Let it Go

William Borden (1887-1913) epitaph: "Apart from faith in Christ there is no explanation for such a life."

Let it Go. This seems to be the theme of the week for me.

It started with the CD my dad got me for Christmas. The poor guy bought me Inception, not knowing that I had already gotten it for myself. As we were browsing through my parents' local Christian bookstore, I found the new LeCrae CD on one of the racks, and he gamely asked if he could give it to me for Christmas. Of course, I agreed.

It has been a huge encouragement already. The lyrics are saturated with scripture, and the beats are incredibly catchy. Hip-hop has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. It's refreshing to have some that's not embarrassing to play.

Anyway, the theme of the album is: "Let it Go" (money, cars, fame, ego, control, addiction, etc.). Just let it all go. Reminds me of Mark 8:35-37:

³⁵ For whoever wants to save his life^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶ What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? ³⁷ Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?

I'm struck with how tightly I've been hanging on. The suburbs are designed with this idea in mind. Houses are built in safely tucked-away neighborhoods. Cars take us conveniently from place to place without having to interact with strangers. Every need is immediately met. If I'm uncomfortable in the slightest, I can immediately get rid of that discomfort by retreating or sleeping or turning up the heat or eating a snack or watching TV or reading a book or seeing a movie.

My reason for mentioning all of this is not to knock the suburbs. I believe the suburbs are a blessing. Life is good and friendships are rich and full. It's a lifestyle that can feel heavenly at times. Just as city or rural life comes with unique temptations and struggles the suburbs have unique temptations and struggles. Each are just places. 

I think the danger comes with the natural impulse to hang-on to these things. We are strangers here, and we can't forget that. We can't have treasure here and in heaven, seek comfort at all costs, neglect our neighbor, be self-sufficient (or self-centered) ... pick your facet. It all comes down to the fact that we are travelers, just passing through. Beyond this, we have been given an assignment by the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and a finite amount of time to complete it. We are actors in His play, written to bring Him glory. We are His image bearers in this dark world. When we forget that, people get hurt.


Gandhi is rumored to have said: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." This is a loaded statement and much could be said in response (that's why we worship Christ and not Christians, there are may Christians who do live as Christ did, etc.), but I think it gets at a deeply felt need that non-Christians have to witness authenticity. If you want me to believe what you say, you need to back it up with what you do.


In Revelation 2 & 3, Jesus gives loving warnings to the first century churches that they need to remember their first love and stop being lukewarm. I've been thinking about that message a lot. It means something different for each of us. We need to be diligent and aware for opportunities to shake-up our dead patterns and empty religious rituals and live lives defined by the gospel.


As Dr. Litfin used to say: "Crown time will come, but now is cross time. You can't do everything, but you can do something."


Amen.

The '20 Obsolete Words that Should Make a Comeback' Dare

When I sent this link (http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-obsolete-english-words-that-should-make-a-comeback/) to a coworker he challenged me to use all 20 words in a sentence. This is what I came up with:

"During his Friday twitter-light brannigan, the ludibrious jollux, a little bibesy after deliciating over his drink about as much as sanguinolent man at war, spotted an illecebrous woman at an adjoining table and tried to corrade his thoughts from his widdendream, but they came out a bit jargogled and perissologious, so he began a quagswagging freck instead; causing even the most malagrugrous brabblers at the surrounding tables to kench and exclaim, “Take a look at that yemeles hoddypeak over there!” and inciting a journalist from the local newspaper to much scriptitation."

For fun, see if you can come up with another sentence using these 20 awesome words.

Restoration and Incarnation

Lately, I've been thinking about the idea of restoration; specifically, as it relates to the work of Christ.

My small group has been going through the book of John for the past semester, and it has been a very insightful trip through a book I have come to love. This time through, I've been struck by the way that Jesus works to restore people.

This is most obvious in his miracles and his discussions. One minute he's giving sight to a man who has never seen. Another, he's raising a good friend from the dead. One minute, he's chatting with a pharisee about spiritual rebirth, the next with a Samaritan woman about living water. Throughout the book, he presents himself as the solution. He makes all kinds of "I am" statements (I am ... Word, bread of life, living water, God's son, the resurrection and life, the vine, etc.) which tie him to God the Father and present him as the ultimate solution for which everyone has been waiting.

