“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me . . .” bellows out Lee Greenwood and American patriots.
And appropriately so . . . Yet . . .
“Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded like dust on the scales . . . Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing” (Isaiah 40:15-17).
Challenging words from an eternal angle. Against that awareness, American pride seems trivial. Surely multitudes of nations have existed and exist, probably will exist. In view of the universe’s age, they, we, are indeed drops in the historical bucket. All that national pride . . . yet against eternity, just what is it worth?
Stuck in the finite with a craving awareness for the eternal. Therein lies our rub. I’m an American, cultured in America, and thankful for it, even appropriately proud of it, appropriately thankful for the patriotic sacrifices which have procured it. In light of that, I seek to be a faithful citizen--informed, voting, paying the taxes, keeping the laws . . .
Still, the God who transcends history and time--including the time drop of America, continues to invite all via the sacrifice of His Son, “whose blood purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation,” to an eternal kingdom (Revelation 5:9). The God over eternity, the God behind eternity, entered time and space as specifically as you and I have. Cultured as a Jew in Palestine under the oppressive weight of the Roman empire, however, a patriotic glint (or glare) was not to be found in his eye. To the fury of fellow Jews, Jesus seemed unconcerned with Roman possession and oppression of the Holy Land. Instead, he was passionately concerned with people’s openness to the presence of the eternal kingdom in their midst--Jews or gentiles. He still is.
Unfortunately, His church, his purported kingdom on earth, has at worst, deliberately neglected and at best, ignorantly forgotten His eternal kingdom passion and has instead steeped itself in nationalism and political agendas. Certainly, life in this world is full of necessary even if undesirable entanglements, yet the church has not really found them undesirable. To the contrary, it has found them appealing. Drenched in finite power, it has lost its eternal moorings, and consequently, its efficacy and credibility.
And yet, for those who have discovered His kingdom, their taste and subsequent hunger for more of it has transformed the world, life-to-life, heart-to-heart. The kingdom comes in this manner. Jesus himself, though crowds certainly gathered, actually built relationships with only handful of minimally educated, even troubled, men and women, opening their eyes to an eternal kingdom. He bypassed Caesar, the religious authorities, the local authorities, instead dropping eternity into individual hearts who would share it in love with other individual hearts.
That’s a kingdom paradox: against its eternity, all the nations a drop in the bucket, large political entities and organizations next to nothing, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12-13). Regardless of gender, tribe, locale, nation, or birthright, the kingdom is open. And it is passed in love relationally, never coercively, never manipulatively, never politically.
Nonetheless, a proper engagement in the finite political scene can establish and enhance an environment fit for kingdom engagements: freedom of thought and free exchange of ideas and debate, freedom to worship or not. An appropriate separation of church and state is essential as the church seems to completely forget salvation by grace when it tastes wordly power. Thankfully our country’s founders--Deist or Christian--understood that. They understood that the notion of God is essential to the undergirding of our dignity in rights and freedoms. Without God, then dignity, rights, and valuing freedom are quite simply evolved contrivances and constructs--nice, even essential, yet contrived constructs nonetheless. But they also understood that when finite powers seep into eternal perspectives, those eternal perspectives are trumped by prideful political mandates and dictates.
All the above to say to non-Christians whose non-interest in faith in Christ has a lot to do with the political behavior of Christians, I am very sorry. And I would encourage you to consider the person of Christ, who is the entire point of Christianity. You’ll not only be impressed by his lack of political motive, but you may be impressed how he lived with overt eternal values and expressed them with refreshing, yet disconcerting, ease. In the testimonies of those who encountered him, you’ll find that his kingdom is certainly not of this world but is imperative to this world.
And to politically-motivated Christians of any stripe, it is exciting, even necessary at times, to engage in politics and government, but let’s avoid associating the God of eternity, the God who considers the nations a drop in the bucket, with any political party or agenda or any nation. Our calling is clear: to pass the love that rules in God’s kingdom heart-to-heart, life-to-life. Politics has never gotten that done.
His kingdom is boundary-less, open to all nations, tribes, and races, for He has given His life to redeem them all. And his kingdom is a saving grace from even the tyranny of the American dream.
So I’m proud to be an American, but ultimately my “citizenship is in heaven” by God’s saving grace (Philippians 3:20). May that citizenship always be prime.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Parental Wounds . . . Our Father . . .
I write this on Father’s Day. Yet, I’m thinking of some daughters I know. One worked to forgive her father for his verbal, physical abuse, and alcoholism which contributed also to his neglect of her. She even helped him to pass away in peace. Another is at 20 years of age working to maintain contact with boundaries from another unhealthy father. And another is the only one aiding in the gradual passing of a father woefully lacking other relationships because of his cruelty. Each of these women has had to forgive so much in order to honor their fathers, an undeserved honor.
However, this life is only about just deserts insofar as there is a heavenly Father. If we only exist by luck, or lack thereof perhaps, then there is no “ought” in life but what we contrive. Our parents’ coming through for us or devastating us is simply an evolutionary tweak or burp, nothing more. Our feelings are simply biochemical responses--some we label as pleasure; some we label as painful. Really, any meaning beyond that is contrivance. It’s strange to me how such an impersonal force can feel so personal, however. The wounds of fatherly neglect or fatherly abuse runner deeper than our existential contrivances, don’t they? For wholeness to ensue, we must see them as deeper and more personal than contrivance, whether we believe in God or not.
While I cannot speak for the above three women, although I know all of them are Christians, my relationship with God was integral to my coming to peace with my dad. And I’m so thankful to have made peace with him before he passed.
My dad was quite aloof during my growing up years. The term “phantom father” is an apt one. He was there, but he was not. He didn’t take an interest in my life. Attending events or any sort of conversation were not priority. I developed a hatred for him but blamed myself. He never did anything wrong, so how could I hate him?
Years later, one of my philosophy and theology professors gently challenged me. I had something to forgive. I was not to blame. My dad didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t do anything. Maybe he didn’t have sins of commission, but he had sins of omission. I had, like every child does, an interior construct of how a father should be, and he didn’t fulfill it. And where do such constructs come from? The existence of God validates those constructs of loving, accepting, engaged, sacrificing parents. As a result, our hurts are justified when our parents fall short.
