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Archive for the ‘Jesus’ Category

Honey & Moonlight: Meditative Mumbling On Creative Constipation

Posted in Jesus, Speech, The Arts, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2012 | 6 Comments »

I’ve got a Norah Jones record playing (currently a duet with Ryan Adams). I’ve got a cupacoffee at my elbow. It’s a dirty blonde with Antarctic proportions of sugar in it. Do I need my coffee to taste like candy? No. As a native-born Texican, I can drink it black. But if it’s possible to get your coffee to taste like candy, why wouldn’t you?

I’ve been thinking about the process of creation lately. I’m not sure how it works for other tortured souls. For me, it looks different in different mediums. If I’m writing words, it’s usually pretty quick (though I cringe and mope through the revisions). If I’m playing in the mud, I just try to keep it out of my eyes. But when I’m writing a song, that’s where I see the greatest distance between taste and ability.

Ira Glass from “This American Life” has some great words on this.

I have the language in my head. I have the harmonic rhythm in my chest. But the melody is hiding under the table. The lyrics are halfway out of bed or halfway smeared on a windshield.

Making a song requires the same discipline as anything else, I guess. It’s like when I was in college, working on Bach or Bottesini. I shaped every phrase. I measured out vibrato in coffee spoons. I strained to control bow speed and weight, listening through bedrock for the sound of a stampede. I even had one teacher tell me to write a poem, describing what I “felt” the Bach cello suite No.1 was about. It ended up sounding like a very sad Dr. Seuss story about cats. Never again…

There’s one particular clam I’m trying to pop right now. It’s called “Honey & Moonlight”. I tried to think of what I would call someone to show them how much I cared. Instead of “sunshine” or “doll” or “sweet cheeks” (which are not my favorite things and, therefore, not legitimate terms of endearment), I opted for honey and moonlight. They are two of my favorite things and I can think of no better combination to describe someone I like.

For a couple of years now, it’s only been a handful of words with this haunting, plaintive melody. The people who’ve heard it really like it and wonder what the rest sounds like. So do I.

Stuck. Stuck in the dark, straining to gain momentum. So, I ask you problem solvers: what do you do when you struggle with a problem off and on for a long time? Should I take a walk? Should I take a train to Pawtucket? Should I sing things upside down? How do you overcome writer’s block?

(So grateful that Jesus never gets writer’s block. Constantly speaking the world.)

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I’m Always Angry

Posted in Jesus, The Arts, What If?, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2012 | 4 Comments »

“If I wasn’t a Christian, I would’ve killed you years ago.” I can still remember saying that to a friend back in high school. Even though we were joking around, it was probably indicative of a much deeper problem in my soul.

My friend and I were talking about what we would do if we weren’t bound by Christian convictions and ethics. Basically, we liked to play the “what if” game. Some people don’t have much patience for this game, but Paul apparently liked it (1 Cor.15- “what if Christ is not risen from the dead?”).

While I can’t remember his hypothesis, but my own speculation was this: if I wasn’t a Christian, I probably would’ve killed a few people before taking myself out in some dramatic fashion (wrestling a bear, maybe). This sounds dark, but when you’re shooting your mouth off as a high school kid, you don’t always ponder the weight of your own words.

Why did I tend toward destruction (both my own and others’)? Why not, “If I wasn’t a Christian, I’d steal a lot of stuff” or “if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d become a paranormal investigator and make some sweet coin on my own T.V. show”? Because I had rage issues. And I find I still do.

Now let me be clear. You will never see me storming down the sidewalk, tripping children and kicking blind puppies. I’ve learned to control it. I’m actually a very laid back, peaceful guy. I’m just a peaceful guy with a proclivity for rage.

I tend to be passive-impulsive. That’s probably a psychological category, but here’s how I use it: I’ll get a sudden surge of anger, but I won’t do anything about. Some imagined slight from an acquaintance. Some careless word from a friend. A direct insult from someone I don’t much care for.

It could be anything.

It will immediately become enrage, but you would never know. Externally, I’d look calm. But internally, it would simmer and fester there just beneath the surface. It’s terrible. It breeds bitterness and resentment and I end up plotting terrible things on the people that wrong me and tearing them apart in my mind. But again, it’s passive. Nothing will ever be acted out. And that, of course, means that I will rarely resolve the issue with the person who’s offended me. And that’s not healthy.

