A good friend of mine and I were chatting recently. We were discussing a situation in which he had lost patience with a friend and needed to go back and make some amends. We all have been through this. Truth be told, there are many more times where we don't actually hurt the surface relationship while we hide it beneath the surface in our heart.
We are constantly sizing people up, even those who are closest to us, and then comparing them with ourselves. Why do we do this? We do it to make us feel better about ourselves. When we see a fault in someone else, we can easily say, "Well, at least I don't do that," or "I am not that bad." We also have more subtle approaches where we begin to treat others with contempt, and when a situation arises, we find ourselves talking down to that person as if from a superior position. It is a form of posturing that makes us feel superior.
This exposes a self-righteous pattern in our thinking that we often over look. If you ask anyone if they have faults, almost all will admit they do. We are just not to forthcoming about them, and the ones we do take responsibility for are usually more like faux pas that we are really not all that ashamed of. It is admission of the particular more serious character faults that we most often don't see. And when we do see them, we try the smoke and mirrors approach to avoid the shame.
The reality is that when we are judgmental of other people it is because we are not looking at our own faults. Let me say it this way: The reason we judge other people is because we judge other people's weaknesses by our own strengths. So let me give you an example. You may have a friend with a drinking problem, but that is not your particular weakness. You have been friends for some time with this person and have watched their destructive behavior. At some point though, their drinking problem becomes a problem for you. Now this does not mean you do not lovingly challenge self-destructive behavior in them. A real friend does, even if your friendship eventually gets rejected over it. But what usually happens is we tend to get personally exasperated with that person and at some point effectively wash our hands of them, even if temporarily. People do this in marriage and other relationships all the time. Becoming exasperated with the person's faults, we want to cut-off or distance. Or perhaps we stay in relationship, but we begin to treat them in a somewhat patronizing way. My point is this. It is easy to judge people for things that we don't struggle with. I have never struggled with binge drinking and have never had any attraction to drugs. At one point in my teens when I had left home, I was living with drug dealers. I saw tens of thousands of dollars of street cocaine pass through my house while I was there. I never tried it or any other drug once. But I have struggled with other things.
This creates an "apples and oranges" scenario. If I don not have a problem with drinking and my neighbor does, or if I don not have a problem with greed, complaining, unthankfulness, etc., and my neighbor does, then it seems that I am comparing "apples with apples." Right? Wrong. Different people have different strengths and life experiences that make them have different patterns of strength and weakness. So to compare my strength with my neighbor's weakness, be they the same thing, is actually comparing apples with oranges because we are not the same person. To play fair and to remove our naturally self-righteous posture, we need to compare our personal weaknesses with that of my neighbor's.
For example, since I have never struggled with substance abuse, it does not help my personal growth nor my neighbor's to compare my strength with his weakness. However, my temper is another thing. I have always struggled with that to one degree or another. That is where my flank is exposed. I have worked really hard throughout my Christian life to control my anger. I know the same frustration of lapsing in this area that a binge drinker might in his own area. As I have grown, these have gotten fewer and far between. But it is not gone. It is a daily struggle that I still have to keep wraps on myself about, perhaps a lot like a recovering substance abuser.
What is most important is that only when we begin to see us against our neighbor through our own weaknesses will we not only be a help to him, but a help to ourselves. Comparing ourselves by our weaknesses levels the playing field and creates the opportunity for true humility.
As I was chatting with my friend I pointed out a climbing analogy. When rock climbing or mountaineering, you only understand and see clearly what you have already climbed. What is above you is always obscured by what is right in front of you. When climbing a sheer face, you cannot see beyond the next outcropping or bulge in the rocks. Our pilgrimage of life is similar. What we have overcome already is clear to us, but what we have not is still obscure. So in the climb of life, the person that is farther ahead may be able to see the person's situation more clearly and wonder why they cannot. Yet if he turns his gaze back upward, there is someone else above him who sees things clearly that he does not. We often look at each other mystified by how in our struggles we cannot see what seems grossly obvious to others. But that is the challenges of the climb of life. We need to understand that our own perspective is always limited by our current location in the ascent. But if we learn to begin with our weaknesses it helps ground us in a humility that will help both us and our neighbor.