As I realized I did indeed have something to forgive my dad for, I began recognizing where I was receiving fatherly love--professors, pastors, friends’ parents. I also begin to trust more deeply in the love of God as father. Gradually, this freed me from my bitterness enough to see my dad as another fallen being, also in need of grace and love. He was deeply wounded by losses growing up and was functionally depressed during my childhood and teen years. My pain was real, but so was his. God loved us both, sacrificed for us both, forgave us both. When my dad was gradually passing away from the effects of a stroke, the fact I could tell him I loved him and mean it was huge for me.
Of course my happy-ending story should not be seen as a prototype for others to follow. Many are wounded far more deeply than I ever was. The cross is reminder that God knows the personal pain of the wounds we received. The sins of others against us is costly. It cost him his life. Jesus Christ did not just die for my sins. He died for the sins committed against me as well. And if Christ chose to suffer their just deserts in their place, who am I to dare say that is not enough?
Our brokenness is real, not an evolutionary contrivance, nor an illusion. And the sanity of forgiveness and grace is real, also not an evolutionary contrivance. Unless one is committed to biochemically shrink-wrapping the dimensions of existence.
I know for many Father’s Day is a painful one. Grief continues. Estrangement continues. Justifications continue. I certainly won’t pretend moving down a path of healing, forgiveness, and potential reconciliation is easy. However, I do know bitterness and unforgiveness only victimizes us further, and keeps us small, which is tempting because then nothing much can be expected of us. We don’t have to explore avenues of our own fallenness as long as we keep the spotlight on our fathers’ sins, or anyone elses for that matter.
Maybe it’s time to pray, even if you don’t believe it will work. Maybe it’s time to ask God’s help in forgiving a parental wound, in healing it. Who knows? Maybe by next Father’s Day, you will have greater peace with your heavenly Father and will have traveled farther down a path of wholeness. Do you really have much to lose?
The attached song I found quite healing. Yes, it’s from the ‘80s as is readily apparent, yet its truths remain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5Z2YXlG8M
However, this life is only about just deserts insofar as there is a heavenly Father. If we only exist by luck, or lack thereof perhaps, then there is no “ought” in life but what we contrive. Our parents’ coming through for us or devastating us is simply an evolutionary tweak or burp, nothing more. Our feelings are simply biochemical responses--some we label as pleasure; some we label as painful. Really, any meaning beyond that is contrivance. It’s strange to me how such an impersonal force can feel so personal, however. The wounds of fatherly neglect or fatherly abuse runner deeper than our existential contrivances, don’t they? For wholeness to ensue, we must see them as deeper and more personal than contrivance, whether we believe in God or not.
While I cannot speak for the above three women, although I know all of them are Christians, my relationship with God was integral to my coming to peace with my dad. And I’m so thankful to have made peace with him before he passed.
My dad was quite aloof during my growing up years. The term “phantom father” is an apt one. He was there, but he was not. He didn’t take an interest in my life. Attending events or any sort of conversation were not priority. I developed a hatred for him but blamed myself. He never did anything wrong, so how could I hate him?
Years later, one of my philosophy and theology professors gently challenged me. I had something to forgive. I was not to blame. My dad didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t do anything. Maybe he didn’t have sins of commission, but he had sins of omission. I had, like every child does, an interior construct of how a father should be, and he didn’t fulfill it. And where do such constructs come from? The existence of God validates those constructs of loving, accepting, engaged, sacrificing parents. As a result, our hurts are justified when our parents fall short.
As I realized I did indeed have something to forgive my dad for, I began recognizing where I was receiving fatherly love--professors, pastors, friends’ parents. I also begin to trust more deeply in the love of God as father. Gradually, this freed me from my bitterness enough to see my dad as another fallen being, also in need of grace and love. He was deeply wounded by losses growing up and was functionally depressed during my childhood and teen years. My pain was real, but so was his. God loved us both, sacrificed for us both, forgave us both. When my dad was gradually passing away from the effects of a stroke, the fact I could tell him I loved him and mean it was huge for me.
Of course my happy-ending story should not be seen as a prototype for others to follow. Many are wounded far more deeply than I ever was. The cross is reminder that God knows the personal pain of the wounds we received. The sins of others against us is costly. It cost him his life. Jesus Christ did not just die for my sins. He died for the sins committed against me as well. And if Christ chose to suffer their just deserts in their place, who am I to dare say that is not enough?
Our brokenness is real, not an evolutionary contrivance, nor an illusion. And the sanity of forgiveness and grace is real, also not an evolutionary contrivance. Unless one is committed to biochemically shrink-wrapping the dimensions of existence.
I know for many Father’s Day is a painful one. Grief continues. Estrangement continues. Justifications continue. I certainly won’t pretend moving down a path of healing, forgiveness, and potential reconciliation is easy. However, I do know bitterness and unforgiveness only victimizes us further, and keeps us small, which is tempting because then nothing much can be expected of us. We don’t have to explore avenues of our own fallenness as long as we keep the spotlight on our fathers’ sins, or anyone elses for that matter.
Maybe it’s time to pray, even if you don’t believe it will work. Maybe it’s time to ask God’s help in forgiving a parental wound, in healing it. Who knows? Maybe by next Father’s Day, you will have greater peace with your heavenly Father and will have traveled farther down a path of wholeness. Do you really have much to lose?
The attached song I found quite healing. Yes, it’s from the ‘80s as is readily apparent, yet its truths remain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5Z2YXlG8M
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
A Filling Hunger
I take a right out of my family’s farmyard, jogging down the hill of the gravel road. Alfalfa perfuming the air on my left, corn leaves jostling each other on my right. Turning east at the corner, I hear the creek gurgle in the ditch, surrounded by thick, short trees and brush, blocking my view in either direction. Yet the setting sun’s rays gently lay upon the leaves, tickled by the breeze. Several gravel-crunching steps farther, the view opens up. I look south. Just beyond another hayfield and more impenetrable brush lies the pasture: tumbling, lolling hills clustered with oaks. The sun’s diminishing light casts its subdued glow.