There’s a great line from this great movie called the Avengers. You may have heard of it. At one point, Bruce Banner turns to Captain America and says, “That’s my secret, Captain: I’m always angry.” When I heard that line, I instantly identified with it.

I can look as calm as a Hindu cow, but if I’m not careful, anger and rage and resentment can sneak in and eat away at me. They can combine to become a constant presence in me. And before I know it, I’m living life, trying to love people and honor everyone with a time bomb just beneath my ribs.

Sure, I’m not always angry. Sometimes, I’m very happy. But anger and rage and wrath are the struggles that come up most often. You have yours. I have mine. We learn to control them and we deal.

Now, this brings up the question: is my love, then, sincere? Paul tells Christians that our love should be genuine. So, if I’m loving people while I’m angry, am I really loving them?

I’m angry because my pride has been wounded or I feel I’ve been cheated out of something I was supposedly owed. Rage turns me inward, introspectively and forcefully focusing on my self. Love, as a rule, is others-focused. So, I find this law at work: two opposite forces, rage and love, active in the same body. That sounds like a pretty common Christian experience to me (see also Romans 7:7-25).

But what do you think? If you’re a Christian, can you imagine what your life would be like without Christ? What does such a scenario tell you about your particular inclinations as a broken human being? Is there any value in the “what if” exercise when applied to matters of faith?

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Why I’d Choose Aslan’s Country Over Heaven Any Day

Posted in Jesus, Scripture, The Arts, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 24, 2012 | 6 Comments »

A few years back, Dr. Jerram Barrs, a professor at Covenant Seminary, was speaking about the Narnia books at a Borders bookstore (remember those?). The store had been gracious enough to host the event and Dr. Barrs had drawn a large crowd, speaking about the Chronicles of Narnia and what they meant. At one point in the Q & A, a little boy stood up and said, “I don’t want to go to heaven! I want to go to Aslan’s country!”

I remember that story because that little guy’s desire was so right. In my favorite book in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep the mouse has this lifelong wish to see Aslan’s country, the land where Aslan came from, where Aslan’s father reigns supreme. And at one point in the book, Reepicheep says this:

“While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

Christians tend to get very excited about heaven. And that’s great. I’m sure heaven will be fantastic. But it seems to me that we’re missing something. The Bible is very clear: heaven is not our final destination.

People really want to know what heaven will be like. People are so desperate to know about it that they write books about the afterlife. I completely understand this motivation. Some people even go so far as to say they’ve died, gone there, and come back to tell us what our home will be like. But heaven is not our home. Heaven is merely the threshold.

But this reigning “heaven-is-the-ending” philosophy has a few problems.

1.) It leads to an “I’ll Fly Away” escapist mentality. The rationale goes something like this: This world is not my home. God will scrap it anyway. My job on earth is to grin and bear it until I die and then the real party starts. To quote Colin Hay, “I’m waiting for my real life to begin.”

2.) If heaven is the final destination for a Christian, then the Christian has no meaningful reason to take care of the earth. Oh sure, we should be good stewards of creation and we’re commanded to care for the earth. But because our citizenship is in heaven, I don’t really have a reason to recycle or fight pollution or save the whales. Heaven will be litter-free and THAT’S where I’m going.

3.) It just ain’t biblical.

I’ve already written about how I think God is not going to scrap the world and start over with a new one. But whether you agree with me there or not, the real biblical story does not end with all the saints floating up in heaven. It ends with a new sky and a new land, renewed and cleansed from all sin and death.

And upon that new earth, the holy city, new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven to be the dwelling place of God among humanity. That old hymn “I’ll Fly Away” should really be about leaving heaven to come back down to our true, eternal home: the earth.

This is what C.S. Lewis was trying to get at with the idea of Aslan’s country. A real place with real walls and streets and trees and running water. That’s where the saints will live out eternity. You can read all about this in the Book of Revelation, chapters 21-22.

In the end, heaven will come down to subsume the earth with “the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel” (Rev.21:10-11). We will live out eternity here, on the earth-renewed, in Aslan’s country, bathing in the glory of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea. And he will dwell among his people and they shall reign forever and ever.

That is why I will sink with my nose to the sunrise. Because that’s my real home: this earth, cleansed from evil, wrapped in the Light of the glory of God. The promise of Aslan’s country.