But there is something more subtle afoot here.

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question that everyone asks, and that we've been asking ever since the garden. Chris McGarvey, my former college pastor, put the answer this way: We are meant to be reflectors. God built deeply into our DNA an aching longing to be a reflection of greatness.  Talk to anyone for 20 minutes, and this is immediately obvious.

The problem is, we've set the bar too low. Lucifer was the first one to do this. Isaiah 14 is terribly tragic:

12 How you have fallen from heaven,

morning star, son of the dawn!

You have been cast down to the earth,

you who once laid low the nations!

13 You said in your heart,

“I will ascend to the heavens;

I will raise my throne

above the stars of God;

I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,

on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.

14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;

I will make myself like the Most High.”

15 But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,

to the depths of the pit.

We followed suit by deciding to reflect ourselves. God had designed us, in His own image, to be the crowning jewel of His creation: creatures who could think, and feel, and relate, and speak, and worship like no other being ever created. He made us truly great. We turned our vibrantly lit, blazing mirrors around toward ourselves and the light went out.

Ever since then, we've been stacking stones, trying to get to heaven, or wallowing in the mud, looking for someone who will think we are something special.

And that's where Jesus comes in.

Contrast the above passage with this one from Philippians 2:

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Mirror images, right? Jesus became a man and a perfect man at that. He was the image of God that reflected God's glory perfectly. Jesus restored more than just physical and intellectual wholeness. He gave us our purpose and significance back. He healed the broken mirrors that we are, and mended God's image within us.

Now our failures are always tempered by an undying hope. We don't have to find significance in being perfect, or looking perfect, or winning a championship, or becoming the best in our field, or supporting our families, or being a faithful friend, or anything else. God just wants us to love and reflect Himself. That's it. He's already done the rest.

Why Are You Destroying My Joy?

A coworker said this to me when I was complaining about my day.

Yes ... I'm aware of the irony. I just wrote a blog post on the topic of joy, and here I am stealing someone else's. Truthfully, it was a comment that was made tongue-in-cheek, and I don't think I was actually destroying this person's joy. But it got me to thinking.

Our attitudes affect other people.

It's an idea that's so elementary that it's easy to ignore. So, I'll say it again:

Our attitudes affect other people.

At times, each of us can behave like an emotional parasite, feeding off the energy of another, or performing for sympathy. I want to be careful to distinguish this from the times we are really in need of emotional support. Our friends, family, and coworkers want to be there for us when we are in need, and more often than not are totally willing to bear our burdens so that we can regain our emotional footing. I think the distinction between being an emotional parasite and accepting emotional support is that so.

What is the purpose, or the motivation for seeking that support? Are you seeking it because you want to climb out of your pit but need someone to offer you a hand, or do you want to pull someone into the pit with you for some company down there?

The idea of drowning is another metaphor that's often used for depression or emotional turmoil, and is also helpful for getting at this distinction. Are you using the arm that is extended to pull yourself out of the current, or are you pulling the other person into the raging rapids with you?

The same is the case with sin in general. When accountability fails, it's most often because it's improperly used. Sometimes it's a sin contest with one person unconsciously trying to match the other sin-for-sin. Other times, we confess without setting up any battle plan to avoid sin when it comes knocking again. We are content to wallow in perpetual defeat, confession, and repentance. There are too many passages about the power of God to defeat sin (ex.: Rom. 6:14, I Cor. 10:13, I Cor. 6:19-20, Gal. 5:1, Rom. 12:2, II Cor. 3:18, etc.)  for us to be content with the status quo until we escape to heaven and are fully sanctified.

Our attitudes and the way we think about sin will shape the ways we go about defeating it. Like I said in the previous post, Christ drank the bitter cup that we might drink living water. Let's not go back to drinking nastiness when Jesus has provided a cup that is so much better. Let's also not steal our friends' cups to quench our own thirst. There's plenty of living water to go around. He is, after all, the one who made more wine when it ran out, and turned 5 loaves and 2 fish into a meal for 5,000 with leftovers.