I stop. There it is again. Beauty’s poignant touch. It fills me, yet leaves me hungry, saddened that something I deeply desire is just out of my reach. I want to run toward the scene, but I know I won’t find it. It’s there, but I’m not.
In the years since, I’ve had that experience during other encounters with beauty--canoeing in Boundary Waters, being surrounded by trusted, loving friends, sitting alone with a cup of coffee and a good view, reading or watching artistic creations. It’s that simultaneous sense of yearning while feeling filled.
A character in a C.S. Lewis novel (Till We Have Faces) summed up the experience. She said, “I want to know where all the beauty comes from.” And that’s just it. I notice the beauty, delight in it, yet the sharp longing suggests there’s something more I cannot grasp just yet, cannot get to now. Something that is wonderfully filling just in the longing for it.
One of the criticisms of Christians is that they so long for heaven that they take no real interest in the world, that they are of no earthly good here; while atheists or others who simply believe in this life alone are the ones who truly love this world because there is no “beyond” to distract them. However, Christians and unbelievers of whom the above descriptions fit are both missing something.
Genuinely loving this world--or anything or anyone for that matter--necessitates a teleological approach, a worldview that affirms purpose; without it, loving it simply devolves into just enjoying it. While enjoying it is not wrong, just enjoying it can become patently self-serving; whereas, enjoying it with an eye to beauty deepens both the joy of enjoyment and longing for something more, something this world is no doubt a part of, yet is fragmented in its expression.
I appreciate G.K. Chesterton’s analogy of this world containing pieces of broken stained glass. We can rejoice in the beauty of each shard, while simultaneously longing for wholeness. While unbelievers may suggest the shards are all there is, that hardly explains the longing of the informed conscience--atheist or not--for wholeness, hardly explains the oft-experienced sadness regarding the brokenness. On the other hand, some Christians can get so caught up noticing and judging the brokenness, they neglect the shard’s beauty and fail to aid in the redemptive journey toward wholeness, and instead wait--in protective uselessness--for “the end.”
The life of Jesus best exemplifies the tension between beauty and brokenness. He was a man of joy and a man of sorrows. His immersive awareness of the love of God enabled him to see beauty in all those the world rejected and even in those doing the rejecting. Yet his awareness of their brokenness broke his heart, ultimately literally. He came from the place where beauty and love come from, but “the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10). We still don’t.
Recognizing beauty and love is vulnerable. If you open your heart to the joy of it, yes there will be the sorrow. The world’s brokenness prevents us have from having it completely. “For now we see in a glass dimly” (I Corinithians 13:12). Still, the reality is there though we cannot see it.
And this, in part, is faith: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). It’s not belief without evidence, nor belief without reason. It’s a belief that realities exist beyond my perceptions that evidence themselves based on my openness to them. It’s a trust that what is ultimately real is love and its concomitant beauty.
When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6), they are blessed because righteousness does ultimately exist--it is not just an ego construct of purportedly societally-evolved people. When he tells us to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” it’s because a kingdom and a will exist worth hungering for because they are actually there. And loving this world means rejoicing when we see that kingdom expressed as well as sorrowing over its lack where brokenness has eroded it. From that sorrow grows the passion to challenge and nourish those fragments.
Why hunger for anything that is not ultimately real? If beauty, love, justice, mercy, grace are only elevated societal constructs of no eternal value beyond this life, then they are just the empty calories for the ego rather than the fueling and enticing nourishment for the soul.
I stop. There it is again. Beauty’s poignant touch. It fills me, yet leaves me hungry, saddened that something I deeply desire is just out of my reach. I want to run toward the scene, but I know I won’t find it. It’s there, but I’m not.
In the years since, I’ve had that experience during other encounters with beauty--canoeing in Boundary Waters, being surrounded by trusted, loving friends, sitting alone with a cup of coffee and a good view, reading or watching artistic creations. It’s that simultaneous sense of yearning while feeling filled.
A character in a C.S. Lewis novel (Till We Have Faces) summed up the experience. She said, “I want to know where all the beauty comes from.” And that’s just it. I notice the beauty, delight in it, yet the sharp longing suggests there’s something more I cannot grasp just yet, cannot get to now. Something that is wonderfully filling just in the longing for it.
One of the criticisms of Christians is that they so long for heaven that they take no real interest in the world, that they are of no earthly good here; while atheists or others who simply believe in this life alone are the ones who truly love this world because there is no “beyond” to distract them. However, Christians and unbelievers of whom the above descriptions fit are both missing something.
Genuinely loving this world--or anything or anyone for that matter--necessitates a teleological approach, a worldview that affirms purpose; without it, loving it simply devolves into just enjoying it. While enjoying it is not wrong, just enjoying it can become patently self-serving; whereas, enjoying it with an eye to beauty deepens both the joy of enjoyment and longing for something more, something this world is no doubt a part of, yet is fragmented in its expression.
I appreciate G.K. Chesterton’s analogy of this world containing pieces of broken stained glass. We can rejoice in the beauty of each shard, while simultaneously longing for wholeness. While unbelievers may suggest the shards are all there is, that hardly explains the longing of the informed conscience--atheist or not--for wholeness, hardly explains the oft-experienced sadness regarding the brokenness. On the other hand, some Christians can get so caught up noticing and judging the brokenness, they neglect the shard’s beauty and fail to aid in the redemptive journey toward wholeness, and instead wait--in protective uselessness--for “the end.”
The life of Jesus best exemplifies the tension between beauty and brokenness. He was a man of joy and a man of sorrows. His immersive awareness of the love of God enabled him to see beauty in all those the world rejected and even in those doing the rejecting. Yet his awareness of their brokenness broke his heart, ultimately literally. He came from the place where beauty and love come from, but “the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10). We still don’t.
Recognizing beauty and love is vulnerable. If you open your heart to the joy of it, yes there will be the sorrow. The world’s brokenness prevents us have from having it completely. “For now we see in a glass dimly” (I Corinithians 13:12). Still, the reality is there though we cannot see it.
And this, in part, is faith: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). It’s not belief without evidence, nor belief without reason. It’s a belief that realities exist beyond my perceptions that evidence themselves based on my openness to them. It’s a trust that what is ultimately real is love and its concomitant beauty.