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Final Takeaway from New England

Posted in Jesus, tagged , , , , on April 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Welp. A week ago I was driving through Pennsylvania on the way back home to St. Louis. The exhaustion of constant movement and constant interviews had absolutely wrecked me. I’m still a bit sore from it. And on Monday, I was back in the grind: teaching at church, going to classes, going to work, writing papers, hanging out with my nephew and niece, eating ice cream. Just a real full schedule.

But now that I’m on Easter break (one of the perks of going to a seminary), I have a few spare hours. And I figured, since so many people have been asking, I’d just post a short final summary of what I learned in New England. I met with about ten pastors/church planters in four days. I drove a total of 3,215 miles, round trip. I lost a back window on Raymond (my trusty CR-V) to a rock on the highway. And I ate way too many nutrigrain bars (healthy, but not a lot of variety). So…here’s my last post on the trip. Two things:

1.) I want to plant a church in New England. Seriously. This trip was not a deterrent. There were discouraging aspects to the trip, but overall it was very confirming. I can’t see the future, but unless God kills me or something, I want to someday plant a church in Providence, RI. This will be a few years down the road. I still have to finish seminary. That’ll take a couple years. I would like to find some type of core group in St. Louis to head out with me. The problems are location and commitment. I don’t know many people (single people notwithstanding) who would like to uproot and move their families to a distant city to be a missional community in a region that has a strong hostility to the gospel. Challenges abound, glory be.

2.) Providence is a weird city. The city I’ve chosen to plant in (so far as it depends on me) is a funky little joint. You can drive down Rhode Island in an hour. You can drive across it in 30 minutes. The capital really does take up a huge chunk of the state. But it’s such an insular area (much like New England in general). There are people who have lived in Cranston (20 minutes from downtown Providence) all their life and they’ve never been to Providence. There are folks in Barrington who would never drive all the way around the Narragansett Bay to get to Warwick because that would take like 25 minutes! And who would drive all that way? Everything is close but everyone is distant.

I’ve long agreed with Ed Stetzer that America is no longer a pancake. We are not just one culture across the board. America is a waffle. There are thousands of little divots across the nation with their own individual cultures. Providence is a microcosm of that cultural diversity. On the west side, you have traditional New Englanders (see earlier post for a brief snapshot). They’re mostly blue collar Catholics with traditional values seen through a libertarian spirit. On the east side, you have the more liberal, cultural elite college swells who just hate Christianity. And those two sides rarely interact. And surprise-surprise, the east side is the area I’m attracted to.

I learned a lot about that town and the best ways to go about penetrating that culture, but much prayer and training is needed (and probably a montage featuring some rockin’ 80s music). Pray for me, if you think of it. But more than anything, pray for New England. It is the least-churched region in America and there are whole communities where the gospel of Christ hasn’t been preached or heard for centuries. And that is just plain stupid. Please commit with me to pray for that region as a whole and for Providence, RI, in particular. As King of the universe, Jesus deserves all of that region.

Godspeed, y’all.

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Why I’m Headed to New England

Posted in Jesus, tagged , , , , , , , on March 25, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Good morning from the future! Driving through time zone is a primitive form of time travel, so I’m currently writing this in a bright neon red spandex jumpsuit and moon boots (a la Back to the Future II or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure). Side note: why did every futuristic movie in the 80s envision the future as a place where people wore insanely bright, tight clothing? Thank God we’re not there yet. We only have Justin Bieber to deal with right now. The signs of our times, folks…

I’m writing to you from my hotel room in Buffalo, NY. Lake Erie has spread a thick fog through the city streets and visibility is terrible. Canada looms just 15 minutes north of me and somewhere close by in this grey misty web Niagara Falls is flushing a whole lot of drool over a cliff. Nature!

The drive was pleasant enough. One broken window. One sweaty car seat. About a dozen white mochas. There was this gorgeous smokey, rose-colored sunset just outside of Cleaveland. Haven’t seen the Mothman or Big Foot yet. Keep praying for a sighting, please. Pennsylvania was covered in many trees. Upstate New York is dark and foggy and populated by people who pass you on the highway way too closely. But I didn’t come here for the sights. I didn’t come here for the Holiday Inn continental breakfast. I didn’t come here to wear my Cardinals hat in Yankee territory. I came here for New England.

