New friends are sometimes surprised to learn that punk is my favorite kind of music. I mean, if I were banished to the furthest of the nether-regions with my ten-dollar portable cassette player and allowed only one genre – punk, no question. Those new friends are surprised because I don’t look punk, that is, I haven’t adopted the fashion. I played punk music for the better part of a decade and didn’t look the part then, either. In the mid to late nineties, some of the punk kids at my shows openly expressed their displeasure about my appearance and called me hilarious words like “poser” and “dick”. Ha ha ha. My spent tissues were more punk than those kids.
As a culture, punk has confused and disappointed me. People wanted to draw battle lines and shout slogans of unity. As Jello Biafra (vocalist for the Dead Kennedys) said, when you have this supposedly egalitarian movement using words like “us” and “them” without defining either us or them, you leave the defining up to the individual. Suddenly, “them” describes anyone who doesn’t agree with you or your set of friends. Then that golden movement centered around the unity of the individual (again, ha ha ha) splinters into an innumerable amount of impotent subcultures.
When I read that explanation of infighting and splits in the punk movement, my first thoughts were to compare this with the church. I mean, the Reformation was obviously necessary. The church had become uncompassionately wealthy, corrupt, and more focused on politics than holiness. The common man needed to read the scriptures for himself. That sort of thing needed to happen. But then you had centuries of people fighting wars over how to take communion or baptize folks. And so on and so on until today, where literally hundreds of denominations stand as a testimony of disagreement and misdirected anger within the body of Christ. Is it any wonder that the Western Church reminds me of snotty punk kids? If you don’t wear a tie and jacket, you’re not punk… so to speak.
Instead of parroting slogans of unity like I did back in 1997, I wanted to spend time today talking about co-operation within the church by looking at the book of Nehemiah.
In some ways, the Western church is in shambles. Rubble. Burned stones piled in heaps. In the first chapter of his book, Nehemiah is working as a servant for the king of Persia. One day, he asks his brother and some other men how the escaped exiles are faring in Jerusalem. Nehemiah 1:3-6 says, “They said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire.’ When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, ‘I beseech You, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father’s house have sinned.’”
When I read that passage, I remarked how Nehemiah’s first response to the condition of Jerusalem is to confess his own sins. This was correct, I believe. I mean, it’s easy to look at the condition of the church and assume that it’s someone else’s fault, or everybody else’s fault, but you and me are spotless lambs. Were he still alive at the time of Christ, Nehemiah would have understood what Jesus said in Matthew 7:3-5, “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
As we read on in Nehemiah, we’ll find that corporate repentance is also needed before the restoration. For several weeks, the people had been rebuilding the walls at a miraculous pace while resisting opposition from surrounding nations. In chapter 8, after the reconstruction, a priest named Ezra reads from the scriptures in the presence of the whole people all day. As the people listened, God convicted them of their sins as a nation and they fell in repentance together. Then, the people purposed in their hearts to obey God’s commands again. At the end of chapter 8, this is demonstrated with their observance of the Feast of Booths, which had not been celebrated for centuries since the time of Joshua.
I’ve begun to see a pattern in the Bible where God moves powerfully when His people do something together. Whether it’s in repentance (like in Nehemiah 8), or sacrifice (Numbers 7), or praise and dedication (1 Kings 8), God shows up in power.
Also, notice how Ezra didn’t scold the people or heap guilt upon them. He read the word of God and allowed their hearts to bear its conviction. Now we live in an age where the Holy Spirit moves among us. Jesus said in John 16:8 of the Holy Spirit, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” Although it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict people, we can continue to proclaim the word as Ezra did and allow God to work through it.
I’ve heard teaching on Nehemiah a few times. Not a lot aside from a focus on building walls and standing in the gap and stuff. But never have I heard anyone talk about the last chapter of the book. Have you read it? It’s weird. Okay, so get this, Nehemiah goes back to work for the King of Persia and later hears about all sorts of idiocy happening back in Jerusalem. So he returns to set things straight. A priest had taken a room in the temple and made it into a residence for his relative. Nehemiah throws the guy’s stuff out of the temple and has the room cleansed and restored to its proper function. He had to rebuke the people for not tithing to the priests and temple caretakers, who had dispersed in their poverty and left the house of God.
Then he saw that some men were taking their goods into Jerusalem on the Sabbath to sell in the market. He has the gates closed on Sabbath to discourage them from breaking God’s commands, but one night sees them camped outside the gates waiting to be let inside. He said to them in Nehemiah 13:21, “Then I warned them and said to them, ‘Why do you spend the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will use force against you.’ From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath.”
But even crazier is what Nehemiah does at the end of the last chapter. He saw that the people were intermarrying with foreigners and in Nehemiah 13:25-27 says, “So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, ‘You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?’”
After doing these things, Nehemiah keeps asking God to remember the good that he has done and asks for favor. “Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out my loyal deeds which I have performed for the house of my God and its services.” “For this also remember me, O my God, and have compassion on me according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness.” “Remember me, O my God, for good.” I think Nehemiah kept asking God to remember his deeds and show favor because he was pissing off a lot of people. But if Nehemiah understood that the sins of one affect the whole people, as he demonstrated by his personal confession in the first chapter, then he knew that these individual sins put the whole people in danger of God revisiting His wrath. They were in it together and needed to hold each other accountable.
I don’t have the answers for how we can fix division in the Western church. But if the book of Nehemiah is any indication of how we can start, I say we start by recognizing our own individual shortcomings and coming to God in repentance. It can’t and won’t stop there, so don’t think that you alone have to bear the burden for millions of people messing up God’s church. Jesus thankfully gave us the Holy Spirit to carry out that part of His plan for us. We can, however, continue to pray for the restoration and teach the Word knowing that Jesus came to heal all things, even the church.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
God's Merciful Use Of His Mercy - Or, how a seven-year-old can slam-dunk.
A man once approached me at a conference in Indiana and asked if I was Isaiah. When I told him that he’d found the right man, he held up a copy of Stark Raving Obedience and began to thumb through many highlighted pages. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” he said. “You talk a lot about both ‘Faith’ and ‘Belief’.” He read from a passage that talks about a person’s lack of faith versus unbelief. Then he asked, “I still don’t understand the difference between ‘Belief’ and ‘Faith’. You use the words interchangeably throughout the rest of the book. Could you explain this for me?” The best answer I could give him at the time was that he had a copy of the first edition, a three-year-old version full of hilarious typos and half-explanations. Which was more of a commercial for the second edition than an answer.
To be honest, it took a full two weeks before I could confidently define my use of the two words. Belief is when a person mentally ascribes themselves to a system of thought. Faith is when the person begins to apply that system of thought to their lives through action.
Many Christians have historically used the words “Grace” and “Mercy” interchangeably as well. I want to make sure you know what I mean when I say these words. As I understand it, grace is a gift freely given to one who did not earn or deserve the gift. A good example of this is how Boaz treated Ruth in the book of Ruth. She was a foreigner, a widow, and a woman. In that culture, she had no rights, and yet Boaz showed her favor without asking for anything in return. That’s grace.
I’ve heard a few people teach on God’s messy covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. I first heard it from Ray Vanderlaan, so my credit goes to him here. God promises Abraham that he and his descendants will possess the Promised Land. Abraham asks God, “How am I supposed to know you’re telling me the truth?” So God has Abraham split a cow, a goat, and a ram into halves, placing the halves opposite of each other. This would allow for the animals’ blood to run together and form a sort of path.
Vanderlaan taught that this was a common Bedouin custom for making a covenant. One man would walk through to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the deal, you can split me in two and walk in my blood.” The other man would do the same. An admittedly severe agreement, but this is what God asked of Abraham. Instead of allowing Abraham to walk through the bloody path, God caused Abraham to sleep and spoke His promise. When Abraham awoke, he saw a smoking pot, and then a flaming torch, pass through the halved animals. By doing this, God passed through the path Himself both times as if to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the agreement and uphold my promises, you can kill me and walk in my blood. And if you don’t keep your end of our agreement to follow me as your only God, you can kill me and walk in my blood.”