When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6), they are blessed because righteousness does ultimately exist--it is not just an ego construct of purportedly societally-evolved people. When he tells us to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” it’s because a kingdom and a will exist worth hungering for because they are actually there. And loving this world means rejoicing when we see that kingdom expressed as well as sorrowing over its lack where brokenness has eroded it. From that sorrow grows the passion to challenge and nourish those fragments.
Why hunger for anything that is not ultimately real? If beauty, love, justice, mercy, grace are only elevated societal constructs of no eternal value beyond this life, then they are just the empty calories for the ego rather than the fueling and enticing nourishment for the soul.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Freedom That Becomes Us
Freedom is always inviting, yet it’s risky and vulnerable, for it means change. I understand that as freedom was procured for slaves in the waning days of the Civil War, some slaves preferred the predictability, the security of the plantation. They had become slaves, and the prospect of becoming free--even if they were in fact, free--was overwhelming.
I read something recently wherein someone conceded they were living in Hell, yet candidly admitted to a comfortable familiarity with it-- “At least I know the names of every street!” I’m sure the streets in Freedom and Peace are nice, but I won’t be familiar. I’d have to acclimate, and I’m unsure I can pull that off . . . so I’ll just stay in Hell.
Just today, my husband related his having heard that huge adult elephants can be tied via a rope to a stake in the ground, and they will remain even though they could walk off with the rope and stake quite easily. Why? Because when they were babes, the stake and rope had the power to hold them then. Now the enormous adult elephant still believes they can. Of course, this story isn’t so much about a fear of freedom, but rather the questioning if one actually has it: If you believe you are smaller than that which holds you, you really won’t be free.
My faith in Jesus Christ appeals to me primarily because of the freedom He invites me to, the freedom He invites all of humanity to, and it’s the only freedom offered which is commensurate with our human dignity . . . and beyond. He invites us to live larger than that which we believe holds us.
He invites us to a freedom from condemnation. Since he has absorbed the cost of our reconciliation, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8). Now if we are free from God’s condemnation, we are free from everyone’s condemnation: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” We are free from the condemnation of others, of ourselves. Familial, educational, societal condemnations no longer hold because God has accepted us. And no voice carries more weight, though we may not always think it so.
Now I realize there’s a whole self-esteem industry marketing means for us to feel good about ourselves. Feel good about ourselves based on what? That there are now a few overweight models so we really can feel good about ourselves because the media gods have finally affirmed size variety? How about that my friends assure me I’m smart, talented, attractive--got some good things going for me? That my parents have affirmed me? That “in comparison” to whatever or whomever, I’m better? But isn’t that all a relative? All a sliding scale? I’d prefer a transcending self-assessment, based on something far less fickle than surrounding culture . . . and my moods. Indeed, if God says I’m loved and accepted just as I am, that He has no condemnation for me, then indeed I am genuinely free to love and accept myself, condemnation-free.
Being free from condemnation of any kind means I am now free to become who I am: the Beloved. The journey of spiritual growth is becoming who you are--learning to live loved. And this really isn’t about living by some moral code--as handy as those can be. In Christ, we’ve received an identity shift: living lives of love is a result of internalizing an identity. As I become who I am, loving other becomes obviously consequential, rather than something achieved by obeying laws or religious dictates. “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6). Soaking in that humbling amazing grace shifts the foundations of the heart: it’s no longer about obeying ethics while remaining internally unchanged; it’s living new: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation: The old is gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
If there’s a discipline involved in it, it’s learning to regularly receive grace, receive God’s love until the old measurements, assessments, condemnations, achievements and failures purported to give identity in this world fade into their apparent superficiality. As they diminish, the freedom to be me increases. And clearly, I’ve got a long way to go, yet indeed there is joy in this journey.
Don’t become so familiar here, so comfortable and familiar in your present assessments that you decide to remain a slave, remain on the streets of whatever hell you’re in, or remain tethered to a stake so much smaller than you.
Begin the freeing journey of becoming who you are: the beloved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Conceding the Absurd
About six crosses are within my sight as I write this in my living room. Yes, an ancient Roman torture and execution device adorns walls, bookcases, dressers, shelves in my home. It’s pretty ridiculously absurd.
I desire this blog to demonstrate the truth of Christianity--the credibility of its text, its history, its message. Yet to the argument that its absurd . . . I have to concede. It is absurd. That’s no secret admission. The Apostle Paul even back in the day admitted that “the message of the cross is foolishness” in the eyes of the world.
Now, of course, I don’t concede my worldview’s absurdity as some means of getting out intellectual accountability free card when it comes to discussing my beliefs. I’m quite comfortable with challenges. Further, I would suggest that the absurdity of Christianity provides additional evidence for its credibility.
Consider the overwhelming preposterousness of this world. Where to begin? With the recent inexplicably intentionally tragic bombing in Boston that forever changed lives and took lives, including that of an innocent little guy, who in a school poster urged people toward kindness weeks before? A horrid explosion in Texas that devastated lives? An earthquake in China? A crazed dictator in North Korea making nuclear threats, while thousands languish in prisons for not worshiping at his throne? Attacks in religions’ names in multiple spots around the globe? Illnesses? Accidents? Wars? Terrors? Nature’s upheavals? Many who wonder where God is. Others have decided he’s simply not there, period. All this absurdity and an overwhelming much more can deluge anyone’s belief system.
And that’s just it. I just don’t see another worldview that confirms reality for what it is, like Christianity. As Frederick Buechner states in Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, & Fairy Tale (1977), “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.” Jesus Christ, God-in-flesh, is persecuted and crucified by religious and political authorities. The innocent one meets the raw injustice of the world. Is that absurd? Or does it simply confirm the already evident absurdity of this world, where innocence is destroyed by religion and politics? God himself becoming a victim of our absurdity is the best evidence that our world is clearly absurd! What other worldview so strongly confirms our absurdity?