For those of you who don’t know, it’s my desire to plant a church in New England some time in the future (a non-neon, non-spandex future). Jared Wilson (who I’ll be meeting with on Wednesday morning) wrote this article and started my life on a new trajectory. New England is in dire need of the gospel and I’m drawn into this fight. Whether it takes ten years or 50 years, this is where I’m going to die, serving people and loving them.

SO. I’ll be attempting to blog my way through this trip. No promises on the consistency of these updates.

On Monday, I’ll be in New Hampshire. Tuesday starts out in New Hampshire but will mostly be a free day to do homework (yes, I said homework) and see the sights. On Wednesday, I’ll be trotting up to Vermont and then back down to Boston. Thursday, I’ll be hanging out in Providence, RI. This is the city that’s really been on my heart. I’d love to plant a church there and get to know those folks. Friday finds me in Connecticut. Friday afternoonish, I’ll begin driving back. And, if Jesus wants it, I’ll be back in St. Louis by Saturday night.

Bam.

Now, in every city I’ll be meeting with at least one church planter. This is a reconnaissance mission in a lot of ways. I’ll be interviewing a dozen pastors, asking them about their cities, the people, the particular challenges and advantages of planting in the least-churched region in America, etc. I figure it’d be nice to know what I’m getting into.

And on that note, I’m going to get ready to disembark. I’ll be driving across upstate New York today. Through Rochester, Syracuse, Utica (which I will burn to the ground after I steal their copier- any Office fans?) and then up to Vermont, where I hope to score some maple syrup and catch a showing of the Hunger Games. The meetings with the church planters start tomorrow. I certainly would appreciate your continued prayers for safety and fruitfulness and fun.

Until next time.

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Therefore

Posted in Jesus, Scripture, tagged , , , , , , on March 22, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Inspired

The Bible is God’s word. It is inspired. That means that God is the ultimate author of the Bible, making it without error and absolutely true in all that it affirms. We get the idea of “inspiration” from 2 Timothy 3:16 where Paul says that all Scripture inspired (literally, “breathed out”) by God. This is not to say that God had a Bible sitting there, written by human authors, and decided to breathe on it like Aslan, thereby making it holy and inerrant. That’s the wrong picture. Rather, the Bible is the breathed out word of God. When God exhaled, Scripture came out. He didn’t breathe into the text. He breathed the text in existence. It is his word, not a human word injected with divine DNA. God breathed it out. That’s what we mean when we say “inspired”.

I bring this up because, not only do believe that the Bible is inspired, I believe the grammar is inspired. The syntax, the flow of argument, the grammar…God breathed it out. And the more tightly I hold to that seemingly irrelevant nuance, the more joy I get. Here’s what I mean.

I Am Not My Sin

In Romans chapter 7 (specifically verses 7-25), Paul has been talking about his personal struggle with trying to obey God. He is refreshingly honest and his experience matches mine to the T. Verse 15: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Verse 19: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” That’s my situation. That’s every believer in Christ who is struggling to make war on their sin and love Jesus and obey him every day. I try to love and obey God and when I try, it backfires and I end up sinning, doing the very thing I hate more than anything in the world.

And not only that, when I try to do good, when I try to obey God, when I resolve in my heart to be holy, sin is right there waiting for an chance to slit my throat. Verse 21: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” It is always there and it never sleeps. It always wants to dominate my life.

But Paul uses the pure beauty of logic here. Paul, in his mind (in the inner man) actually doesn’t want to sin. He wants to obey God. He wants to do good. The disobedience doesn’t flow from who he is on the inside. God has redeemed his soul. It’s not his redeemed self that wants to sin. It’s the sin that lives in him that wants to sin. “So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (verse 17). He doesn’t want to sin. “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (verse 20).

The body of death (verse 24) that wages war against the law of Paul’s mind, taking him captive to the law of sin that dwelled in his body parts, does not define him. He is not his sin. I have that written on a sticky note on the visor in my car: “I am not my sin.” Is the sin still my responsibility? Absolutely. Just read Romans 8:13 (“by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body”). But the sin does not define me, just like Paul’s sin did not define him.

