Looking at the ways that we've sinned and been sinned against is always supposed to be a stepping stone to the need for grace, rescue, forgiveness, and healing--all things that are offered to us at the cross.
In the Luke's account of the resurrection story, the women go to the tomb and they meet a couple of angels who pronounce these glorious words: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen!"
Given how emphatically the New Testament, particularly Paul, emphasizes how we once were dead in our sin but now we have been raised in and with Christ (see Ephesians 2, and Colossians 3, among others) I think that we have a right to take on the angels' words as describing our own situation.
Next time you find yourself either over-infatuated with how you've been sinned against (therefore reveling in your victim status) or overly-fixed on how you've sinned (and stuck in the cycle of self-condemnation and guilt) hear these words of the angels directed to you:
"Why do you look for yourself among the dead? You are not here! You have risen!"
This is the good news of the gospel. We need to hear it. We need to preach it to ourselves and remind ourselves what is true.
And we need to speak it to one another. We need to remind one another over and over again what is true because we have so many other messages coming at us all the time.
This is one of the main purposes of Christian community: to speak the gospel of our "risen-ness" to one another in real-time, in the midst of our everyday lives. We need people that we can call on who will remind us what is true: we are no longer among the dead, we have risen with Christ.
Apart from that, we are barely alive.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Barometric Differentiation
Once a month, fourteen or so student Team Leaders get together to talk about what's going on in the chapter. Last week, since it's November, we met and did some evaluation of this past semester: how have we done, what needs to improve, where do we go from here type of stuff.
The meeting was a good one. There were some areas of definite growth we could celebrate and point to. And there are definitely some areas where we need to improve or develop for next semester. It's those "areas that need improvement" that get me when I'm not healthy.
I'm in a job that I love, working with a large community of people. I invest a lot of time and energy into what happens with InterVarsity at UNC-Chapel Hill. And the danger is that I become so overly-invested in all of it that I hear any criticism of the chapter as criticism of me.
One barometer of my soul being "off" is that I do not have healthy differentiation between me and the chapter. There's me. There's the chapter. They are not the same thing. And yet from time to time I'm in meetings or conversations with people who are critical of what goes on with IV and I find that I'm disproportionately defensive. This is a good warning sign for me that I need to reset my identity and my security in something much healthier than the ups and downs of people's experiences of the IV community.
So that's what last week was about. It was about remembering that my name and my identity and my security are wrapped up in Christ. I am a dearly beloved son who is known and tended to by a Good Father. Without that, I'm just a gaping wound walking around hoping that someone will say something nice about me (or about the chapter) so that I'll feel good about myself. I'm not free to love people. Without knowing who I am in Christ I am so desperate for affirmation that I can only see people either as threats or as opportunities for compliments to be manipulated.
I don't think that this is just a hazard for IV staff. For anyone who is heavily invested in work or a community of people or a project or their kids it's tempting for us to find our identity in how things "turn out." Are people impressed with my work? Do my colleagues appreciate what I'm doing here? Do my kids "show well" around our friends or their teachers or at church?
The solution is not to "care less." That would be an abdication of our divine calling to work. The solution is to care more. Care more for the precious gift of security and purpose and identity that has been given to us in Christ.
And then let love flow, let grace flow, let the investment of energies and time flow. Only this time rather than trying to prove ourselves or make a name for ourselves or manipulate people into liking us (and calling that "service"), we can genuinely give of ourselves unselfishly, freely, recklessly, gladly, joyfully...and then rest when it's time to rest. Because I'm loved fully I can give without self-concern and I can rest without worry about what others might think about me. That's real freedom.
The meeting was a good one. There were some areas of definite growth we could celebrate and point to. And there are definitely some areas where we need to improve or develop for next semester. It's those "areas that need improvement" that get me when I'm not healthy.
I'm in a job that I love, working with a large community of people. I invest a lot of time and energy into what happens with InterVarsity at UNC-Chapel Hill. And the danger is that I become so overly-invested in all of it that I hear any criticism of the chapter as criticism of me.