The cross reminds me that I’m part of a ridiculously tragic, pathetic humanity, that “my nature is built into the wall of humanity” as C.H. Spurgeon expressed it, that we have all contributed to it “by what we have done and have left undone” (Lutheran liturgy perpetually lodged in my head). We’re all in this mess together. And God is, too. He has shared in our humanity and as a result can “empathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:5). As Buechner continues, “God himself does not give answers. He gives himself . . .” We all want answers, we all want reason, logic, sense for the absurd quality of our world. None of those suffice. Perhaps an absurd world merits an absurd God, the God who gives himself. So the cross affirms for me that the world is what it is, and God intimately knows what it is.
So what prompts God’s absurdly personal investment in our preposterous world? Love. The cliched verse still bears the truth: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s unfortunate how infrequently the verse following is posted: “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17). God is not interested in condemning. He’s interested in saving.
We never see that coming. It seems too good to be true. So we tone it down a little or a lot: to have eternal life you must do all this religious activity, hold these particular views, do these particular good works while avoiding these particularly bad works. None of that is true! And that’s the good news.
Eternal life is simply ever only a gift to be received. How do you receive it? Acknowledge you’re part of the absurd mess of this world, that you’re a contributor, a neglector. In other words, agree with God on the reality of the situation. Then receive His forgiveness. He has absorbed the cost of our sin. There’s not debt to be paid. “It is finished!” He said in concluding words on the cross.
It’s tough to believe eternal life is that easy. “The tragic is inevitable. The comic is unforeseeable,” Buechner notes. I think that’s why I'm amused as I notice my home redundantly emblazoned with crosses. It is almost comic. This instrument of death intersects two realities: the world and I are fallen and broken; the world and I are loved beyond our wildest comprehension. There’s something delightfully, joyfully comical about that.
“Maybe the truth of it is that it’s too good not to be true” (Buechner). Indeed, I don’t think humanity could have made this up. It flies too much in the face of our prideful constitution and our suspicion of and avoidance of joy. In fact, a couple thousand years of church history includes plentiful evidence of quieting and containing this absurdly good news.
Thank God for leaks! :)
I desire this blog to demonstrate the truth of Christianity--the credibility of its text, its history, its message. Yet to the argument that its absurd . . . I have to concede. It is absurd. That’s no secret admission. The Apostle Paul even back in the day admitted that “the message of the cross is foolishness” in the eyes of the world.
Now, of course, I don’t concede my worldview’s absurdity as some means of getting out intellectual accountability free card when it comes to discussing my beliefs. I’m quite comfortable with challenges. Further, I would suggest that the absurdity of Christianity provides additional evidence for its credibility.
Consider the overwhelming preposterousness of this world. Where to begin? With the recent inexplicably intentionally tragic bombing in Boston that forever changed lives and took lives, including that of an innocent little guy, who in a school poster urged people toward kindness weeks before? A horrid explosion in Texas that devastated lives? An earthquake in China? A crazed dictator in North Korea making nuclear threats, while thousands languish in prisons for not worshiping at his throne? Attacks in religions’ names in multiple spots around the globe? Illnesses? Accidents? Wars? Terrors? Nature’s upheavals? Many who wonder where God is. Others have decided he’s simply not there, period. All this absurdity and an overwhelming much more can deluge anyone’s belief system.
And that’s just it. I just don’t see another worldview that confirms reality for what it is, like Christianity. As Frederick Buechner states in Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, & Fairy Tale (1977), “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.” Jesus Christ, God-in-flesh, is persecuted and crucified by religious and political authorities. The innocent one meets the raw injustice of the world. Is that absurd? Or does it simply confirm the already evident absurdity of this world, where innocence is destroyed by religion and politics? God himself becoming a victim of our absurdity is the best evidence that our world is clearly absurd! What other worldview so strongly confirms our absurdity?
The cross reminds me that I’m part of a ridiculously tragic, pathetic humanity, that “my nature is built into the wall of humanity” as C.H. Spurgeon expressed it, that we have all contributed to it “by what we have done and have left undone” (Lutheran liturgy perpetually lodged in my head). We’re all in this mess together. And God is, too. He has shared in our humanity and as a result can “empathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:5). As Buechner continues, “God himself does not give answers. He gives himself . . .” We all want answers, we all want reason, logic, sense for the absurd quality of our world. None of those suffice. Perhaps an absurd world merits an absurd God, the God who gives himself. So the cross affirms for me that the world is what it is, and God intimately knows what it is.
So what prompts God’s absurdly personal investment in our preposterous world? Love. The cliched verse still bears the truth: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s unfortunate how infrequently the verse following is posted: “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17). God is not interested in condemning. He’s interested in saving.
We never see that coming. It seems too good to be true. So we tone it down a little or a lot: to have eternal life you must do all this religious activity, hold these particular views, do these particular good works while avoiding these particularly bad works. None of that is true! And that’s the good news.
Eternal life is simply ever only a gift to be received. How do you receive it? Acknowledge you’re part of the absurd mess of this world, that you’re a contributor, a neglector. In other words, agree with God on the reality of the situation. Then receive His forgiveness. He has absorbed the cost of our sin. There’s not debt to be paid. “It is finished!” He said in concluding words on the cross.
It’s tough to believe eternal life is that easy. “The tragic is inevitable. The comic is unforeseeable,” Buechner notes. I think that’s why I'm amused as I notice my home redundantly emblazoned with crosses. It is almost comic. This instrument of death intersects two realities: the world and I are fallen and broken; the world and I are loved beyond our wildest comprehension. There’s something delightfully, joyfully comical about that.
“Maybe the truth of it is that it’s too good not to be true” (Buechner). Indeed, I don’t think humanity could have made this up. It flies too much in the face of our prideful constitution and our suspicion of and avoidance of joy. In fact, a couple thousand years of church history includes plentiful evidence of quieting and containing this absurdly good news.
Thank God for leaks! :)
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Saving Face
A recent 60 Minutes show provided an update on the Lost Boys of Sudan, whom the program covered many years ago. These boys fled their villages in South Sudan, fleeing those who had murdered their parents and captured their sisters into slavery. They were faceless--no documents, no legal rights, really nonexistent--and/or persecuted wherever their existence were discovered. One of these boys, who eventually became an Episcopal priest, said even then: “They call us the lost boys. But I’ve never been lost to God.”