Why I Need This

This is so crucial and necessary for me to grasp. When I sin, I instantly go into a depressive tailspin. I’m wracked with guilt. I wallow in my own sinfulness. I forget that, even when I disobey God, I am still in Jesus Christ (see also Romans 6:1-14- notice all the “in Christ”, “into Christ”, “with him” language). That is still my position. Jesus is my identity, not my sin. And that is true when I sin and that is true after I sin.

And here’s where the God’s inspired grammar floods me with joy.

The Beauty of Therefore

After that last chunk of Romans 7, where Paul argues that he is not his sin, that he doesn’t want to sin even if his body wants to sin, we’re faced with a shocking reality. Paul begins Romans 8 by saying, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

I’ve heard that verse so many times growing up in church that it has honestly lost its punch. I hear it and I say, “yes and amen”, but I would still be crippled by guilt and condemnation after every crash and burn. And the reason is that I never heard it in context. I never heard it as a logical extension of the argument from chapter 7.

But that’s where the joy and freedom comes from! Paul says “therefore”. It’s just a little particle. Blink and you might miss it. But as I’ve dwelt on it, I can imagine Paul standing up, his body trembling with passion, pointing wildly back to Romans 7:25, and screaming, “THEREFORE!”

Paul is saying, “So then, consequently, as a logical inference, because of the fact that you are not your sin even when you do sin, even when you curl up into a ball of guilt and shame after you sin, because of that truth, there is now no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus.”

All I think I deserve is condemnation after I sin. All I think I AM is condemnation after I sin. When I fail so miserably (or when my day consists of a thousand subtle sins that build up like pus on a wound), I somehow believe, in my mind, “I am my sin”. And that crushes me to the ground under a weight of condemnation.

But Paul goes right back to my identity “in Christ Jesus”. He goes right back to the fact that it is sin that does what I don’t want to do. It’s not me. That’s not who I am anymore/ “I delight in the law of God in my inner being” (7:21). And that’s true because I’m in Christ, even while I struggle and make war on my sin that doesn’t want to obey and delight in God.

And notice that Paul also says the word “now”. Because of the fact that you are not your sin, there is now no condemnation. It is an immediate and an ever-present truth. So that when I sin, when I crash and burn in a pile of depression and guilt and shame, there is always an ever-present reality and truth concerning me: no condemnation.

The condemnation that I’m feeling is a trick, a dark slight of hand from the Evil One. It is not righteous conviction. It is the feeling that I am my sin, that I will never be used by God to do great things, that I am not good enough to serve him. And that is condemnation. And condemnation does not exist for someone who is in Christ Jesus. He is my identity, not my sin.

And just to squeeze more goodness from this verse (Romans 8:1), Paul says that there is now no condemnation for us. It’s a little bit tame in the English. The word is actually an adjective in the Greek and it means something like “not at all, huh-uh, not a bit, not in a million years, impossible, never gonna happen” no. It’s the same idea as in 1 John chapter one, where John says that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Same concept. We are not our sin. Consequently, (THEREFORE) there is no condemnation in us at all.

You are not your sin. Therefore, there is no condemnation for you. You are in Christ Jesus. So get back up. Uncurl yourself from the fetal position you’ve been moping in. Stand up. And make war on the stubborn sin robs you of your joy. Go ahead. Make war.

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Jesus Serves and Cleanses

Posted in Jesus on March 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

John 13:1-17. Jesus served the ones he loved. Are you better than Jesus?

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Beautiful, Childish Things

Posted in Jesus, The Arts, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Fed Up With Growning Up

Deep down, I just want to play. I’m childish. Notice that I didn’t say “I’m childlike”. Childish is a word that, especially in the Church, is looked down on because of its perceived connotations of pettiness and fussy discontent. An -ish ending on a word often conveys a nasty condition. Childlike, however, is much more acceptable. If you’re childlike, you’ve retained your sense of wonder and faith and innocence. But I’m fed up just enough with the abuse of both words that I honestly don’t care to make a distinction anymore.

I’m writing this because I feel Christians (myself included, certainly) are a bit too grownup for their own good. Let there be any bit of silliness, any revelry in a pile of leaves, any “infantile” joke, any overall frolicking (beautiful word, isn’t it?) and you’ve obviously devolved into an irresponsible creature, lacking in perspective.

Now, for sure, we do need to “grow up” in the sense of human anatomy and psychological development. We must support ourselves and those we love. We must pay our taxes, give generously, love well, take our punches, and learn from the scars. That sort of growing up is wonderful and natural and good.