Derek Webb, formerly of Caedmon's Call, sings a song of hope for justice along with recognition that all of us help make up an unjust world. The final verse of Webb's song "This Too Will Be Made Right" underscores how fostering an unjust world comes back on all of us:
I don't know the suffering of people outside my front door.
I join the oppressors of those who I choose to ignore.
I'm trading comfort for human life
And that's not just murder, it's suicide;
This too shall be made right.
As we move forward in looking at justice, we move from a foundation rooted in God's plan for all of creation to be whole and properly ordered. This state is called shalom. We move forward with the conviction that God's plan of shalom has been severely damaged by networks of broken relationships in which we all participate.
We all populate networks of broken relationships at 4 levels. We have a broken relationship with God. We have a broken relationship with ourselves as we under-perform our true humanity. We have broken networks of relationships with others that lead to a deeply disordered society and harmful systems of injustice and poverty. And, we also suffer from a broken relationship with creation itself as we damage the planet, litter space with dangerous junk, and exterminated species of life God asked us to take care of.
The first layer in the network of broken relationships in which we participate is a broken relation ship with God, where God is ignored, or God's image is distorted in such a way that God's intention for creation is not fulfilled through us, His people.
The starting point for repaired and restored relationship is with God. To that end, listen to God's word from Deuteronomy 6:1-12, There are the commands, decrees, and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing Jordan to possess, so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping His decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. There commandments that I give you today are to be on your heats. Impress them on you children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, -- to give you a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant -- then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Key notes for righting relationships with God and clearing up faulty God-views:
1. SHEMA - "hear" - listen to God: My grandma Rowland was really cool. Every once in a while, I would be sprouting a bad way of thinking and she would not say, "No!" or, "Shut up!" Grandma would say, "Listen to yourself." Then she would quote me back. Then it would wind up with me listening to her and really hearing what she was saying from the depths of her life to the heart of me. This kind of encounter is a SHEMA event: Now hear this.
2. ONE GOD - The Lord is one - He is the center that must hold for all the other relationships to matter.
a. There is no room for "a little religion never hurt anyone."
b. Most of the religious damage done in the history of the world by Christians was done by those who had "a little religion" attached to their ambitions.
3. LOVE GOD - give one's self fully and sacrificially.
a. Heart - Intellect + Intuition
b. Soul - Emotion + Relational
c. Strength - Will + Resolve +Energy Spent
4. Create rituals and habits of remembering and listening.
a. Public Worship
b. Scripture study in depth
c. Prayer that includes listening and meditating on God's word
d. Small groups
e. Engagement in the Missions of God in risky ways
f. Remember that every success, entitlement, and achievement that comes our way is a temptation to forget God and crown ourselves as lord of the universe.
Application of Deuteronomy 6 as a tool for keeping our relationship with God fresh and responsive helps move us away from some dangerous and lurking faulty views of God that destroy shalom and cause us, as Derek Webb sang, To trade human life for comfort.
Here are some faulty and/or broken vies of God that can lead to an unjust world...
ANIMISM/MAGICAL -- This worldview may mot be prevalent among many of us, so I start here as an example...
A Christian relief and development agency attempted to improve crop yields for poor farmers in Bolivia's Alto Plano. Although successful in increasing output, the impact on the farmers' income was far less than hoped for because of the farmers' deep reverence for Pachamama, the mother earth goddess who presides over planting and harvesting. Seeking Pachamama's favor, farmers purchased llama fetuses, a symbol of life and abundance, to bury in their fields before planting. At the time of the harvest, the farmers held a festival to thank Pachamama. The larger the harvest, the larger the celebration was. In fact, a large percentage of the farmers' income was being spent on the fetuses and on the burning of usable crops as sacrifices at the harvest festival, thereby contributing to the farmers' material poverty. Furthermore, by increasing agricultural output without worldview transformation, the development agency realized it was actually adding to these farmers' idolatry, as the farmers were giving increasing levels of praise to Pachamama for her benevolence.