Now, of course, I don’t share this to gloss over the horror of lives lost or to assume this faithful account somehow dismisses the questioning of this woefully disturbing violence. However, it is interesting (and touching to me) that America stepped in and transplanted some 4000 of these lost boys to cities across America in what one interviewed professional on the program considered the most successful transplant of foreign peoples in American history. We were moved by facelessness. We wanted them to have a face, to become citizens, to have rights. It’s a powerful, invigorating vision.
We liberally apply the term “person” to everyone, and rightly so, for person is the equivalent of having a face. Yet even for us, history has shown that we’ve not been too willing to extend the notion of facefullness to everyone. The powerful typically have it and the powerless never seem to have enough face, sadly.
Still in the Greco-Roman world, the facelessness of some, if not the majority, of the populace was assumed and justified. David Bentlley Hart’s Atheistic Delusions (so called because he challenges the arguments of some atheists who question the role of Christianity in history) discusses that for those of the “lowest stations--slaves, base-born non-citizens and criminals, the utterly destitute, colonized peoples--legal personality did not really exist, or existed in the most tenuous of forms” and of course, those tenuous forms applied also to the limited extent of women’s possessing “face.” Even the esoteric philosophies of the times were not interested in extending personhood to the masses. The philosopher’s facefilled pensive leisure was purchased by the sweaty brow of the faceless.
In Jerusalem, correct religiosity added to the addenda of acquiring a face. And in order for there always to be a hierarchy--whether in religious circles or otherwise--it was essential that only a powerful few access face and the rest are left faceless.
Yet it is to the faceless that Christ comes. The Gospel accounts are rife with his intentional engagements with the faceless, to the perpetual chagrin of the face-filled powerful. I think that is one of the key characteristics of Jesus’ life to which I’m so drawn. He was so perpetually free from and therefore, dismissive of human power. He talked to whom he wanted when he wanted, was entirely unmoved by human praise or criticism. I believe he has been the only human who was ever only genuinely himself, defined by his capacity to live totally, entirely free from the confining responses of others. He calls us to a similar freedom, but that’s a topic for a different day.
In fact, it was this absolute freedom to love, to grant face to the faceless that made him such a threat to the religious of any type as well as political authority, for earthly authority typically always gathers more face for some and less for others. Christ created the fissure of facefulness that is still rupturing our preconceived notions of face today. Bentley continues: “Conscience, after all, at least in regard to its particular contents, is to a great extent a cultural artifact, a historical contingency, and all of us today in the West, to some degree or another, have inherited a conscience formed by Christian moral ideals. For this reason, it is all but impossible for us to recover any real sense of the scandal that many pagans naturally felt at the bizarre prodigality with which the early Christians were willing to grant full humanity to persons of every class and condition, and of either sex.” Consequently, the merging into one community of people previously separated by clear strata became the key challenge of the early church: how does a community consisting of sharply divided personhood designations become unified and cohesive? For now the “literate, accomplished, propertied and free had to crowd in among slaves, laborers, and craftsmen, and count it no disgrace” (Hart 2009).
The letter writers of the New Testament, of which most are in Paul’s hand, reveal the challenges of merging these previously faceful and faceless communities together. Sarah Ruden’s Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time (2010) is a refreshing text in that it reveals the culture in which these efforts were taking place. Of particular interest to me in this text was her discussion of Paul’s intentions in regards to the sexually objectified, women (also, of course, sexually objectified), and slaves. In these we see the Spirit of Christ breaking the fissure of facefulness opened wider.
Ruden’s contention is when Paul addresses homosexuality, he is indicting the prevalent pederasty of the Greco-Roman world, wherein manhood was not only proved by family and offspring but also by one’s ability to dominate other, weaker men via forced sexual penetration: “The Greeks and Romans thought that the active partner in homosexual intercourse used, humiliated, and physically and morally damaged the passive one.” Therefore, you did not want to be the passive recipient, so you had to prove yourself the brutal, aggressive one: “society pressured a man into a sexual brutality toward other males.” So when Paul takes on homosexuality so aggressively, it is likely he’s referring to this brutalization and the surrounding culture’s encouragement of it. Indeed, Paul is quite clear that sexual intimacy is to be preserved for the marriage bed, wherein your spouse’s face is most intimately honored. No one is ever to be defaced sexually: “and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister” (I Thessalonians 4:6).
And in regard to “sisters,” it is probably discombobulating to some that Paul actually encouraged more rights, more freedoms, more honor than women certainly possessed at that time. When Paul directs all women to be veiled during worship, he is actually seeking to honor all women who attend, regardless of previous “face” status--prostitutes, the discarded, and the otherwise abused. Esteemed women--matrons and widows--wore veils in this culture: an ironic way to feature their facefulness, whereas other women did not merit such honor. However, Paul directs all women to be veiled during worship, so that all will be equally honored, so that all have equal face because that’s their reality before Christ, what Ruden terms “an outrageous equality.”
Of more intriguing controversy in the early Christian era within the Greco-Roman world was Paul’s affirmation that men AND women could decide whether or not to marry. All the sudden the enforced hierarchal, determined role of marriage could be freely entered into or not. Of course, Paul encouraged celibacy for both: the persecution at the time was so intense, he felt it wiser. Still, it was up to them. Much more could be said here: his contention that both should please the other in marriage, not just the woman to the man would also have been revolutionizing in this time period. Yet our culture now assumes it, but its roots are here.
The early cracks of institutional, government ordained slavery appear in the early days of Christianity as well. While Paul could never have conceived of a culture devoid of slavery--it was so ensconced, his following of Christ lead him to conclude that slaves are brothers and sisters to their masters. That in and of itself was a revolutionary thought. Unfortunately, it took us a couple thousand years to carry it to its logical conclusion. Ruden feature Paul’s brief letter Philemon, to whom Paul is writing in regards to Philemon’s escaped slave, Onesimus. Paul encourages Onesimus to return to Philemon, holding Philemon accountable to receiving his former slave as a brother in Christ, an unheard of request in a culture that would have cruelly punished such an offense. Yet Paul desires the Christian community to live out its new reality: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
The most beautiful Face condescended to give each of us a face, regardless of our face-status in this world. Our love for him is measured in our ability to see his face in every face and love them accordingly: “Truly, I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Because of him, our present culture understands some of this, but we have miles to go for its realization. Indeed, may his kingdom come, his will be done. Amen.