One barometer of my soul being "off" is that I do not have healthy differentiation between me and the chapter. There's me. There's the chapter. They are not the same thing. And yet from time to time I'm in meetings or conversations with people who are critical of what goes on with IV and I find that I'm disproportionately defensive. This is a good warning sign for me that I need to reset my identity and my security in something much healthier than the ups and downs of people's experiences of the IV community.
So that's what last week was about. It was about remembering that my name and my identity and my security are wrapped up in Christ. I am a dearly beloved son who is known and tended to by a Good Father. Without that, I'm just a gaping wound walking around hoping that someone will say something nice about me (or about the chapter) so that I'll feel good about myself. I'm not free to love people. Without knowing who I am in Christ I am so desperate for affirmation that I can only see people either as threats or as opportunities for compliments to be manipulated.
I don't think that this is just a hazard for IV staff. For anyone who is heavily invested in work or a community of people or a project or their kids it's tempting for us to find our identity in how things "turn out." Are people impressed with my work? Do my colleagues appreciate what I'm doing here? Do my kids "show well" around our friends or their teachers or at church?
The solution is not to "care less." That would be an abdication of our divine calling to work. The solution is to care more. Care more for the precious gift of security and purpose and identity that has been given to us in Christ.
And then let love flow, let grace flow, let the investment of energies and time flow. Only this time rather than trying to prove ourselves or make a name for ourselves or manipulate people into liking us (and calling that "service"), we can genuinely give of ourselves unselfishly, freely, recklessly, gladly, joyfully...and then rest when it's time to rest. Because I'm loved fully I can give without self-concern and I can rest without worry about what others might think about me. That's real freedom.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Finding our Way Through the Paradox
I'll try to offer some thoughts, know that these are still a little raw and in process--as I parent, I'm learning what it means to deal with my own baggage I'm bringing into this.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. I think that reflecting on your own family brokenness is crucial to coming to terms with it. I wouldn’t give up on the word "broken" entirely, unless it has too much baggage for you. The truth of the matter is, all parents sin against their kids. Some do so unknowingly or unwittingly, but they all do it. This does, indeed, do damage to the children. To attempt to downplay that damage or excuse it does not actually deal with the problem.
Jesus does not excuse our sin. He forgives it. And he does so at great cost to himself. Forgiving and excusing are not the same thing. And so we are called to this much greater act of forgiveness always, but especially in relation to our families. This means calling sin what it is (sin), looking at it dead in the eye, and then saying, "I forgive you." Which you'll probably have to do two million times before you die, but that's just how much of life is, isn't it? Process. And some things you'll only have to forgive once and other things you'll have to forgive thousands of times. But it's not excusing, it is a real forgiveness.
The chip on your shoulder is removed through the process of genuine forgiveness. Jesus redeems all of humanity and all of our life experiences submitted to the canopy of his grace must ultimately serve to bless us. Including the sin of your parents against you. Including how you've sinned in response by becoming self-righteous and occasionally arrogant towards them. Your submission to the canopy of Jesus' grace most likely starts with calling both you and your parents sin real sin and then beginning the process of asking for forgiveness and extending it ('forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...or at least as we try to do so!').
2. I agree with you that gratitude is needed in the areas where it is required. But gratitude is a feeling, generally spontaneously generated, in response to something done that we appreciate. It might take some work to get there, but you can at least begin to recognize, as you said, the areas where you were blessed by your parents. But this is not about making a list of "good things" and "bad things" and trying overly-hard to make the "good things" list longer than the bad things so you feel bad about being angry or get over your chip on your shoulder.
3. You're great questions regarding starting your own family: I think that apart from the hope we have in the redemptive power of Christ, no, there is no hope; just endless cycles of repeated sin patterns. But in Christ, we have the power to break those cycles and to genuinely bless our families.
The place where that starts for me is recognizing that I will sin against my kids and being very quick to ask for their forgiveness where I go wrong. My parents actually did this and I'm grateful for it. My wife and I joke that we're starting two savings funds: the college fund and the counseling fund. We know that they'll probably need both! So we try to have good communication with one another about how we're raising our own kids and as they get older, we'll be having that conversation with them as well.