Of course, Abraham would be the one to break the covenant, but God’s promise was to take the punishment for our failure Himself. This promise was fulfilled with Jesus’s death on the cross. This is the free gift of grace, and it’s ours to accept or deny.
When we do accept Jesus and His forgiveness of our sin, Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Many sections of the New Testament teach that our righteousness, justification, and holiness are found in Jesus. This works because we’re hidden in Him. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our mistakes, our trauma, our sickness, our wounds, or any of that stuff. He sees Jesus. The Old Testament prophets, when telling of the coming Messiah, said He would suffer, be broken, bruised, striped, crushed, and slaughtered for our iniquity, sin, transgression, illness, and infirmity. God doesn’t want to punish us because He already punished Jesus. When we place ourselves under the covering of Jesus’s blood, we’re, well, covered. In 2 Timothy 2:11-13, Paul wrote, “It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”
Of course, just because all of our sins are forgiven doesn’t mean we use grace as an excuse to live an intentional lifestyle of sin. Paul explains this gorgeously in Romans 6. To be sure of God’s grace is to be sure of our salvation in Jesus and this understanding is foundational to the life of every believer.
Mercy is more of a head-scratcher for people, I think. I see mercy as God’s affectionate attitude toward us, His goodwill, and the help He wants to offer. When explaining my idea of mercy to a close friend, I compared it to the brief period of my life when I wanted to play basketball. I was, I don’t know, seven or so, and I wanted to try dunking the ball. I don’t even know if I was four feet tall at the time, but I kept trying to dunk. And I mean repeatedly. I probably stuck my tongue out a few times thinking that was Michael Jordan's secret. My dad laughed as he watched, and I kept saying, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” But, come on, there was no way I would dunk that ball. So my dad stepped in and said, “Let me help you.” He lifted me up as I jumped and I was finally able to dunk the ball.
Now, I could have refused his help and insisted that I was going to dunk on my own. But it would have been pathetic of me to really commit to that kind of denial. And it would have been cruel of my dad, or at least way less cool of him, to watch me struggle in futility and demand that I do the impossible without his help. When I let him help me, though, I wanted him to help me over and over again. It was more fun for both of us.
Some people think that God is like the dad who forces the kid to dunk the ball on his own. They feel like failures when they can’t do everything right, or they imagine that God views them as failures, too. But Jesus didn’t come to make us feel like failures. The angels in Luke 2 proclaimed God’s pleasure for us when Jesus was born. God is pleased with us because we’re hidden in Jesus, His beloved son, with whom He is very pleased.
There are parts of scripture that tell us believers should spread the gospel, baptize people, make disciples, heal the sick, and yeah, sometimes, raise the dead. Many Christians don’t see that happening around them. It’s possible that when we try to do these things, we’re under four feet tall and trying to dunk, assuming we’re trying at all. We have to accept the truth that we can’t do it on our own.
But God is there, waiting for us to let Him help. As I read through the book of Isaiah last month, many passages reassured me of God’s mercy. In Isaiah 41:13 says, “For I am the LORD your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, Do not fear, I will help you.” Later in Isaiah 46:3-4, God tells His people, “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; and I will bear you and I will deliver you.” And still later in Isaiah 49:15-16 when Israel says God has forsaken them in a time of need, the Lord replies, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.”
God wants to help us, to carry us. And He won’t forget us. It’s not possible for Him to forget. Whatever situation you may struggle with, the problem is not on His end. I learned this recently while listening to a recording of John Wimbur. He’s the guy that started the Vineyard Fellowship. He spent a year in agony from the time he began to pray for healing to finally seeing someone healed.
“I mean, God was at every meeting,” he says toward the end of the message. “A wonderful presence. We would worship in total abandonment and weep. People would be converted. It was wonderful. The air would thicken up with His presence. God was with us! We knew it! But we would pray these pitiful prayers. ‘Oh God, if you’re up there, anywhere... If you’ve ever done anything at any time...Here is a worthy subject...’ Have you ever prayed prayers like that? You have too. You’ve prayed prayers just like that. You’re just like me.”
Finally, God miraculously and hilariously healed someone that he prayed for one morning. That day, he said, “I had a vision, a really graphic one. The first I’d ever had before. I was in my car driving. It was a beautiful morning, of course it would be. And all of a sudden, superimposed over the landscape, as far as I could see, is what looked like a cloud bank. It went all the way across the sky. As I looked at it, I realized it wasn’t a cloud bank, it was a honeycomb. It was dripping. And below the honeycomb are people. They were in all kinds of different postures. Some were reverent. They’re weeping. They’ve got their hands out catching this honey. Some are sharing with their friends while others come by and dipping their fingers other peoples’ honey. And still other people are really irritated. They’re trying to get out of this honey because they don’t like it. I pulled over to the side of the road to sit and look at it and said, ‘God, what is this?’ He said, ‘John, that’s my mercy. For some people, it’s a blessing. And for some people, it’s not. John, don’t ever beg me for healing again. Look at it. There’s plenty for everyone. The problem isn’t on my end. The problem is down there where you are.’ Our God sent mercy in His son. He sent His Word to heal them. The problem we have is receiving it.”
Our Father, God, is favorably disposed to us. He wants to help us live and thrive and walk with Him. Sometimes we don’t accept His help because we want to do it on our own. Sometimes He’s waiting for us to drop that victimized, weak sort of prayer that Wimbur described and come to Him confidently as His children, knowing that dad wants to help. Other times, He’s asking us to learn how to remain in Him through the Holy Spirit as Jesus taught in John 16 because that’s where our joy is made complete. But whatever your circumstances are, His grace is available to you through Jesus and His mercy is so abundant it drips down from heaven. It delights Him to lift you high in the air and let you hang on the rim.
To be honest, it took a full two weeks before I could confidently define my use of the two words. Belief is when a person mentally ascribes themselves to a system of thought. Faith is when the person begins to apply that system of thought to their lives through action.
Many Christians have historically used the words “Grace” and “Mercy” interchangeably as well. I want to make sure you know what I mean when I say these words. As I understand it, grace is a gift freely given to one who did not earn or deserve the gift. A good example of this is how Boaz treated Ruth in the book of Ruth. She was a foreigner, a widow, and a woman. In that culture, she had no rights, and yet Boaz showed her favor without asking for anything in return. That’s grace.
I’ve heard a few people teach on God’s messy covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. I first heard it from Ray Vanderlaan, so my credit goes to him here. God promises Abraham that he and his descendants will possess the Promised Land. Abraham asks God, “How am I supposed to know you’re telling me the truth?” So God has Abraham split a cow, a goat, and a ram into halves, placing the halves opposite of each other. This would allow for the animals’ blood to run together and form a sort of path.
Vanderlaan taught that this was a common Bedouin custom for making a covenant. One man would walk through to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the deal, you can split me in two and walk in my blood.” The other man would do the same. An admittedly severe agreement, but this is what God asked of Abraham. Instead of allowing Abraham to walk through the bloody path, God caused Abraham to sleep and spoke His promise. When Abraham awoke, he saw a smoking pot, and then a flaming torch, pass through the halved animals. By doing this, God passed through the path Himself both times as if to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the agreement and uphold my promises, you can kill me and walk in my blood. And if you don’t keep your end of our agreement to follow me as your only God, you can kill me and walk in my blood.”
Of course, Abraham would be the one to break the covenant, but God’s promise was to take the punishment for our failure Himself. This promise was fulfilled with Jesus’s death on the cross. This is the free gift of grace, and it’s ours to accept or deny.