Now, of course, I don’t share this to gloss over the horror of lives lost or to assume this faithful account somehow dismisses the questioning of this woefully disturbing violence. However, it is interesting (and touching to me) that America stepped in and transplanted some 4000 of these lost boys to cities across America in what one interviewed professional on the program considered the most successful transplant of foreign peoples in American history. We were moved by facelessness. We wanted them to have a face, to become citizens, to have rights. It’s a powerful, invigorating vision.
We liberally apply the term “person” to everyone, and rightly so, for person is the equivalent of having a face. Yet even for us, history has shown that we’ve not been too willing to extend the notion of facefullness to everyone. The powerful typically have it and the powerless never seem to have enough face, sadly.
Still in the Greco-Roman world, the facelessness of some, if not the majority, of the populace was assumed and justified. David Bentlley Hart’s Atheistic Delusions (so called because he challenges the arguments of some atheists who question the role of Christianity in history) discusses that for those of the “lowest stations--slaves, base-born non-citizens and criminals, the utterly destitute, colonized peoples--legal personality did not really exist, or existed in the most tenuous of forms” and of course, those tenuous forms applied also to the limited extent of women’s possessing “face.” Even the esoteric philosophies of the times were not interested in extending personhood to the masses. The philosopher’s facefilled pensive leisure was purchased by the sweaty brow of the faceless.
In Jerusalem, correct religiosity added to the addenda of acquiring a face. And in order for there always to be a hierarchy--whether in religious circles or otherwise--it was essential that only a powerful few access face and the rest are left faceless.
Yet it is to the faceless that Christ comes. The Gospel accounts are rife with his intentional engagements with the faceless, to the perpetual chagrin of the face-filled powerful. I think that is one of the key characteristics of Jesus’ life to which I’m so drawn. He was so perpetually free from and therefore, dismissive of human power. He talked to whom he wanted when he wanted, was entirely unmoved by human praise or criticism. I believe he has been the only human who was ever only genuinely himself, defined by his capacity to live totally, entirely free from the confining responses of others. He calls us to a similar freedom, but that’s a topic for a different day.
In fact, it was this absolute freedom to love, to grant face to the faceless that made him such a threat to the religious of any type as well as political authority, for earthly authority typically always gathers more face for some and less for others. Christ created the fissure of facefulness that is still rupturing our preconceived notions of face today. Bentley continues: “Conscience, after all, at least in regard to its particular contents, is to a great extent a cultural artifact, a historical contingency, and all of us today in the West, to some degree or another, have inherited a conscience formed by Christian moral ideals. For this reason, it is all but impossible for us to recover any real sense of the scandal that many pagans naturally felt at the bizarre prodigality with which the early Christians were willing to grant full humanity to persons of every class and condition, and of either sex.” Consequently, the merging into one community of people previously separated by clear strata became the key challenge of the early church: how does a community consisting of sharply divided personhood designations become unified and cohesive? For now the “literate, accomplished, propertied and free had to crowd in among slaves, laborers, and craftsmen, and count it no disgrace” (Hart 2009).
The letter writers of the New Testament, of which most are in Paul’s hand, reveal the challenges of merging these previously faceful and faceless communities together. Sarah Ruden’s Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time (2010) is a refreshing text in that it reveals the culture in which these efforts were taking place. Of particular interest to me in this text was her discussion of Paul’s intentions in regards to the sexually objectified, women (also, of course, sexually objectified), and slaves. In these we see the Spirit of Christ breaking the fissure of facefulness opened wider.
Ruden’s contention is when Paul addresses homosexuality, he is indicting the prevalent pederasty of the Greco-Roman world, wherein manhood was not only proved by family and offspring but also by one’s ability to dominate other, weaker men via forced sexual penetration: “The Greeks and Romans thought that the active partner in homosexual intercourse used, humiliated, and physically and morally damaged the passive one.” Therefore, you did not want to be the passive recipient, so you had to prove yourself the brutal, aggressive one: “society pressured a man into a sexual brutality toward other males.” So when Paul takes on homosexuality so aggressively, it is likely he’s referring to this brutalization and the surrounding culture’s encouragement of it. Indeed, Paul is quite clear that sexual intimacy is to be preserved for the marriage bed, wherein your spouse’s face is most intimately honored. No one is ever to be defaced sexually: “and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister” (I Thessalonians 4:6).
And in regard to “sisters,” it is probably discombobulating to some that Paul actually encouraged more rights, more freedoms, more honor than women certainly possessed at that time. When Paul directs all women to be veiled during worship, he is actually seeking to honor all women who attend, regardless of previous “face” status--prostitutes, the discarded, and the otherwise abused. Esteemed women--matrons and widows--wore veils in this culture: an ironic way to feature their facefulness, whereas other women did not merit such honor. However, Paul directs all women to be veiled during worship, so that all will be equally honored, so that all have equal face because that’s their reality before Christ, what Ruden terms “an outrageous equality.”
Of more intriguing controversy in the early Christian era within the Greco-Roman world was Paul’s affirmation that men AND women could decide whether or not to marry. All the sudden the enforced hierarchal, determined role of marriage could be freely entered into or not. Of course, Paul encouraged celibacy for both: the persecution at the time was so intense, he felt it wiser. Still, it was up to them. Much more could be said here: his contention that both should please the other in marriage, not just the woman to the man would also have been revolutionizing in this time period. Yet our culture now assumes it, but its roots are here.
The early cracks of institutional, government ordained slavery appear in the early days of Christianity as well. While Paul could never have conceived of a culture devoid of slavery--it was so ensconced, his following of Christ lead him to conclude that slaves are brothers and sisters to their masters. That in and of itself was a revolutionary thought. Unfortunately, it took us a couple thousand years to carry it to its logical conclusion. Ruden feature Paul’s brief letter Philemon, to whom Paul is writing in regards to Philemon’s escaped slave, Onesimus. Paul encourages Onesimus to return to Philemon, holding Philemon accountable to receiving his former slave as a brother in Christ, an unheard of request in a culture that would have cruelly punished such an offense. Yet Paul desires the Christian community to live out its new reality: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
The most beautiful Face condescended to give each of us a face, regardless of our face-status in this world. Our love for him is measured in our ability to see his face in every face and love them accordingly: “Truly, I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Because of him, our present culture understands some of this, but we have miles to go for its realization. Indeed, may his kingdom come, his will be done. Amen.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
The Reconciliation
In the process of joining a a church several years ago, the pastor wanted to interview me. Since it was a Lutheran church, I assumed he wanted to know just how Lutheran I was or was interested in becoming, so I came in pretty nonchalant.