But there is a colder form of maturation that is no maturation at all. It is not growing up. It is growing out. It is a process in which one grows out of all things childish or childlike or imaginative or silly. It is a putting away of childish things. And here’s where I think Christians run into a severe misunderstanding.  This is where I was stuck for a long time before I grew up a little.

Childish Things

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)

This verse has become a licence to jettison one’s childhood in favor of big boy and big girl clothes. This verse has been twirled like a club, beating dreamers into submission, into “acting their age”. If acting your age means being wise as serpents and innocent as doves, loving other people as fellow creatures made in God’s image, and putting the needs of others before our own, then we should certainly act our age. But this verse is often pushed down the throat of the kid in us, choking the life out of our silliness and our creativity. This is the verse that builds up inhibitions. This is the verse that lies and tells us there no monsters under the bed. This is the verse that tells us faery land doesn’t exist.

At least, that is what the verse has been twisted to say.

But there needs to be a few things said about the context and meaning of this sweet little verse. 1.) It is descriptive, not prescriptive. Paul is explaining something that happened in his youth. He is not commanding all Christians to follow suit. 2.) This verse is the illustration, not the point. In context, Paul is talking about how we won’t need prophecy or tongues or knowledge because one day we will be fully known as we ought to be. 3.) Putting away childish things does not mean putting away the child.

The Fear of Appearing Childish

Let me harp on that last point for a bit. Just because I don’t play with my X-Men action figures anymore doesn’t mean I don’t love the epic scope and grandeur of sweeping battle fields and heroic action sequences. Just because I no longer create little bug worlds in my mom’s garden does not mean I don’t lose myself in the shock and wonder of nature (see previous post). The child in me is still very much active, even if I’m an adult.

But this is what a lot of grown-ups fear: being thought of as childish. In “An Experiment in Criticism”, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Nothing is more characteristically juvenile than contempt for juvenility.” Which is worse: the man who gallops through the woods just so he can get dirty or the man who’s too scared to admit he wants to as well?

As one who works with students in a church setting, I often feel like I have more fun than some of them. Oh, they enjoy themselves and do alright, I suppose. But every now and then, I can see their shields go up and they become too scared to move. Some of them always keep an eye on their peers, wondering if they’re doing it right, if they’re acting their age. It’s times like those I wish I could just lock them in a closet with a Winnie the Pooh book until they learned to laugh again. Maybe it’s this monster we call “adolescence” that robs everyone blind.

Do It Again!

We’ve lost the childish joy that God immortal has. Look at the apparent monotony of the created order. All daisies look like daisies. Chickens lay eggs. Fish swim in water. The sun rises every morning, over and over again. Hum drum and ho hum. Yawn.

But God does not view it as monotony. He doesn’t look at it as a lack of variety that all daisies are the same or that the sun comes up again and again. God has enough abounding vitality to exult in a repeated game, like a child wanting you to play the same song or do the same trick over and over until you pass out.

“Grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. Bu perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, “Ethics of Elfland”)

The eternal appetite of infancy. That craving to revel in wonder and find continuous delight in the repetitive magic of life. That is what I mean by being childish and childlike. Putting away childish things doesn’t mean you burn yourself hollow of everything that makes childhood sweet. If anything, it allows you grow up enough to hold onto your childhood.

 

 

 

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Jealous for Love

Posted in Jesus, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Puppy Love

I was an awkward 13-year old. All 13-year olds are awkward, but I was a poster child for insecurity. I’ve always had bad posture. My neck naturally swoops forward like a vulture and I hunched a lot in middle school. Still do. On top of that, I had terrible acne. My face looked like the surface of Mars.

To combat the zits, my parents put me on acne medicine. But the medicine dried out every square inch of my head. My lips chapped, cracked, and bled. My nostrils were desert wind tunnels. My eyes dried and itched every day. There’s nothing like puberty to make a guy feel inadequate.

And then there was Megan. Megan was the incarnation of everything a 13-year old boy is looking for: good eyes, good hair, good smile, good legs, and a good figure. She looked good. But realize that 13-year old boys don’t give a great deal of thought to the depth of their standards. They mostly just care about looks. Megan had ‘em and I was 13.