When we do accept Jesus and His forgiveness of our sin, Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Many sections of the New Testament teach that our righteousness, justification, and holiness are found in Jesus. This works because we’re hidden in Him. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our mistakes, our trauma, our sickness, our wounds, or any of that stuff. He sees Jesus. The Old Testament prophets, when telling of the coming Messiah, said He would suffer, be broken, bruised, striped, crushed, and slaughtered for our iniquity, sin, transgression, illness, and infirmity. God doesn’t want to punish us because He already punished Jesus. When we place ourselves under the covering of Jesus’s blood, we’re, well, covered. In 2 Timothy 2:11-13, Paul wrote, “It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”
Of course, just because all of our sins are forgiven doesn’t mean we use grace as an excuse to live an intentional lifestyle of sin. Paul explains this gorgeously in Romans 6. To be sure of God’s grace is to be sure of our salvation in Jesus and this understanding is foundational to the life of every believer.
Mercy is more of a head-scratcher for people, I think. I see mercy as God’s affectionate attitude toward us, His goodwill, and the help He wants to offer. When explaining my idea of mercy to a close friend, I compared it to the brief period of my life when I wanted to play basketball. I was, I don’t know, seven or so, and I wanted to try dunking the ball. I don’t even know if I was four feet tall at the time, but I kept trying to dunk. And I mean repeatedly. I probably stuck my tongue out a few times thinking that was Michael Jordan's secret. My dad laughed as he watched, and I kept saying, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” But, come on, there was no way I would dunk that ball. So my dad stepped in and said, “Let me help you.” He lifted me up as I jumped and I was finally able to dunk the ball.
Now, I could have refused his help and insisted that I was going to dunk on my own. But it would have been pathetic of me to really commit to that kind of denial. And it would have been cruel of my dad, or at least way less cool of him, to watch me struggle in futility and demand that I do the impossible without his help. When I let him help me, though, I wanted him to help me over and over again. It was more fun for both of us.
Some people think that God is like the dad who forces the kid to dunk the ball on his own. They feel like failures when they can’t do everything right, or they imagine that God views them as failures, too. But Jesus didn’t come to make us feel like failures. The angels in Luke 2 proclaimed God’s pleasure for us when Jesus was born. God is pleased with us because we’re hidden in Jesus, His beloved son, with whom He is very pleased.
There are parts of scripture that tell us believers should spread the gospel, baptize people, make disciples, heal the sick, and yeah, sometimes, raise the dead. Many Christians don’t see that happening around them. It’s possible that when we try to do these things, we’re under four feet tall and trying to dunk, assuming we’re trying at all. We have to accept the truth that we can’t do it on our own.
But God is there, waiting for us to let Him help. As I read through the book of Isaiah last month, many passages reassured me of God’s mercy. In Isaiah 41:13 says, “For I am the LORD your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, Do not fear, I will help you.” Later in Isaiah 46:3-4, God tells His people, “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; and I will bear you and I will deliver you.” And still later in Isaiah 49:15-16 when Israel says God has forsaken them in a time of need, the Lord replies, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.”
God wants to help us, to carry us. And He won’t forget us. It’s not possible for Him to forget. Whatever situation you may struggle with, the problem is not on His end. I learned this recently while listening to a recording of John Wimbur. He’s the guy that started the Vineyard Fellowship. He spent a year in agony from the time he began to pray for healing to finally seeing someone healed.
“I mean, God was at every meeting,” he says toward the end of the message. “A wonderful presence. We would worship in total abandonment and weep. People would be converted. It was wonderful. The air would thicken up with His presence. God was with us! We knew it! But we would pray these pitiful prayers. ‘Oh God, if you’re up there, anywhere... If you’ve ever done anything at any time...Here is a worthy subject...’ Have you ever prayed prayers like that? You have too. You’ve prayed prayers just like that. You’re just like me.”
Finally, God miraculously and hilariously healed someone that he prayed for one morning. That day, he said, “I had a vision, a really graphic one. The first I’d ever had before. I was in my car driving. It was a beautiful morning, of course it would be. And all of a sudden, superimposed over the landscape, as far as I could see, is what looked like a cloud bank. It went all the way across the sky. As I looked at it, I realized it wasn’t a cloud bank, it was a honeycomb. It was dripping. And below the honeycomb are people. They were in all kinds of different postures. Some were reverent. They’re weeping. They’ve got their hands out catching this honey. Some are sharing with their friends while others come by and dipping their fingers other peoples’ honey. And still other people are really irritated. They’re trying to get out of this honey because they don’t like it. I pulled over to the side of the road to sit and look at it and said, ‘God, what is this?’ He said, ‘John, that’s my mercy. For some people, it’s a blessing. And for some people, it’s not. John, don’t ever beg me for healing again. Look at it. There’s plenty for everyone. The problem isn’t on my end. The problem is down there where you are.’ Our God sent mercy in His son. He sent His Word to heal them. The problem we have is receiving it.”
Our Father, God, is favorably disposed to us. He wants to help us live and thrive and walk with Him. Sometimes we don’t accept His help because we want to do it on our own. Sometimes He’s waiting for us to drop that victimized, weak sort of prayer that Wimbur described and come to Him confidently as His children, knowing that dad wants to help. Other times, He’s asking us to learn how to remain in Him through the Holy Spirit as Jesus taught in John 16 because that’s where our joy is made complete. But whatever your circumstances are, His grace is available to you through Jesus and His mercy is so abundant it drips down from heaven. It delights Him to lift you high in the air and let you hang on the rim.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Secondary Questions - Or, lessons from a homeless man's reading list.
In 2004, a man named Dan walked into the coffee shop where I worked in Grand Rapids. My co-worker took his order and I made the drink. While they waited for me to finish, she decided to make some small talk with this guy. “I’ve never seen you before. Do you work around here?”
“I don’t work around here or anywhere else,” he said.
“Oh. Well, do you live around here then?”
It was an innocent question, but she clearly didn’t understand that Dan was probably homeless. I hip-checked her out of the way and handed him his drink. He paid with a dirty dollar bill and some change, if I remember right, and began talking with me about education and religion. Unlike some of the other people I talked with in that neighborhood, his points were articulate, well reasoned, and truthful. He mentioned some books and asked if I had read them. Then he wrote the titles in beautiful cursive on the back of a concert flyer. “You’ll find these at the Grand Rapids Main Branch Library,” he said.
He told me that one of the books, The Art of Clear Thinking, didn’t have much to say. He really only recommended the chapter, “How To Not Be Bamboozled”. I found all the books on his reading list and read them over the next four months, but I remember this chapter best. “How To Not Be Bamboozled” warned against accepting false information in an age where information is so easily accessible. And mind you, this book was written in the 1950’s, way before the lightning speed at which we could all WikiTubeBookSpace. The author said that all information should be tested by three questions: “Why do I need to know this? Who is telling me? And what are their sources?” I won’t give you my book report summary of the chapter, but I want to point out the importance of further inquiry. It’s easy to hear something and assume that we have a complete understanding of both its context and credibility.
I’m awesome when it comes to acting like I understand everything. Reader’s Digest once had an article that explained how you could impress people at parties. I was ten and woefully insecure, so I ate this stuff up. The author’s strategy was to say truthful statements, but to say them in such a way that deceived people. Imagine someone asks you, “Have you ever read Dante’s Divine Comedy?” Instead of saying “No,” you can answer, “Not in English.” The second reply insinuates that you’ve not only read the Divine Comedy, but that you read it in Italian. But this is a party. You can move on to another circle of cocktails and leave that person to bask in the residual glow of your coolness.
I’ve spent the better part of the past five years re-training myself to not play that game anymore. It all started when I couldn’t get away fast enough and the person started asking questions that proved I was a phony. My Reader’s Digest-inspired cool (if such a thing were possible) couldn’t stand the test of secondary questions.
But secondary questions aren’t just a BS detector. What if every conversation you ever had sounded like a job interview? You have your set of questions for people to get the basic information of who they are and what they’ve done. But without context, do you really know the person? I recently filled out an application that asked me to tell them a little about myself. “What makes you tick?” it asked. I looked at the space given after the question and basically wrote in, “It’s a long story, but at least it’s not boring.” I couldn’t give a short, easy answer. If I had given an answer like, “I’m a writer,” and left it at that, their assumptions could lead them to a conclusion miles away from my meaning. In Nashville, when you say you’re a writer, most people immediately say, “Songwriter?” I have to tell them, “No, typewriter.” It takes another question for them to understand what I meant.