That might seem primitive to some of us, but what about some of our faulty word-views?
THE GOD COMPLEX -- Who needs God? I can handle this.
Steve Corbett and Brian Fickert, authors of When Helping Hurst, say, Few of us are conscious of having a god-complex, which is part of the problem. We are often deceived by Satan and by our sinful natures. For example, consider this: why do you want to help the poor? Really think about it. What truly motivates you? Do you really love poor people and want to serve them? Or do you have other motives? I confess to you that part of what motivates me to help the poor is my felt need to be needed. The God complex excuses our poverty, injustice, and need for God and others and places ourselves in a role of spiritual, moral, social, and material superiority. If you want to see what some of this looks like, look at the free distribution of baby formulas and pesticides and medicines to Africa that should be okay for them, but we wouldn't use here due to risks involved.
FATALISM -- God is out there somewhere, but I don't know where and I don't have any skin in this game. I am just a spectator.
Walter Brueggemann has said that, The key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of the imagination so that we are too numbered, satiated and co-opted to do serious imaginative work. I come to those works of imagination for the reawakening of the imagination, and such reawakening is so necessary, precisely because of the pathology that Breuggemann argues,The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.
The dis-orderedness and injustice of our world urges each one of us out of resignation and into "prophetic imagination and articulation" of a world that breathes, even oozes God's shalom. This is where music, theater, poetry, and art become so important to us. They fire the imagination and they kick against the darkness.
Singer songwriter Bruce Cockburn once said,Every totalitarian regime is afraid of the artist.
THE HEALTH AND WEALTH GOSPEL -- I have done all the right stuff and have claimed God's blessings and I have stuff and I am healthy. That means I am good and you maybe could be good too if you claimed your blessing.
There have been versions of this "name it and claim it" theology around for many years. It has roots deep in the belief in manifest destiny of nations and also in the American Ideal that hard work and good character result in material prosperity.
The health and wealth gospel hit its popular peak just a few years ago with the Prayer of Jabez where one prayer in Scripture is over-emphasized into a distorted view that God wants to increase my territory -- by the way, whose territory decreases when my prayer is answered?
The true view of God is that what He does promise to those who are faithful is:
A meaningful place in the world and a contribution that matters.
Enough days to do all that must be done by you and me.
And, we are promised a blessed and loving relationship and union with God in our innermost being.
Examples:
Jesus faithfulness on the cross for the salvation of the world. His increased territory was spaced next to 2 ordinary criminals by who he would be crucified.
St. Francis of Assisi who eschewed wealth and power to be among the poor and to work to restore the broken relationship with all God's creatures.
Father Damien who sacrificed health and long life to work among despised lepers in the Hawaiian Islands where he too became a leper and died.
The list is endless -- the increased territories of such men and women of God do not coincide with material wealth, financial prosperity or earthly health. Yet, they are blessed among all people.
I AM/WE ARE THE ELECT -- God chose me to be special and I am!
This doctrine has confused many people in the Reformed Tradition who believe that Election has more to do with salvation than on calling to ministry. And, this notion is further distorted by extreme expressions of double predestination in which it is believed that God actually creates some people to be poor, destitute, oppressed, enslaved, and godless.
A series of Reformed scholars at Oxford University were recently discussing election on one of my favorite podcasts, called Godpod. Here is what they said,If you look at election throughout the scriptures story, election is not about salvation, but about a calling to bring salvation and wellness to all of creation. Those who are elect are not on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of others.
Abraham - to be the father of nations.
Moses - to deliver people from slavery in Egypt like is referred to in Deuteronomy 6, and into a new and free land that he never sees.
The Apostle Paul to bring freedom in Christ to non-Jewish converts, who, ruling the nation of Rome, beheaded him after a lengthy prison stay.
Was Abraham Lincoln elect to free slaves? If yes, the 15th president of the United States did that for others because his candle was snuffed before he ever saw the day!