The Setup

Now, most middle schools have some sort of rhythmic ceremonial ritual at least once a year. At my school, they called them mixers. A mixer was intended to be a dance, a first shot for guys and girls to mingle and flirt like the emerging young adults we weren’t. It was invented, I’m sure, to build up our confidence with the opposite sex.

In reality, however, these mixers were less about dancing and mingling and more about standing against the wall while your more courageous friends swayed awkwardly to the music out on the gymnasium floor, all the while trying to avoid direct eye contact with the girls. It was awkward.

But after many bad jokes and much peer pressure, my friends and I had decided to go. And I was actually pretty excited about it. Why? Megan was going.

It had been confirmed by several credible sources that she would be attending the mixer. And it was public knowledge that Megan was going alone. No one had asked her! All that my young mind knew of hope was wrapped up in this one thought: I could go to the dance with Megan.

The idea made my hands sweat, but my chances seemed pretty good. A couple of weeks before the dance, one of her friends asked her if she was going. I remember it clearly. We were in the hallway outside our homeroom, getting books out of our lockers for the next class. Our lockers were close, foreshadowing our all-but-certain future together.

Megan looked up at her friend from her locker on the floor. “I don’t know. No one’s asked me yet.”

With that last sentence, she looked directly up at me. I mean, it was legitimate eye contact. And those eyes told me what her lips were obviously too shy to say: “Jason, hurry up and ask me to the dance, you idiot.”

And so I didn’t.

God made me an introvert. And in middle school, I was a capital I Introvert. I had a few close friends I opened up around, but usually, I never said a word. If the ground swallowed me whole in the middle of algebra, I wouldn’t have embarrassed myself by yelling for help.

And Megan? She was out of my league. Waves of cascading golden hair. Emerald eyes that saw right into your soul. Tall and beautiful. And then there was me. The pimple face kid with the vulture neck.

Last Chance Dance

So, no, I didn’t actually ask her to the dance. But there was still hope. In my mind, I could see it all playing out beautifully.

I would show up fashionably late, dressed in my best khaki pants and polo shirt/blazer combination. With my slickly parted hair and my mom’s vanishing cream to cover up the pimples, I’d be dressed to kill. Pushing through the crowd of swaying slow dancers, I would finally find her. And of course, Megan would be standing by the punch bowl, waiting for me to pour her a glass. Then, I’d follow up with a cool line (“come here often…?”) and ask her to dance.

Then, we’d get married.

It was fool proof. I kept this hope alive for a full week before the night of the mixer. Every day, Megan had been dropping what I’m sure were hints. A cough here, a blink there, a few smiles with her friends. Clearly, she wanted me to ask her out at the dance.

That night, my mom dropped me off outside the gym doors. Iridescent streamers waved at me from the doorway. Inside, the bass was turned up way too loud, thudding its rhythm into my ribcage. From multiple angles, strobe lights panicked through the fog from the smoke machines, making me feel for all the world like I could suave and dashing.

For about an hour, I couldn’t find her. Almost all of the girls were lined up against the far wall of the room, looking nauseous and disinterested. But where was my soon-to-be girlfriend? I stared intently from my position at the punch bowl, making sure to scan every face carefully. I got a few rude stares back, but Megan was nowhere to be found.

I was about to make up an excuse to spend the rest of the dance hiding out in a bathroom stall when I noticed it. There were a handful of couples in the middle of the floor. They were all uneasily holding their partners as if they were handling plutonium. But one of the couples seemed a bit more “natural” with the art of slow dancing.

The guy I recognized. He was some complete jerk named Eric. He was good at soccer but had virtually no redeeming qualities as a human being. He was self-centered, cocky, and didn’t know how to treat a girl right. And there, leaning into his shoulder and swaying like a golden willow, was Megan.

I can’t remember if I spit out my punch. I’m not sure if I went out and sulked in the bathroom until my mom picked me up. All I remember is how I felt.

Somewhere inside me, in a dark cave where I keep my precious hidden gods, I felt it. Anger. Entitlement. A morose sense of injustice. It all rose up quickly and soaked in my bones. It took its time and curled around me like smoke.

This girl had obviously been pining for me just as deeply as I had for her. She had all but thrown herself at me. And yet, another guy was holding her tight, moving in a slow, tight circle with her to the raw and honest lyrics of N’Sync.