I’m learning to ask secondary questions when I pray. First, it’s important to ask questions that test the truth of what I may hear in prayer. 1 John 4:1-3 says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” Just because I hear something while I’m praying to God, and just because it sounds like something God might say, it doesn’t automatically mean the word is from God. John encouraged people to ask questions that would test the spirit speaking to make sure the word came from God.
Then there are the questions I ask God to build an understanding of what He may require of me. I think He wants us to make an effort to understand, to learn and grow instead of passively accepting everything that comes our way. There’s a reason, I think, why James 1:5 encourages us to ask for wisdom from God. And the writer makes it clear that God wants to give you wisdom. But you have to ask.
If God were to tell you to get a new job, for example, does that mean you should get any job other than the one you have now? Or should you take a moment to ask, “Where do you want me to work?” That could save you a lot of frustration applying and interviewing at dead ends, which might cause you to blame God for making your life hard. And I’ve found that asking God the secondary questions doesn’t only give me clearer information on what He wants me to do, it also helps me to understand His heart, how He desires to give me good things, how He loves me enough to guide me.
Secondary questions help keep us from being bamboozled. We can see if the guy at the party is making himself look a lot cooler than he is in real life. We can see if God is speaking, or if a lying spirit is trying to deceive us. Information without credibility will eventually break down if you press it with questions. That sure beats having your thinking enslaved by lies.
Secondary questions also make space for a relationship. It’s the difference between a boss who only wants you to know your duty and a Father who wants His adopted son to become more like Him. Information without context is just trivia, and I don’t want my life to be trivial. Instead of asking the wandering homeless guy where he lives, you could ask him why he’s out of work. Who knows? He might give you a cool reading list.
“I don’t work around here or anywhere else,” he said.
“Oh. Well, do you live around here then?”
It was an innocent question, but she clearly didn’t understand that Dan was probably homeless. I hip-checked her out of the way and handed him his drink. He paid with a dirty dollar bill and some change, if I remember right, and began talking with me about education and religion. Unlike some of the other people I talked with in that neighborhood, his points were articulate, well reasoned, and truthful. He mentioned some books and asked if I had read them. Then he wrote the titles in beautiful cursive on the back of a concert flyer. “You’ll find these at the Grand Rapids Main Branch Library,” he said.
He told me that one of the books, The Art of Clear Thinking, didn’t have much to say. He really only recommended the chapter, “How To Not Be Bamboozled”. I found all the books on his reading list and read them over the next four months, but I remember this chapter best. “How To Not Be Bamboozled” warned against accepting false information in an age where information is so easily accessible. And mind you, this book was written in the 1950’s, way before the lightning speed at which we could all WikiTubeBookSpace. The author said that all information should be tested by three questions: “Why do I need to know this? Who is telling me? And what are their sources?” I won’t give you my book report summary of the chapter, but I want to point out the importance of further inquiry. It’s easy to hear something and assume that we have a complete understanding of both its context and credibility.
I’m awesome when it comes to acting like I understand everything. Reader’s Digest once had an article that explained how you could impress people at parties. I was ten and woefully insecure, so I ate this stuff up. The author’s strategy was to say truthful statements, but to say them in such a way that deceived people. Imagine someone asks you, “Have you ever read Dante’s Divine Comedy?” Instead of saying “No,” you can answer, “Not in English.” The second reply insinuates that you’ve not only read the Divine Comedy, but that you read it in Italian. But this is a party. You can move on to another circle of cocktails and leave that person to bask in the residual glow of your coolness.
I’ve spent the better part of the past five years re-training myself to not play that game anymore. It all started when I couldn’t get away fast enough and the person started asking questions that proved I was a phony. My Reader’s Digest-inspired cool (if such a thing were possible) couldn’t stand the test of secondary questions.
But secondary questions aren’t just a BS detector. What if every conversation you ever had sounded like a job interview? You have your set of questions for people to get the basic information of who they are and what they’ve done. But without context, do you really know the person? I recently filled out an application that asked me to tell them a little about myself. “What makes you tick?” it asked. I looked at the space given after the question and basically wrote in, “It’s a long story, but at least it’s not boring.” I couldn’t give a short, easy answer. If I had given an answer like, “I’m a writer,” and left it at that, their assumptions could lead them to a conclusion miles away from my meaning. In Nashville, when you say you’re a writer, most people immediately say, “Songwriter?” I have to tell them, “No, typewriter.” It takes another question for them to understand what I meant.
I’m learning to ask secondary questions when I pray. First, it’s important to ask questions that test the truth of what I may hear in prayer. 1 John 4:1-3 says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” Just because I hear something while I’m praying to God, and just because it sounds like something God might say, it doesn’t automatically mean the word is from God. John encouraged people to ask questions that would test the spirit speaking to make sure the word came from God.
Then there are the questions I ask God to build an understanding of what He may require of me. I think He wants us to make an effort to understand, to learn and grow instead of passively accepting everything that comes our way. There’s a reason, I think, why James 1:5 encourages us to ask for wisdom from God. And the writer makes it clear that God wants to give you wisdom. But you have to ask.
If God were to tell you to get a new job, for example, does that mean you should get any job other than the one you have now? Or should you take a moment to ask, “Where do you want me to work?” That could save you a lot of frustration applying and interviewing at dead ends, which might cause you to blame God for making your life hard. And I’ve found that asking God the secondary questions doesn’t only give me clearer information on what He wants me to do, it also helps me to understand His heart, how He desires to give me good things, how He loves me enough to guide me.
Secondary questions help keep us from being bamboozled. We can see if the guy at the party is making himself look a lot cooler than he is in real life. We can see if God is speaking, or if a lying spirit is trying to deceive us. Information without credibility will eventually break down if you press it with questions. That sure beats having your thinking enslaved by lies.
Secondary questions also make space for a relationship. It’s the difference between a boss who only wants you to know your duty and a Father who wants His adopted son to become more like Him. Information without context is just trivia, and I don’t want my life to be trivial. Instead of asking the wandering homeless guy where he lives, you could ask him why he’s out of work. Who knows? He might give you a cool reading list.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Importance of Being Right – Or, a possible path toward unbelief.
Recently, I considered the topic of predestination. Unless we’re talking about the movie 12 Monkeys, I don’t typically like discussing the hopelessness of man’s decisions. The topic surfaced again when my roommates and I read about the atonement in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. One roommate took the side of particular redemption. I told him that I could only, at this point, agree with particular redemption after the fact. That is, I will only tell a person that Jesus came to specifically save them, that God chose them from before their birth for salvation, after they have already accepted Christ. And consequently, I will regard every unbeliever as one who may potentially accept Christ. My roommates and I talked for about an hour and a half on the subject. I finished my argument later by saying, “Even if I’m wrong, I can’t be mad. Nobody deserves to be saved. One person receiving salvation is more than the whole of mankind deserves from God.”
The conversation ended well even though we didn’t come to an agreement. As I washed the dishes afterwards, I smiled at the thought that a room full of opinionated men could still be humble in their beliefs. There were no assaults made against a person who didn’t agree with one side or another. We tried to come to an understanding based upon what we know of scripture and cared only that we lived our lives in a way that honored God. I haven’t fully adopted Reformed theology, but I am still thinking about the points made in its defense. I want to know more about God. In order to make sure that I don’t become stubbornly proud in my faith, I have to remind myself, “I don’t know everything.”
At the end of Stark Raving Obedience, I spent a little time writing about Blaise Pascal. In the book Pensees, he said that man is a point on a line and limited in his ability to comprehend either end of the line. Man cannot comprehend the extremes of anything in nature. There are numbers so big and small that we have yet to count them. The Universe continues to expand, and we have only begun to chart the vastness of it. On the other hand, scientists keep finding smaller and smaller subatomic particles. Some light and sound waves are too high or low for our senses, and maybe our machines, to register. Yet these extremes exist regardless of our ability to know them. Pascal’s argument was that some Being must fully comprehend these extremes. This was one argument he made for the existence of God. He said that it was man’s great joy to discover more of what God had put in place, but man must humbly recognize that he will never arrive at full and complete comprehension. This belongs to God alone.