I believe in and take seriously the true and un-sullied doctrine of elections...that we are selected and called by God to act on behalf of others. We are invited to love Him fully and live for others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, The church is only the church when it lives for others. Yes, you count. You are important. But, you are important for the others for whom you live. Who is that for you? So what new orientations and perspectives become imperative to you as you ask the question, For what and to whom has God called me? Asking this question in a shema (hear) posture, might just lead you to examine the following:
The alternative future lived in faith, hope, and love.
Radical monotheism
Active remembering of God in very context
Painful re-alignment of views that are in line with loving God wholly.
Behavioral repentance beginning with re-devotion to a God whose mercies are new every morning.
How must I live today to be true to my true love?
At the beginning of his short novel Remembering, Wendell Berry offers a poem:
Last month I attended the CRC Prayer Summit with other leaders from the US and Canada. It's hard to put into words how "full" I felt afterwards. Many people in my church were praying for the Prayer Summit and we felt answers to those prayers. I enjoyed spending time with my dad and reconnecting with good friends from New Jersey. Almost all the Texas Pastors were there. And it was good to make new friends as well. But first and foremost, we were there to pray. We were seeking God's face together and as one speaker said, we were "wasting time" with God and each other. What a better way to "waste time" than to be near to God?
I have a whole notebook full of reflections I'm still processing. The other members of my church who went with me also came away with many practical suggestions for prayer that we are starting to implement. And there are even plans to have a Texas Prayer Summit later this fall! But for me, the two biggest takeaways had to do with persistence in prayer and also being authentic and humble in prayer.
There are areas of prayer in my life that I am strong in and doing a good job. There are also other areas I've been lacking and need to change. One of the things I decided to do is to set aside more time in the morning to pray. I want to do this because I haven't been faithful in lifting up each and every person at my church in prayer and praying over each and every request. And I haven't persevered in prayer. I've been proud, thinking I can pastor my church in my own strength. I've been complacent with the way things are instead of really wrestling with God in prayer for Him to change lives and bring transformation in our community. And I've also lacked vision for why I should pray.
What is that vision? One speaker said, "My hand is only so big. Why would I try and take things into my own hands when God's hands are so much bigger?" Another speaker spoke about that line in the Lord's Prayer that says, "Your kingdom come" and said we can't see that kingdom come in power the way God would want if we're not seeking the King's face first.
Friends, we serve a big God and we want to see Him make a difference in our lives and in this world. But we also need a vision for God Himself. This is the starting place for prayer -- to be near to God and to seek His face.
I'm thankful for everyone who prayed for me and the others at the Prayer Summit. I was also excited that most of the Texas Pastors were there and am looking forward to a Texas Prayer Summit! Let's seek God together, give ourselves fully to Him, and not be shy about "wasting time" with God and one another. And let's pray that God has His way with us and that He uses us to ignite a missional movement in the CRC and beyond. Amen!
On February 3 we looked at the words of Jesus as he quoted the prophet Isaiah about why he came to earth. Jesus' self-described mission was to fulfill the favorable year of the Lord by proclaiming the good news, ministering to the poor, setting captives free, giving sight to the blind, and eradicating oppression. We talked about the fact that Jesus has come to restore "shalom" - which is the Hebrew word for things being fully functional and whole. Jesus has come to reconcile all things. This total salvation, shalom, or holistic mission of Jesus is broader and more comprehensive than many of us recognize.
So, on to our Scripture for this blog entry: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)
Christ enters into our brokenness to bring us reconciliation. Christ redeems us and makes us fit for heaven. He brings us to heaven. But, he also brings heaven to us and entrusts us to work with him in redeeming all things.
So, as Christ followers we are committed to proclaiming heaven and all of its benefits offered us in this one named Jesus who died for us while we were enemies to him so that we might one day live eternally in heaven. We are equally committed to the idea that we are saved through his life as our text reads.
The word saved in Greek is "sodzo" and it means whole - it's the equivalent of the Hebrew "shalom." Jesus' life demonstrates a wholeness that we too pursue as a new humanity in a new creation.