Joy and Living Water blog post

A blog post I wrote for inspiredfaith.com: http://blog.inspiredfaith.com/joy-and-living-water


“My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water”
-Jeremiah 2:13

but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
-John 4:14

“My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
-Matt. 26:42

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty” … When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.”
-John 19:28,30


Joy is an elusive thing, moreso as we become adults. There’s a reason most of us are nostalgic for our childhoods. When we were kids, the world was a mystical place of discovery, safety, and fun. We were blissfully ignorant of the constant pressures of adult awareness. Adam and Eve reached out for a piece of fruit that promised knowledge and got more than they bargained for. God offered them the simplicity of living by faith, and they chose complexity. We’ve been trying to unlearn that knowledge ever since.


Joy is a close relative of contentment and thanksgiving. I think the reason joy is so elusive, is that our daily lives wage war against contentment and thanksgiving. There’s always something missing, and because we know there’s got to be more to life, we seek to fill our lives with more. Whether it’s something as obvious as the stuff we buy or something more subtle like seeking others’ acceptance, we’re always looking for something else. We are thirsty and the cups we drink from leave us that way.


So what’s the secret? How do we find the joy that’s so elusive? How do we quench our thirst?


One of my favorite passages of scripture is John 4. Here we read about a woman so broken and used that she comes to the well during the heat of the day to avoid the other women of her community. She’s had six husbands and the last one hasn’t even given her the dignity of marriage. We can easily read between the lines and see a cup filled to the brim with deep sorrow.


Jesus meets her at the well in this state of loneliness–like Isaac (through his servant), Jacob, and Moses before him–symbolically becoming her seventh husband. He offers her his right hand of fellowship, renewed hope, restoration, and the gift of living water.


This living water is costly. You can’t fill a cup that’s already full, and the woman, like us, has filled hers to the brim with other things that add up to wrath and sorrow. Jesus had to drink it to fill it. Like a dad who eats the nasty concoction his daughter created on her plate while playing with her food, Jesus took our cup, swished it around a little and then swallowed its contents. Then he filled it again, this time with living water that works a deep transformation within us to slake our thirst.


Joy starts with an awareness of this reality. When the truth catches up to us and slows us down enough so that we put down the nastiness we keep drinking, we can take a refreshing swallow of living water. Contentment and thanksgiving for what Christ has done bloom on the palate of our soul, and we can only respond with a joyful sigh.


Our lives on this earth are filled with trouble just as sparks fly up (Job 5:7), and many times we thirst for joy and relief from sorrow.


But Jesus drank the cup of wrath and sorrow that we might drink deeply of the cup of joy and quench our thirst forever.

CT Music interview

I interviewed a fledgling music group for Christianity Today back in August and never posted the link here. Here it is (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/music/interviews/2010/aptlytitled-august31.html).

Re-enchantment

A friend blessed me deeply last Thursday in a way he cannot fully understand.

Backing up a little, this friend and I had lunch a couple weeks ago. A couple weeks prior, I had ended another relationship with a girl. Another failed experiment in romance. Starting back at square one again. A couple years prior, I had begun an entirely different experiment: to examine my faith.

I was running out of gas, becoming complacent and lazy. God and I were in the sitting around on the couch in sweats phase of our relationship. I needed to take a step back, sweep away the cobwebs and figure out why I was a Christian and not something else. More importantly, if I was a Christian, why it didn't alter the way I lived my life. Christianity should be so much more than a supplement for a healthy, balanced life. 

So, I dove headlong into philosophy and other sorts of non-fiction (until that point I'd been an exclusively fiction guy--why think about real life when I'm trying to escape into a book?). I joined a discussion group at the local community college to meet some non-Christians. And I tried to view my faith from a detached vantage point.

The short version, it was a miserable existence. I found it hard to read the Bible and pray. Though I was singing in the choir, I found it hard to worship. I felt reclusive. My former college pastor described it best: I was throwing a heavy log on the fire, and the flames were being smothered a little in hopes that the log would fuel a more sustained fire than the brush I had been feeding the fire with before. I missed the fire. I missed the intimacy I'd always enjoyed with God

Back to lunch with the friend. I told him about my situation and he offered some counsel. More importantly, he filed away the conversation in his memory. That Thursday, at our small group Bible study, he discretely pulled a book from his bookshelf and handed it to me. Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl by N.D. Wilson. Once again, the adage don't judge a book by its cover is proven true. The cover is garish and the title off-putting at first, like an attempt to be edgy that one expects to deliver the nutrition of cotton candy upon reading.