Toward the end of George MacDonald’s Lilith, the narrator struggles to understand a truth Mr. Raven tells him. Apparently, the narrator is in a dream, but everything seems quite real. He doubts that his senses deceive him. Everything feels real, so how could it not be real? If his current surroundings were a dream, how would he know if he ever truly entered the waking world? Mr. Raven explains, “Thou doubest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou are not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be forever dead.”
I often think about Pascal’s picture of humble learning and taking joy in discovery. But does this mean that any skepticism of new understanding puts me in the wrong? According to MacDonald, it shows that I have a love for the truth, a truth I can never fully understand apart from God’s illumination. I want my knowledge to form a complete whole instead of a pile of facts with which I can agree. I want to learn, but I’m trying to reconcile what I have already learned with any new information. If I’m going to learn anything, I sometimes have to allow for the possibility that I’ve previously accepted something untrue. This is the hard part. So hard, in fact, that I need the Holy Spirit to help me change my thinking.
I take this very seriously because of how easy it is to resort to an “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality. The danger in this attitude comes from a resistance to truth not previously understood. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s a breeze to disregard it as nonsense, right? Priests and bible teachers of Jesus’s day were arrogant in their knowledge of scripture, but they didn't see Jesus as the fulfillment of all those prophecies they had memorized. In John 8, they couldn’t recognize Him when He stood right in front of them. Jesus had come to the temple to teach and said in John 8:12-14, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.’”
Did you ever wonder why the Pharisees said, “You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true”? I think they were trying to trap Jesus with His own words. Three chapters earlier, Jesus said in John 5:31, “If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.” But then he says in verse 32, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.” This is why Jesus answered the Pharisees accusation by saying, “Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.” He knew that He was the Son of God, one in and with the Father, but these religious leaders had no understanding of the Trinity to know the truth when they heard it. It didn’t make sense, so they disregarded it.
My pastor pointed out that John 8 takes place in the temple court. The priests kept huge oil lanterns burning day and night to signify God’s presence in the temple. Here they stood, focused on the representation of God’s presence and unable to see God Himself standing before them saying, “I am the light of the world.” It probably would have been okay if they had responded by saying, “Huh? We don’t understand what you’re saying, Jesus. Why don’t you explain it to us?” The disciples said that all the time. But the Pharisees didn’t want Jesus to explain. They wanted to trap Him and prove Him a liar. They wanted to be right.
What did that leave them with? Unbelief, I think. Graham Cooke once said, “The Bible talks about ‘an evil heart of unbelief”. And it’s not that if you have unbelief, your heart is evil. What it’s saying is that the impact of unbelief on your heart is really evil. You commit yourself to a life of toil, struggle, and pain. It damages everything.”
What’s the opposite of unbelief? Faith. Then that probably means the impact of faith on your heart is lovely. I’m not going to say that thinking you’re right equals unbelief, and thinking you’re wrong equals faith. Put it in terms of the attitude you have towards knowledge. Is it arrogant and prideful? Then you’re in danger of unbelief just like the Pharisees in John 8. Is it humble, allowing for new understanding? I’d say that’s a good step toward faith.
Having said all that, I encourage you to both seek as well as stand firmly upon truth. People used to tell me that I had to be open minded. At the heart of their argument, they wanted me to admit that their version of truth was just as valid as mine. Which is funny because this meant they didn't think my explanation of truth was valid. I didn’t budge from my position that there is one eternal God. That not all gods were God. That truth was not relative. Absolutely nothing will change my mind about these statements.
So whether God knew (and therefore picked) who would be saved, or if He made a genuine offer of salvation to all, Jesus is the only way to salvation. I can stand on the truth of Christ and yet continue to learn more about this truth. At least on this, the roommates and I can agree.
The conversation ended well even though we didn’t come to an agreement. As I washed the dishes afterwards, I smiled at the thought that a room full of opinionated men could still be humble in their beliefs. There were no assaults made against a person who didn’t agree with one side or another. We tried to come to an understanding based upon what we know of scripture and cared only that we lived our lives in a way that honored God. I haven’t fully adopted Reformed theology, but I am still thinking about the points made in its defense. I want to know more about God. In order to make sure that I don’t become stubbornly proud in my faith, I have to remind myself, “I don’t know everything.”
At the end of Stark Raving Obedience, I spent a little time writing about Blaise Pascal. In the book Pensees, he said that man is a point on a line and limited in his ability to comprehend either end of the line. Man cannot comprehend the extremes of anything in nature. There are numbers so big and small that we have yet to count them. The Universe continues to expand, and we have only begun to chart the vastness of it. On the other hand, scientists keep finding smaller and smaller subatomic particles. Some light and sound waves are too high or low for our senses, and maybe our machines, to register. Yet these extremes exist regardless of our ability to know them. Pascal’s argument was that some Being must fully comprehend these extremes. This was one argument he made for the existence of God. He said that it was man’s great joy to discover more of what God had put in place, but man must humbly recognize that he will never arrive at full and complete comprehension. This belongs to God alone.
Toward the end of George MacDonald’s Lilith, the narrator struggles to understand a truth Mr. Raven tells him. Apparently, the narrator is in a dream, but everything seems quite real. He doubts that his senses deceive him. Everything feels real, so how could it not be real? If his current surroundings were a dream, how would he know if he ever truly entered the waking world? Mr. Raven explains, “Thou doubest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou are not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be forever dead.”
I often think about Pascal’s picture of humble learning and taking joy in discovery. But does this mean that any skepticism of new understanding puts me in the wrong? According to MacDonald, it shows that I have a love for the truth, a truth I can never fully understand apart from God’s illumination. I want my knowledge to form a complete whole instead of a pile of facts with which I can agree. I want to learn, but I’m trying to reconcile what I have already learned with any new information. If I’m going to learn anything, I sometimes have to allow for the possibility that I’ve previously accepted something untrue. This is the hard part. So hard, in fact, that I need the Holy Spirit to help me change my thinking.
I take this very seriously because of how easy it is to resort to an “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality. The danger in this attitude comes from a resistance to truth not previously understood. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s a breeze to disregard it as nonsense, right? Priests and bible teachers of Jesus’s day were arrogant in their knowledge of scripture, but they didn't see Jesus as the fulfillment of all those prophecies they had memorized. In John 8, they couldn’t recognize Him when He stood right in front of them. Jesus had come to the temple to teach and said in John 8:12-14, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.’”
Did you ever wonder why the Pharisees said, “You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true”? I think they were trying to trap Jesus with His own words. Three chapters earlier, Jesus said in John 5:31, “If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.” But then he says in verse 32, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.” This is why Jesus answered the Pharisees accusation by saying, “Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.” He knew that He was the Son of God, one in and with the Father, but these religious leaders had no understanding of the Trinity to know the truth when they heard it. It didn’t make sense, so they disregarded it.
My pastor pointed out that John 8 takes place in the temple court. The priests kept huge oil lanterns burning day and night to signify God’s presence in the temple. Here they stood, focused on the representation of God’s presence and unable to see God Himself standing before them saying, “I am the light of the world.” It probably would have been okay if they had responded by saying, “Huh? We don’t understand what you’re saying, Jesus. Why don’t you explain it to us?” The disciples said that all the time. But the Pharisees didn’t want Jesus to explain. They wanted to trap Him and prove Him a liar. They wanted to be right.
What did that leave them with? Unbelief, I think. Graham Cooke once said, “The Bible talks about ‘an evil heart of unbelief”. And it’s not that if you have unbelief, your heart is evil. What it’s saying is that the impact of unbelief on your heart is really evil. You commit yourself to a life of toil, struggle, and pain. It damages everything.”
What’s the opposite of unbelief? Faith. Then that probably means the impact of faith on your heart is lovely. I’m not going to say that thinking you’re right equals unbelief, and thinking you’re wrong equals faith. Put it in terms of the attitude you have towards knowledge. Is it arrogant and prideful? Then you’re in danger of unbelief just like the Pharisees in John 8. Is it humble, allowing for new understanding? I’d say that’s a good step toward faith.