This is where justice enters the picture. Jesus justifies you and me and others with God and we bring justice to the people and systems around us. In the book When Helping Hurts, the authors say, Jesus' life and death brings reconciliation to every last speck of the universe, including both our foundational relationships and the systems that emanate from them. Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again.
The very fact that Jesus came with this mission in mind is indicative of the fact that God knew there was a problem with His creation. All creation needs to be reconciled and restored to shalom.
The Scriptures tell stories that speak of a pattern that takes place in the cosmos. It is a pattern of creation, fall, and redemption.
Creation: God made the heavens and the earth and all forms of life that dwell here. God completed His creation, according to the biblical story, by saying, "It is good." He saw that is was good. The Hebrew word for good is "tov." But if you study the word tov, what it really means is functional. God's world was created fully functional, ordered, beautiful, and purposeful. Relationships were ordered and God was glorified. The state of Creations was shalom at its best. All creatures had freedom and fullness of life.
Then a second movement takes place: The fall. In the disobedience and disconnection caused by the actions of our fore-parents Adam and Eve, what was Good was shattered and shalom was vandalized. The pandemic of sin enters the creation and wreaks havoc.
Relationships between God and humanity were fractured. People denied God and did their own thing. Human beings lost their true humanity and dove into a deepening cesspool of shame. Adam and Eve tried to hide from God. Nice try kids. Relationships between humans cratered. Adam blamed Eve for the fall. Adam and Eve's son, Cain, murdered his brother Abel. Relationship with the rest of creation is broken; the land and humanity are in opposition to one another. Land is worked wrong. Species are annihilated. Pollution and global warming choke the planet.
Let me also add that these 4 key broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation create systemic states of disorder. Good systems go bad. Bad systems get introduced. The brokenness is so deep and humanity's lost-ness is so profound that there is little or no hope of fixing things on our own.
We collectively live in a perpetual state of spiritual, relational, moral, psychological, social, and economic poverty. All this brokenness is the very antithesis of shalom. And at the heart of the brokenness is layers and systems of broken relationships.
Scripture is a book about relationships between God and people.
Creation is a story of good, healthy relationships. The fall is the description of all the symptoms that point to a core diagnosis of broken relationships. And here's the real rub. We are all broken. This fall is us. It's ruin is ours. We are affected by the fall in each of these relationships: With God, with ourselves, with others, and with all of creation.
Yet, while we are indeed broken and limited, sinners and enemies of God, we often take on a god-complex where we see ourselves as fixers rather than part of the problem. Fact is, we help others in ways that actually hurt them when we try to fix.
If we don't embrace our brokenness and work really hard to correct and amend our faulty thinking and skewed world views, then we seriously limit our ability to be agents of Jesus' reconciliation and shalom. The problem might best be described in the poetry of William Butler Yeats...
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
If the story were to stop here, a brief creation ruined by a deepening fall, the most strident Nihilist would be considered an optimist. But, it doesn't stop here! There is a 3rd movement in God's symphony of grace. There is creation. There is fall, but there is also redemption. Jesus Christ inserts himself as an agent of reconciliation to repair and restore. Redemption repairs broken relationships. Redemption introduces justice. Redemption rights wrong systems.
Huge oppressive systems can emerge from one faulty thought even about our loving and gracious God who sends us Jesus. Imagine, someone assumes because there are stories of slaves in the Bible, that slavery is a "normative" institution. Look at the misery that caused - benefiting some fantastically monetarily. And, look at how this world view led to the oppression of millions, the assassinations of a US President, and the highest casualty count war in our nations history in the Civil War. One faulty thought - a world of broken relationships and misery that is still not righted in this area.
Redemption restores creation's beauty. All that is wrong is reconciled and made right. When I think of God's redeeming intention and redeeming power for creation, to me, it is like holding a beach ball underwater in a swimming pool. You strain to hold the ball under. The ball strains to break loose and shoot to the surface with force, and it will, and it does. That's what redemption in Christ is like.