In this case, it's not only a hopeful scenario but a powerful one. We work out the real gospel in real time in our family life every day: sin, asking for forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, reconciliation, the joy of fellowship together that keeps short accounts and walks in and extends grace to one another in radical and in recklessly regular ways.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. I think that reflecting on your own family brokenness is crucial to coming to terms with it. I wouldn’t give up on the word "broken" entirely, unless it has too much baggage for you. The truth of the matter is, all parents sin against their kids. Some do so unknowingly or unwittingly, but they all do it. This does, indeed, do damage to the children. To attempt to downplay that damage or excuse it does not actually deal with the problem.
Jesus does not excuse our sin. He forgives it. And he does so at great cost to himself. Forgiving and excusing are not the same thing. And so we are called to this much greater act of forgiveness always, but especially in relation to our families. This means calling sin what it is (sin), looking at it dead in the eye, and then saying, "I forgive you." Which you'll probably have to do two million times before you die, but that's just how much of life is, isn't it? Process. And some things you'll only have to forgive once and other things you'll have to forgive thousands of times. But it's not excusing, it is a real forgiveness.
The chip on your shoulder is removed through the process of genuine forgiveness. Jesus redeems all of humanity and all of our life experiences submitted to the canopy of his grace must ultimately serve to bless us. Including the sin of your parents against you. Including how you've sinned in response by becoming self-righteous and occasionally arrogant towards them. Your submission to the canopy of Jesus' grace most likely starts with calling both you and your parents sin real sin and then beginning the process of asking for forgiveness and extending it ('forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...or at least as we try to do so!').
2. I agree with you that gratitude is needed in the areas where it is required. But gratitude is a feeling, generally spontaneously generated, in response to something done that we appreciate. It might take some work to get there, but you can at least begin to recognize, as you said, the areas where you were blessed by your parents. But this is not about making a list of "good things" and "bad things" and trying overly-hard to make the "good things" list longer than the bad things so you feel bad about being angry or get over your chip on your shoulder.
3. You're great questions regarding starting your own family: I think that apart from the hope we have in the redemptive power of Christ, no, there is no hope; just endless cycles of repeated sin patterns. But in Christ, we have the power to break those cycles and to genuinely bless our families.
The place where that starts for me is recognizing that I will sin against my kids and being very quick to ask for their forgiveness where I go wrong. My parents actually did this and I'm grateful for it. My wife and I joke that we're starting two savings funds: the college fund and the counseling fund. We know that they'll probably need both! So we try to have good communication with one another about how we're raising our own kids and as they get older, we'll be having that conversation with them as well.
In this case, it's not only a hopeful scenario but a powerful one. We work out the real gospel in real time in our family life every day: sin, asking for forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, reconciliation, the joy of fellowship together that keeps short accounts and walks in and extends grace to one another in radical and in recklessly regular ways.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Redeeming "Story"
Last Thursday after I spoke at InterVarsity I had someone approach me and graciously question my use of the word "story" during my talk. I had referred to "the Christian story" throughout my talk and had also referenced "the Adam and Eve story." His concern was that using the word story allowed for the fictionalization of things that we hold to be true. Using "truth" instead of story seemed to him to be a better alternative.
My response to this excellent question was that if Christians give up on the word "story" it would be as catastrophic for us as if we gave up on the word "truth."
N.T. Wright points out to over-educated theologians that all theological statements are simply story told in shorthand. That is, all our summarizing and interpretating statements speaking of what we believe to be true are simply signs and pointers to the Redemptive Story that God is working out in real-time history. "Truth" is worth fighting for, but in the framework of our faith, it functions secondarily to "story." Truth statements are good only insofar as they accurately interpret and point to the most real thing of God's story--what He has done and what He is doing and what He will do.
To be sure, there is some baggage and underbrush that must be cut away from " story" in order for it to serve as a faithful word depicting the realities and enormities of grace. But that work is worth doing, particularly in a post-modern context where stories are innately more well received than truth statements. We must lead with the story and summarize with truth or we will not get much of a hearing in many circles where God has put us to be mediators of His grace.
And lest anyone think that in so doing we are "selling out," we can see a fairly impotant figure in our faith doing this all the time in his teaching. His name was Jesus.
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