Having said all that, I encourage you to both seek as well as stand firmly upon truth. People used to tell me that I had to be open minded. At the heart of their argument, they wanted me to admit that their version of truth was just as valid as mine. Which is funny because this meant they didn't think my explanation of truth was valid. I didn’t budge from my position that there is one eternal God. That not all gods were God. That truth was not relative. Absolutely nothing will change my mind about these statements.
So whether God knew (and therefore picked) who would be saved, or if He made a genuine offer of salvation to all, Jesus is the only way to salvation. I can stand on the truth of Christ and yet continue to learn more about this truth. At least on this, the roommates and I can agree.
Friday, November 28, 2008
How the Bears Became Bad News and the Ducks Became Mighty.
Baseball may have taught me a lot, but nobody taught me a lot about baseball. I remember getting yelled at in Little League for messing up a play or batting poorly. Lots of people were willing to tell me what I did wrong, but very few people would show me how to do it right. There’s a reason I gave up playing the game for playing punk music. Mistakes were acceptable if not celebrated, and it was easy enough to teach myself anything I needed to know. Even so, I still wish I had that cinematic baseball team where a coach comes to turn a bunch of misfits into all-stars.
I’ve been in Michigan for the last three weeks and seen lots of old friends. Some of them have asked me how I like living in Nashville. Even though I lived in Michigan most of my life and moved only a year ago, I tell them that Nashville is my home. When they ask me why I like it so much, I used to tell them that I’m pleased to live where God wants me. While that’s true, I realize that I have another answer. I have people in Nashville who train me in discipleship. It’s like I found the Little League coach I always wanted. Until I moved to Nashville, I never understood the value of discipline and discipleship.
I used to identify the word “discipline” with punishment. Anything else was training. The Bible used the word discipline in terms of punishment sometimes and many a Baptist child heard these verses. Proverbs 22:15, for example, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” Or the famous Proverbs 13:24, “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Dang, right? Imagine how blessed you’d feel hearing someone quote those verses after hitting you with a belt.
But more often than not, scripture talks about discipline as if it’s the greatest thing in the whole world. Hebrews 12 talks of how God disciplines to train us in holiness. Verse 11 says, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” And in Revelation 3, in a letter to Sardis, God says, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” Paul rejoiced at the discipline of the church in Colossians 2:5.
We can easily get the wrong idea about discipline. It’s not punishment for its own sake. It’s not hateful correction. Like children, we think we know the best way to live, but we would mature poorly if we didn’t have people to train us. The disciples weren’t masochists, as far as I know. They wanted Jesus to show them how He lived His life. Instead of studying in the back of some synagogue for an allotted amount of time, they followed Him everywhere, listened to every word, asked Him all sorts of questions. “How should we pray?” “How many times should I forgive my brother?” “Should I pay my taxes?”
Alright, so discipline isn’t as bad as it sounds. It develops a mature way of life. But what does that have to do with living in Nashville? I have people in Nashville who meet with me regularly, whether intentionally or otherwise, to encourage me towards discipline. Then I turn it around and help other people with the same encouragement. It’s created a community of people seeking to develop a mature relationship with God, help each other reach those goals, stay accountable, and celebrate the growth. This gives me even more incentive to build and maintain an intimate relationship with God knowing that it helps my church. Paul mentions this kind of other-centered discipline in Romans 15:1-2. “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification.”
I’m glad I grew up in Michigan. But taken away from the culture of discipline that I’ve found in Tennessee, I fall back into old patterns and live less than extraordinarily. How often does this happen to you? How easy is it? That’s a pretty good sign that I’m still learning. I’m not ready for the travel team yet. I found myself saying the very words a friend told me about his lack of discipline. The decline in discipline almost made me think that I had begun to desire God less. I’m a forgetful person who needs others to remind me of my hunger for God. If I could do it on my own, why would Paul spend all of 1 Corinthians 12 saying that members of the Church were given different gifts so they could work together as a body with different parts?
The different parts of the body depend on each other. They are responsible to each other. They train and build together. They become strong and focused. They are able to accomplish their goals with skill. If the body is supposed to be a picture of the church, how out of shape is yours? In 1 Timothy 4, Paul instructs Timothy how to deal with false teachings and says, “But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”
I’ve said it before, but all I want from life is to glorify God and point others to Jesus. When I die, put it on the stone. I can’t accomplish these things effectively on my own. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. I burn out too quickly and lose heart. I need people to cheer me on, train me, keep me going towards that goal. How else am I going to make a big play in the championship game?
I once wrote about the church as a team. Here are some questions that might apply well to the analogy. How well do you know the people in your church? When you gather, do you encourage each other in righteousness? Are you willing to submit to spiritual authority? You don’t have to answer all of those questions right now. Let’s start with this one. When you think about discipline, do you think of it as a means to victory?
I’ve been in Michigan for the last three weeks and seen lots of old friends. Some of them have asked me how I like living in Nashville. Even though I lived in Michigan most of my life and moved only a year ago, I tell them that Nashville is my home. When they ask me why I like it so much, I used to tell them that I’m pleased to live where God wants me. While that’s true, I realize that I have another answer. I have people in Nashville who train me in discipleship. It’s like I found the Little League coach I always wanted. Until I moved to Nashville, I never understood the value of discipline and discipleship.
I used to identify the word “discipline” with punishment. Anything else was training. The Bible used the word discipline in terms of punishment sometimes and many a Baptist child heard these verses. Proverbs 22:15, for example, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” Or the famous Proverbs 13:24, “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Dang, right? Imagine how blessed you’d feel hearing someone quote those verses after hitting you with a belt.
But more often than not, scripture talks about discipline as if it’s the greatest thing in the whole world. Hebrews 12 talks of how God disciplines to train us in holiness. Verse 11 says, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” And in Revelation 3, in a letter to Sardis, God says, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” Paul rejoiced at the discipline of the church in Colossians 2:5.
We can easily get the wrong idea about discipline. It’s not punishment for its own sake. It’s not hateful correction. Like children, we think we know the best way to live, but we would mature poorly if we didn’t have people to train us. The disciples weren’t masochists, as far as I know. They wanted Jesus to show them how He lived His life. Instead of studying in the back of some synagogue for an allotted amount of time, they followed Him everywhere, listened to every word, asked Him all sorts of questions. “How should we pray?” “How many times should I forgive my brother?” “Should I pay my taxes?”
Alright, so discipline isn’t as bad as it sounds. It develops a mature way of life. But what does that have to do with living in Nashville? I have people in Nashville who meet with me regularly, whether intentionally or otherwise, to encourage me towards discipline. Then I turn it around and help other people with the same encouragement. It’s created a community of people seeking to develop a mature relationship with God, help each other reach those goals, stay accountable, and celebrate the growth. This gives me even more incentive to build and maintain an intimate relationship with God knowing that it helps my church. Paul mentions this kind of other-centered discipline in Romans 15:1-2. “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification.”
I’m glad I grew up in Michigan. But taken away from the culture of discipline that I’ve found in Tennessee, I fall back into old patterns and live less than extraordinarily. How often does this happen to you? How easy is it? That’s a pretty good sign that I’m still learning. I’m not ready for the travel team yet. I found myself saying the very words a friend told me about his lack of discipline. The decline in discipline almost made me think that I had begun to desire God less. I’m a forgetful person who needs others to remind me of my hunger for God. If I could do it on my own, why would Paul spend all of 1 Corinthians 12 saying that members of the Church were given different gifts so they could work together as a body with different parts?
The different parts of the body depend on each other. They are responsible to each other. They train and build together. They become strong and focused. They are able to accomplish their goals with skill. If the body is supposed to be a picture of the church, how out of shape is yours? In 1 Timothy 4, Paul instructs Timothy how to deal with false teachings and says, “But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”
I’ve said it before, but all I want from life is to glorify God and point others to Jesus. When I die, put it on the stone. I can’t accomplish these things effectively on my own. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. I burn out too quickly and lose heart. I need people to cheer me on, train me, keep me going towards that goal. How else am I going to make a big play in the championship game?