I earlier described the state of the fall as a comprehensive state of poverty or injustice. Poverty and injustice vandalize the face of God's creation. They hold the ball underwater against the forces of hope and reconciliation. Because poverty is a huge issue, it is important that we examine the nature and definition of poverty. In our majority culture American thinking, we assume poverty means lack of material goods that make us happy and secure. But if you listen to the voices of those who live in poverty around the world, you hear a deeper issue. Poverty is a psychological state of despair and helplessness. Poverty is being surrounded by systems you didn't create and you don't control. These externalized systems that leave the impoverished powerless are at the heart of oppression and injustice. Poverty reduces freedom and distances it's victims from opportunity. And, along with the despair and depression, those in poverty often lack the material goods needed to survive.
A huge work Christ enlists you and I to do is walk with those suffering every level of poverty and brokenness and help create a new worldview in which people are no longer controlled by shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, voicelessness. Tragically, there are many times when words and deeds that actually increase the magnitude of these indignities emanate from the lips, arms and legs, and notions of people who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord and who claim to worship the one and only God. And, if my biblical studies and theology are correctly located, that includes you and me.
I don't want to over-distill or be simplistic here today, but poverty and injustice can be seen as symptoms of broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation.
One of the ways in which we of Western privilege have failed in attempting to bring justice and material well being to others is that we have treated symptoms of poverty rather than addressing the disease. We give material but don't create freedom for others to discover their vocation and glorify God with their work. We play God and try to fix everything our way.
The type of deep and eternally lasting reconciliation Jesus brings us treats the real root problems of broken relationships and changes world views toward God, self, others, and creation in ways that release people from poverty.
I have made numerous trips to Central America where poverty, oppression, and injustice are out of control. Again and again, I learn from Christian leaders in Latin America that correcting faulty world views is the first and foremost place to bring transformation to society. The more I visit, the more I see that it is those of us from the North and in privilege who need our worldviews corrected. And, that we have some great teachers living in the midst of poverty and working their way out.
As we continue to work, let's be mindful that we are working always on us, and never on them. We need to fix our worldviews first and foremost.
I was looking back at some work I'd done in the book of Proverbs and came across the following words. I don't remember if I wrote them or if they came from another source, nevertheless they reflect a reality that many of us in the Christian community live in.
On the surface, cultural separation masks itself as a form of godliness, but a closer look reveals an enterprise driven more by self-preservation than anything. "We may bemoan a moral decline in the country. Our actual concern, if truth be know, is not to see a vital Christianity flourish, but rather to secure a more orderly and less violent society in which to live out our comfortable and self-satisfied lives." In other words, we want a safer world. We are not as concerned about the salvation of those in the world as much as we want them to behave better around us for our comfort.
This is where so much of our current attitude and approach to the wold differs from God's will as expressed in the prayer of Jesus in John 17. We want to be safe in a safer world; God wants us safe in an unsafe world. We want to protect ourselves by removing ourselves from danger; God wants to protect us in the middle of danger. These differences may seem insignificant on the surface, but in fact they are huge, involving entirely different worldviews and ramifications.
This theory of safety through removing ourselves from the world could be one of the most dangerous doctrines to invade the church in recent years. It is now thought to be more spiritual to be safe from the world than to interact with it.
What would it look like if we traded in a doctrine of safety for a doctrine of engaging the world? What impact would it have on the way we raise our kids?
"It's me," says a precious little voice. "Can I come in?"
"Sure, come on in little buddy!" I say as my grinning four year old bursts through the door, slamming the knob against my desk. He is sporting a Nerf Jolt pistol and two lethal foam darts.
"I came up to shoot you," he grins as he plants his feet wide apart, stationing himself for his assault. Holding the gun under his arm he wrenches the cocking leaver down and then carefully inserts the bolt. "Ready?" he asks. Having learned my lesson, I cover my eyes so that I do not lose one or at least walk around for the rest of the day looking like I have an acute case of pink-eye. "Pop!" he shoots me in the knee. Over the next five minutes I endure the onslaught of multiple point-blank shots to the legs and chest, with a beaming grin as he relishes in Nerf-bludgeoning his helpless prey into oblivion.