Smoldering…

But she was supposed to be with me! And she was giving her affections to him? The cocky soccer kid? It would’ve been a good time to pray an imprecatory psalm against him. The good guy is supposed to win. I’m supposed to hit the home run, shoot the bad guy, save the day, and kiss the girl. But, at that moment, some one else had won.

Jealousy. It wrecked me that night. It probably wrecked the entire school year for me. It taught me not to pine after a girl, not to get my hopes up so recklessly. It taught me not to feel. Yes, in hindsight, every problem in middle school sounds like a cliché. But when you’re in those shoes, everything feels so specific. The pain is very real and the heart is very broken.

Everything about my reaction to Megan’s “abandonment” and “rejection” cut me so cleanly. But more than anything, looking back, my jealousy gave me an excuse to throw the biggest pity party adolescence had ever seen.

I spiraled into a very angry depression. I became anorexic. My dreams were haunted by thoughts of suicide. All because of a girl? No. It was all because I didn’t get the affection that I believed I was entitled to. And when some other guy became the center of her universe, I burned. I seethed. I stewed in doubt and pain and bitterness. It was emotional grumbling, amplified and given no escape valve.

My jealousy was unjustifiably centered around myself. It was petty. It was prideful. And eventually, through counseling and the love of my parents, I got through the mess it caused.

What God Is NOT

I shared that little episode of adolescent angst to illustrate a point of opposites. God is not like that. God is so ultimately and profoundly not like me. God’s jealousy is not petty. It is not prideful.

Jealousy is one of God’s attributes. It shows up enough in the Bible to be a defining characteristic of his nature. We just don’t like to talk about it because it sounds bad. But jealousy is a part of who he is. God is compassionate, holy, happy, and good. He is always those things. In the same way, God is always wrathful, avenging, and jealous.

God does not change. He doesn’t go through phases. He’s not a teenage girl. He doesn’t get moody. He doesn’t have good days and bad days. He is immutable. He is unchangeable. So, with respect to this thing called jealousy, God is always jealous.

Love Him First

If jealousy is a desire for misdirected affection, then no one has more misdirected affection than the Creator. He is the author of all creatures. Every man, woman, and child was created to love God above all other things. God is the intended aim of our affection. When this doesn’t happen, it’s called misdirected affection. Where this is misdirected affection, there is jealousy.

God is justly jealous for your love. He is justly jealous for my love. And to paraphrase Tara Leigh Cobble, God can be pretty tenacious about ripping idols out of our hands. Don’t let it come to that. Keep yourself in the love of God.

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Honesty in Swaddling Clothes

Posted in Jesus, tagged , , , , , , on December 22, 2011 | 3 Comments »

I’ve written on honesty before, but it’s come up again in my mind. People are messy and it’s great. We’re sloppy, we’re sinful, we’re beautiful, we’re broken, we’re raw, we’re complicated, we’re glorious. And as deep as we are, we can never be fully known by anyone but God himself. But that shouldn’t keep us from trying.

In an interview, writer/musician Tara Leigh Cobble said, “Without honesty, we’re all just trying to impress people and protect ourselves.” I thought about that for a while after I read it. I realized that I agreed with her. The truth is, if I don’t show you who I am, it’s because I’m scared.

I want you to think better of me. I want to minimize the damage vulnerability will bring. So, I don’t show you all my cards. I don’t let you see the real me. And we all do this, every day. It’s dishonesty and it’s how we protect ourselves and it kills any hope for real community.

When we don’t show ourselves fully to other people, we cheat each other out of love. I can’t love a person as I ought (as God loved me) if I’m scared that person won’t love me back. And so we can’t have real and deep community.

God has revealed himself fully to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Christmastime commemorates the honesty of God, his coming to this planet to show us perfectly and profoundly who he is. The baby in the manger was the exact imprint of the Father’s nature (Heb.1:3). Such self-disclosure was an amazing expression of love. So, if I don’t fully disclose myself to another soul, I can’t imitate God (Eph.5:1) as I ought.

It’s only when we show each other who we are, with all our fractured flaws, that we act like our Father in true disclosure. It’s terrifying and it’s difficult, but it’s the only way to be known in deep community. One of the reasons Jesus came was to show us the Father. He gave himself to us so that would happen, so that we could have community with God. This Christmas, let’s give ourselves in honesty to one another. Be brave, be known, and give love.

Merry Christmas.

 

 

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