I once wrote about the church as a team. Here are some questions that might apply well to the analogy. How well do you know the people in your church? When you gather, do you encourage each other in righteousness? Are you willing to submit to spiritual authority? You don’t have to answer all of those questions right now. Let’s start with this one. When you think about discipline, do you think of it as a means to victory?
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Reason Why We Shouldn’t Fear Anything.
Now that baseball season is over, I don’t have any good reason to watch television. I can see Heroes online, you know? And that’s a better deal because I don’t have to endure so many commercials when I watch television shows online. Advertisements, more than many things, bother the hell out of me. During the World Series, though, I saw a Wendy’s commercial that annoyingly fits well with what I want to tell all of you today. The ad has two well-cast “everymen” sitting at work. One guy has a Wendy’s bag and asks the other guy how he liked his chicken sandwich. The second dude says, “I don’t remember.” Then the girl on the Wendy’s bag starts giving him a hard time about eating boring food.
This commercial is relevant to my point because memory sometimes fails more than serves us. I remember learning about “Mass Amnesia” from… somebody, I can’t remember. It’s a phenomenon that causes us to forget things like the outrage over gas prices crossing the dollar fifty mark, why we thought that Macarena song was so good, or how my teacher in elementary school convinced an entire fourth grade class that overpopulation would strangle the earth by the time we were twenty-five years old. Which is now. I hate this about my brain because sometimes I forget the most important of truths. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is Lord. I can put my trust in Him. My ears will hear, my own mouth will say words that evaporate into the air, and then I’ll forget to live in the confidence of these truths.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve said that the Bible is absolutely true, infallibly true, the standard of truth. But then I go through my days with a low level of anxiety hanging out in my chest and giving me headaches. Why am I stressed? Why am I worried about anything? Why am I ever afraid?
Just before Jesus ascended into Heaven, his disciples came around him. Matthew 28:17 says, “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.” My paraphrase would read, They hung out with the Messiah, whom had so recently died a brutal death; but some suffered from mass amnesia and wondered if He really was the Son of God. It makes me wonder how easy it could have been for some of them to forget what Jesus said in the very next verse, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”
I love the wording of Revelation 4:2, “Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.” One. Only One sits on the throne. God alone rules everything, and everything is subject to His rule. He loves us and He has it under control. This is the reason why we shouldn’t fear anything.
This post almost had the title, or at least the subtitle, “The Only Reason We Should Ever Fear Anything.” I decided to accentuate the positive. But really, that old question still demands an answer. Why am I ever afraid? It’s because in my heart, I’ve put other things on the throne. I sometimes worry about having the money to pay bills, so I put success and financial responsibility on the throne. My thirties will be here before I know it, and I sometimes think if I’m not married and having babies before then, I’m going to be miserable. I’ve put relationships and family on the throne. Certain family members have at times expressed concern over me wasting my talent. I sometimes listen to them. When I do, I’ve put my abilities on the throne. So many things have sat on the throne in my heart that didn’t deserve the seat. That’s God’s chair. When we put our trust in something or someone else to save us, preserve us, make us happy, or give us hope, then it has become an idol. Only then should we fear because deep inside of us, intricately woven into our souls, is the understanding that our idols can and will fail us.
If I genuinely put my trust in Jesus, then I also trust in His authority, His victory. Jesus has been and always will be mankind’s only hope. He alone can guarantee security through His salvation. Everything else, including good things like achievements or relationships or success, falls short of our security in Jesus. Sometimes these things assert themselves as having power over us, but any power they have first came from God. Remember the conversation between Jesus and Pilate in John 19:10-11? Pilate was offended that Jesus wouldn’t answer a question, so he said, “‘You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?’ Jesus answered, ‘You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.’”
Now that’s fearlessness. Jesus just had the shit beat out of Him, and there He is, toe to toe with the governing ruler, telling him that he has no say in whether He lives or dies. It’s a beautiful, albeit gruesome, picture of how we should deal with fears. God is in control. He’s on the throne. Whatever happens, I know this is true. I’ll just have to try not to forget it.
This commercial is relevant to my point because memory sometimes fails more than serves us. I remember learning about “Mass Amnesia” from… somebody, I can’t remember. It’s a phenomenon that causes us to forget things like the outrage over gas prices crossing the dollar fifty mark, why we thought that Macarena song was so good, or how my teacher in elementary school convinced an entire fourth grade class that overpopulation would strangle the earth by the time we were twenty-five years old. Which is now. I hate this about my brain because sometimes I forget the most important of truths. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is Lord. I can put my trust in Him. My ears will hear, my own mouth will say words that evaporate into the air, and then I’ll forget to live in the confidence of these truths.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve said that the Bible is absolutely true, infallibly true, the standard of truth. But then I go through my days with a low level of anxiety hanging out in my chest and giving me headaches. Why am I stressed? Why am I worried about anything? Why am I ever afraid?
Just before Jesus ascended into Heaven, his disciples came around him. Matthew 28:17 says, “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.” My paraphrase would read, They hung out with the Messiah, whom had so recently died a brutal death; but some suffered from mass amnesia and wondered if He really was the Son of God. It makes me wonder how easy it could have been for some of them to forget what Jesus said in the very next verse, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”
I love the wording of Revelation 4:2, “Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.” One. Only One sits on the throne. God alone rules everything, and everything is subject to His rule. He loves us and He has it under control. This is the reason why we shouldn’t fear anything.
This post almost had the title, or at least the subtitle, “The Only Reason We Should Ever Fear Anything.” I decided to accentuate the positive. But really, that old question still demands an answer. Why am I ever afraid? It’s because in my heart, I’ve put other things on the throne. I sometimes worry about having the money to pay bills, so I put success and financial responsibility on the throne. My thirties will be here before I know it, and I sometimes think if I’m not married and having babies before then, I’m going to be miserable. I’ve put relationships and family on the throne. Certain family members have at times expressed concern over me wasting my talent. I sometimes listen to them. When I do, I’ve put my abilities on the throne. So many things have sat on the throne in my heart that didn’t deserve the seat. That’s God’s chair. When we put our trust in something or someone else to save us, preserve us, make us happy, or give us hope, then it has become an idol. Only then should we fear because deep inside of us, intricately woven into our souls, is the understanding that our idols can and will fail us.
If I genuinely put my trust in Jesus, then I also trust in His authority, His victory. Jesus has been and always will be mankind’s only hope. He alone can guarantee security through His salvation. Everything else, including good things like achievements or relationships or success, falls short of our security in Jesus. Sometimes these things assert themselves as having power over us, but any power they have first came from God. Remember the conversation between Jesus and Pilate in John 19:10-11? Pilate was offended that Jesus wouldn’t answer a question, so he said, “‘You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?’ Jesus answered, ‘You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.’”
Now that’s fearlessness. Jesus just had the shit beat out of Him, and there He is, toe to toe with the governing ruler, telling him that he has no say in whether He lives or dies. It’s a beautiful, albeit gruesome, picture of how we should deal with fears. God is in control. He’s on the throne. Whatever happens, I know this is true. I’ll just have to try not to forget it.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Are Those Your Ribs?
We wear nametags at Lifehouse Church. It’s a practice I have historically avoided until now. Now I see the benefit of helping newcomers get to know about a hundred people. One Sunday morning, the woman writing out nametags gasped when I slapped the sticker to my shirt. Apparently, I had leaned back as I breathed in and she saw the ridge of my ribcage. “Isaiah! Oh my goodness! Are those your ribs? Do you eat?” She and I stared at each other for a moment. If she’s asking if I eat, I thought, that’s one thing. If she wants to know if I eat enough, that’s a different question altogether. It didn’t occur to me until later that I should have asked if she wanted to feed me. She apologized for making a scene about it and I told her not to worry. I’ve been this way my whole life.