I have to say my little guy sometimes wreaks havoc on my productivity flow, but I would not trade these blessed interruptions for the world. He will be this age one time and so now is the time to enjoy it. The beauty of it is that even if I am working, he knows he is welcome. It is not because I don't have anything important to do, but because I do not have anything more important than him, and at the end of the day, he knows that I have a really, really big soft-spot for him.
As Christians we need to be reminded that God has just such a soft spot for us. He loves it when we take time to interrupt His day. It is a blessed interruption for Him too. I think sometimes we are a bit to serious and somber about the whole thing. Have we ever thought of our prayer time as a time to play with God? Really, what is play? Who do we play with? We do it with people we love; we do it because we enjoy their company.
In the early Church it was customary for the Church to teach new Christians to take time to pray the Lord's Prayer three times daily (see the Didache, section 8). Discipleship meant creating new rhythms of life, to conform our time to God's. The reason for praying the Lord's Prayer three times daily was meant to correspond to the tree meals humans ate per day. When Jesus taught us to pray give us this day our daily bread, it had its literal side. But it did not stop there. It also had within it that bigger theological truth, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
All throughout my day I am often encountered by these blessed interruptions from my little guys. Sometimes it is my two year old, sometimes my 4 year old or 11, 13, 15, 16 year old (or even my dear wife). Sometimes it is hard to get anything done! Any way you look at it, no matter how often it happens, there is something I just love about it. Is that how you see our heavenly Father? Or perhaps do you see Him as a grumpy old man who does not want to be interrupted like the Wizard of Oz. In John 17 Jesus exemplifies both prayer and how to approach the heavenly Father in prayer - boldly with confident assurance that He has time for us. For our relationship with God to grow, we need to take initiative to make our own blessed interruptions in our own life. Maybe we need to interrupt our sleep a little early to pray. Perhaps we need to take our lunch to feed our soul as well as our flesh, or maybe sometimes in place of our flesh. Maybe we need to sacrifice that TV show to pray with our family or take a prayer walk. Let's take time to interrupt our day and relish in the presence of God.
There is a continual theme that pulsates through our culture. The theme is "God is love." The thing that always intrigues me about this idea that God is love is that love gets defined in a way that reflects whatever a person wants. So if I want my god to be loving so that he would never demand anything of me, then that is love. If I want my god to be the kind of god who would never separate someone from him for all eternity, then that is love. If I want the sort of god who is a feel good, kind, and grandfatherly god, then that is love.
I was reflecting on this while reading the epistle of 1 John a bit ago. This, of course, is the epistle that declares "God is love." I've read the epistle and those words many times before, but for some reason for the first time I stopped and realized that John doesn't just tell us that God is love, but he also defines that love. Here's the text: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was make manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7-12 ESV)
Rather than leaving the definition of what it means to love God up to us, John spells out that God's love reveals itself in sending His Son into the world as a propitiation* for our sins. God's love is connected to the sending of His Son into the world. It is a love that compels us to love others, especially those who are fellow believers as John points out.
Love as it turns out is not defined how ever we desire. Love is always connected to Christ. If someone tries to give definition to "God is love" without this connection they are not being true to the text. Not only so, but God's love far from freeing us to do whatever we wish actually obligates us to follow God's love by loving others. To divorce "God is love" from this obligation to love also brings a failure to the true definition of God is love.
Maybe the next time someone says, "God is love" it might be an interesting conversation to graciously inquire of them where they get their definition from. Such an inquiry might open up a wonderful conversation.
*Propitiation: the turning away of wrath by an offering. It is similar to expiation but expiation does not carry the nuances involving wrath. For the Christian the propitiation was the shed blood of Jesus on the cross. It turned away the wrath of God so that He could pass "over the sins previously committed. (Romans 3:25) It was the Father who sent the Son to be the propitiation (1 John 4:10) for all (1 John 2:2).
Submitted by Todd Murphy