Turns out the opposite is the case. The title is meant to be poetic, rather than trendy, and the book more than delivers. Those who know Shakespeare will roll their eyes (I don't blame them, I would have too), but N.D. Wilson's prose is vivid and silky as if written in iambic pentameter. It's impossible to describe. You just have to read it yourself. The content of the book is as beautifully well-crafted as the word choices.

Wilson takes on the task of reminding us that creation personifies and mimics its Creator (Ps. 19:1). Using the seasons as a framing device (more often than not the kiss of death for a writer), he ruminates about his daily life, using everything at his disposal in the manner it was intended, as a metaphor through which we can understand characteristics of God, the universe, and our place in God's play.

Not really intending to review the book in this space, I'll simply say that it left me re-enchanted and challenged. As opposed to Crazy Love, which left me feeling guilty and sobered (both good emotions when put to good use, but otherwise death-spirals), this book was inspiring. To continue my earlier image, it was like gasoline for the log-choked flames of my faith.

Read the book and let me know what you think.

Inception

My New Favorite Movie

In the couple months since I saw Inception three times in the span of two weeks, I've been unable to get it out of my mind.

What an incredible movie! It's gotten to the point that I discuss it as a matter of course with just about anybody who might care and a lot of people who don't care at all.

I think what makes it so irresistable to me is the idea of dream versus reality and how one tells the difference between the two. Without giving too much away, the movie is all about the concept that someone can plant ideas in another person's mind while they are asleep. Basically, the person performing inception must share a dream with the subject, and become the architect of the subject's dream. In the process of perfecting this technique, one of the main characters appears to lose the ability to distinguish the real world from the dream world, and that is where the movie finds much of its intrigue and its emotional core.

This is an idea that really excites me, and it has proven to be really fertile imaginative ground for me. Lately, I've been on a philosophy kick for the sake of my own faith and for the sake of the philosophy discussion group I have joined with another man from my church at College of DuPage. I've read deeply and done much thinking on my own. I just finished a review of a book by Peter Hitchens (The Rage Against God) about how societies draw their morality from God, written in response to the new wave of atheists who are vocally anti-God.

So much of our lives hinge on being able to distinguish what is real and true from what is imaginary and false. And so often we are hopelessly blind. Often times we actively suppress the truth (Romans 1) and other times, we quite innocently build our houses on sand that spills out from under the foundations we've built.

Inception gave me an incredibly entertaining look into my own mind and its ability to fool itself. Another book I picked up recently called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell was all about the premise that perhaps our subconscious is actually better at making some kinds of decisions than our conscious mind is.

I am naturally an emotional guy, but that impulse has not served me well in the past, so I have very meticulously striven to rein in my emotions with a hardy dose of reason. I'm starting to believe that emotions have their place in discovering truth. Logic only goes so far before it runs into the barrier of the numinous, mystical, or miraculous. How do humans seem to be able to think about thinking with an organ called the brain that somehow doesn't fully explain the mind?

In the end, truth is relational.

Untitled

Oh to see. I am blind.

Or at least myopic. The tip of my nose marks the

Boundary of my sight.

Are my eyes inside out?

Is everything upside down?

You. Died. For. Me.

I try to look back across centuries, millenia

To see you die for me, but my straining eyes

Fail me.

History grows stale on the page.

Give me new eyes so I can see.

Make mud again for me.

Touch my eyes with your fingers.

The same fingers that painted stars onto an abysmal canvas.

The same fingers that traced an unfolding history into the stone

For an exiled people.

The same fingers that drew in the sand to erase the shame

Of a woman condemned.

Let me see the scars you purchased with your blood.

The souvenirs of your journey into the yawning jaws of death

To snatch me away from its infinite darkness.

Show me.

I want to see.

I want to believe.

I want to be changed.