If you can’t figure it out from my pictures, I’m a fairly scrawny dude. At a height of six feet two inches, I have, once, weighed a little more than one hundred forty pounds. There are a few reasons for this. First, I have a world-class, championship, gold-plated metabolism. Second, even if I have enough money to buy three meals a day, I usually forget about eating. One of my old roommates once said, “How can you forget about eating? That’s all I think about!” I’ll tell you how. I’m busy. I’ll get to reading and writing, playing music, cleaning, watching a baseball game, or anything besides taking the time to preparing a meal. Grazing typically gets me through the day, though. If I can wrap my teeth around a granola bar or bagel while I’m working, I can sustain for hours. Sometimes days. This will go on until I see an oversized, perfectly cooked steak advertised on television or smell someone grilling as I walk by their house. Then I’m reminded, “Oh right! I haven’t eaten.” Suddenly, I feel downright ravenous. The next chance I have to eat a meal, I will devour it without any thought towards table manners.
Like most stories, I didn’t see any significance in what Nametag Lady said until much later. I’m re-reading Lilith by George MacDonald and came across a certain passage. The narrator has come to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Raven. “We are in want of something to eat and drink, wife,” he said; “we have come a long way!”
“You know, husband,” she answered, “we can give only to him that asks.” She turned her unchanging face and radiant eyes upon mine.
“Please give me something to eat, Mrs. Raven,” I said, “and something – what you will – to quench my thirst.”
“Your thirst must be greater before you can have what will quench it,” she replied; “but what I can give you, I will gladly.”
The whole book is like that. One, big metaphysical knot that MacDonald takes his sweet time in untying. How can a person be hungry or thirsty, but not nearly enough to have the thing that will really satisfy? Wouldn’t it makes sense that if a person were only a little thirsty, a little water would take care of the thirst? Isn’t a snack sometimes enough? Mrs. Raven’s enigmatic reply reminded me of two passages in scripture. Psalm 42:1 says, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.” Then, in John 4, Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at a well. He asks her for a drink and this sets off a conversation that makes MacDonald’s dialogue seem elementary. Jesus then begins to talk about the difference between well water and “living water” that He has come to offer. He says in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
A good friend of mine told me that he wanted to become more disciplined in spending time with God. Then just a few weeks later, he confessed to how little time he had spent in prayer or reading his Bible. He said, “It’s not that I don’t have the time, but when the opportunity comes to spend time with Him, I make up excuses to do something else. I think the reason is that I don’t desire God enough.”
I told him, “Dude, please, I know you. You desire God. You’re hungry. You just don’t know how hungry you really are. I’m not going to pray that you become more disciplined. I’m going to ask God to show you just how desperately you already want Him. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”
Of course, discipline is a good thing. Paul commended the church in Colossians 2:5, “For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.” But I believe that desire leads us to begin a pattern of discipline, after which we need to persevere in it. In 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, Paul talks of working hard for the sake of the gospel. “Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”
My friend’s problem with discipline and my eating habits look very much alike. When I have the time to eat a meal, I toast a bagel or open a bag of chips because I think it’s more important to do other things. I’m misdirecting my hunger to something that won’t satisfy. My friend wants to spend more time with God. At the moment he has the chance to get alone with God, though, he chooses to do something else that he believes is more important, like sleeping in.
Jesus’s death and resurrection enabled us to come into God’s presence. We now have the opportunity to accept His gift of salvation. This is at the heart of the gospel, and we must want His presence so badly that we’ll do anything to get there and stay there. We have to love the gospel so much that we can’t help but tell other people about it. We have to need God’s presence like the deer needed water in Psalm 42. We must feel our need to drink the living water Jesus offered before our thirst is quenched. We very well could be starving, but sometimes we need a lady to ask us if our ribs are showing. Once I realize that a granola bar isn’t a substitute for a solid breakfast, one meal isn’t enough. I have to commit myself to eating three meals a day, otherwise nothing will change. And I really should stop losing weight.
P.S.
I wanted to remind any readers of my offer to answer questions in the form of a post. You may leave a comment here or email me at isaiahkallman@gmail.com
If you can’t figure it out from my pictures, I’m a fairly scrawny dude. At a height of six feet two inches, I have, once, weighed a little more than one hundred forty pounds. There are a few reasons for this. First, I have a world-class, championship, gold-plated metabolism. Second, even if I have enough money to buy three meals a day, I usually forget about eating. One of my old roommates once said, “How can you forget about eating? That’s all I think about!” I’ll tell you how. I’m busy. I’ll get to reading and writing, playing music, cleaning, watching a baseball game, or anything besides taking the time to preparing a meal. Grazing typically gets me through the day, though. If I can wrap my teeth around a granola bar or bagel while I’m working, I can sustain for hours. Sometimes days. This will go on until I see an oversized, perfectly cooked steak advertised on television or smell someone grilling as I walk by their house. Then I’m reminded, “Oh right! I haven’t eaten.” Suddenly, I feel downright ravenous. The next chance I have to eat a meal, I will devour it without any thought towards table manners.
Like most stories, I didn’t see any significance in what Nametag Lady said until much later. I’m re-reading Lilith by George MacDonald and came across a certain passage. The narrator has come to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Raven. “We are in want of something to eat and drink, wife,” he said; “we have come a long way!”
“You know, husband,” she answered, “we can give only to him that asks.” She turned her unchanging face and radiant eyes upon mine.
“Please give me something to eat, Mrs. Raven,” I said, “and something – what you will – to quench my thirst.”
“Your thirst must be greater before you can have what will quench it,” she replied; “but what I can give you, I will gladly.”
The whole book is like that. One, big metaphysical knot that MacDonald takes his sweet time in untying. How can a person be hungry or thirsty, but not nearly enough to have the thing that will really satisfy? Wouldn’t it makes sense that if a person were only a little thirsty, a little water would take care of the thirst? Isn’t a snack sometimes enough? Mrs. Raven’s enigmatic reply reminded me of two passages in scripture. Psalm 42:1 says, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.” Then, in John 4, Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at a well. He asks her for a drink and this sets off a conversation that makes MacDonald’s dialogue seem elementary. Jesus then begins to talk about the difference between well water and “living water” that He has come to offer. He says in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
A good friend of mine told me that he wanted to become more disciplined in spending time with God. Then just a few weeks later, he confessed to how little time he had spent in prayer or reading his Bible. He said, “It’s not that I don’t have the time, but when the opportunity comes to spend time with Him, I make up excuses to do something else. I think the reason is that I don’t desire God enough.”
I told him, “Dude, please, I know you. You desire God. You’re hungry. You just don’t know how hungry you really are. I’m not going to pray that you become more disciplined. I’m going to ask God to show you just how desperately you already want Him. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”
Of course, discipline is a good thing. Paul commended the church in Colossians 2:5, “For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.” But I believe that desire leads us to begin a pattern of discipline, after which we need to persevere in it. In 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, Paul talks of working hard for the sake of the gospel. “Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”
My friend’s problem with discipline and my eating habits look very much alike. When I have the time to eat a meal, I toast a bagel or open a bag of chips because I think it’s more important to do other things. I’m misdirecting my hunger to something that won’t satisfy. My friend wants to spend more time with God. At the moment he has the chance to get alone with God, though, he chooses to do something else that he believes is more important, like sleeping in.
Jesus’s death and resurrection enabled us to come into God’s presence. We now have the opportunity to accept His gift of salvation. This is at the heart of the gospel, and we must want His presence so badly that we’ll do anything to get there and stay there. We have to love the gospel so much that we can’t help but tell other people about it. We have to need God’s presence like the deer needed water in Psalm 42. We must feel our need to drink the living water Jesus offered before our thirst is quenched. We very well could be starving, but sometimes we need a lady to ask us if our ribs are showing. Once I realize that a granola bar isn’t a substitute for a solid breakfast, one meal isn’t enough. I have to commit myself to eating three meals a day, otherwise nothing will change. And I really should stop losing weight.
P.S.
I wanted to remind any readers of my offer to answer questions in the form of a post. You may leave a comment here or email me at isaiahkallman@gmail.com
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