After exchanging essential pleasantries, he hit me with an obvious, yet completely unexpected question: “Who is Jesus Christ to you?”
I sat there, eyes blinking . . . lump in my throat rising . . . tears welling up. I cried.
“I guess your tears mean Jesus Christ means a lot to you?”
I nodded, inarticulately blubbering through an apology for the awkwardness of it all.
Clearly, Christianity has to have objective qualities to determine the truth or falsity of its claims, yet it’s a highly personal, highly relational, and therefore, a highly subjective belief system as well. Belief system does not do it justice. Christians actually enter into a reconciled relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And as anyone with any relationships knows, a relationship goes quite far beyond mental ascent or creedal acquiescence.
Essential to my relationship with God is the death of Jesus Christ, God-in-flesh, the God-man, Son of God. It seems strange to suggest my relationship with God is dependent upon His sacrificial death, yet if God is God and I am me (which is the case), for the relationship to exist, he must initiate. And he has. And that initiation involved a cost he was willing to pay.
While I fully acknowledge “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19), in this post, I will not so much be addressing the world’s or other people’s reconciliation to God. Instead, I will be focusing on God’s and my reconciliation.
To be reconciled implies that the relationship was previously broken. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been born into a fallen humanity, a humanity estranged from God. For me, that estrangement expressed itself in a distorted identity, wherein I believed accomplishments, achievements, relationships with the right people, having an enviable guy would somehow make me somebody. Of course, it was an identity based on the ever-shifting sands of endless comparisons.
Beyond the distorted identity, justification was another estrangement symptom. My wrongs had to be excused, rationalized, justified, explained away somehow. My hatreds, cruel words, seeing others as means to ends, my negligence and omissions--I had to weave a victimized rationale for it all, even resorting to the standard, “what’s the big deal?” All this so I could still apply the term “good” to myself--a sociological construct reached again only via comparison.
Of course, to some degree I was a victim. Other sinners had hurt me. At times the fear of being the victim encouraged me to be the victimizer or the “go-alonger,” not actively participating in an injustice, yet simply ignoring it. The approval of the identity-bestowers surrounding me carried the day.
I also remember the fear, the fear of the loss of meaning if I failed or lost approval somehow--the symptom of insecure vulnerability--as if the weight of my life was resting on a tenuous point, like an inverted triangle.
Back then, I would not have expressed the above as symptoms of estrangement from God, even though I knew the concept. I just believed it was life. I didn’t link it to anything to do with him. Most Christians in the inherited-belief-system mindset sadly think this way. Their faith is the occasional church thing with no internalization. Yet what is Christianity if its not internalized?
Needless to say, there are more symptoms of estrangement from God than I’ve listed. We live the global, economic, sociological, political, national, natural symptoms. Others live with different individual symptoms. Here, I just wanted to center more on my journey.
God becoming human in Jesus Christ, suffering and dying on the cross is perhaps an unexpected cure--salvation is the word. Yet at multiple levels, his life and death have been and more and more continue to become my salvation. Please note that I’m not particularly focusing on life beyond the grave here. I’m speaking of my now.
In responding affirmingly to God’s initiation of peace and reconciliation, I’ve noticed and continue to experience the following transformations:
I’ve received the gift of identity, the identity of the beloved, the ever-increasing awareness that I’m loved just as I am . . . and not just because a kind, loving family may have said that--their opinion would be clearly biased in my favor. Though that's warm and healthy, for something so vital, I'd prefer something more objective: God’s coming to earth in human form and shedding his blood for our reconciliation establishes my identity as the beloved. “For you know that it was not with perishable things like silver or gold that you were redeemed [...], but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (I Peter 1:17-18). To know that no amount of success or failure, no amount of rejection or approval alters my core identity as someone worth his life is salvation indeed. As a result, it’s freeing to get off the comparison track. I cannot improve on or lessen my identity regardless of how well I compare in any venue. I value the cross as the most concrete, absolute expression of my self-esteem. I’m now free to be me.
My identity is further expressed as I step out from under the weight of my justifications. He has provided for my justification, so I can let go of the rationalizations and face myself frankly in his love: I’m not inherently good, and I’m not putting myself down here. I’m just being honest. If I say I’m good, well that's motivated by comparisons against the broader culture; however, God’s standard for loving motives, words, and deeds is volumes higher than anyone surrounding me. So I can delude myself with my purported "goodness,"but all the designation does is craft my need for rationalizations so I can hang onto the “good” tag. It’s more realistic and honest to be frank about it: I’m not inherently good, but I have inherit worth. I’m a sinner and my rationalizations only distort reality. I need forgiveness. I need genuine justification. I value the cross because it melds the dual realities of my sin and my belovedness. I’m now free to face me.
While yes, the cross does affirm that I am a victimizer--Jesus did die for my sin, it also affirms that I’ve been a victim. In affirming that my sins against others matters, it also demonstrates that others sins against me matters. While we like to downplay our own sins, we tend to “up-play” the sins of others against us. In Christ, both are just as real. Requesting forgiveness never equates to "what's the big deal?" Accepting forgiveness is never saying, “it was no big deal that you hurt me.” Actually, forgiveness is agreeing to absorb the pain of the sin and not exact it from the offender. This is precisely what Christ did: He absorbed the pain of our sin, so not to exact it from us. Christ died for my sins and for the sins of others against me. Therefore, I’m called to forgive. What greater price would I have the offender(s) pay? Is the blood of Christ not good enough? And while salvation lies in my being forgiven, it’s inextricably linked to my forgiveness of others. I value the cross because it represents my forgiveness and my forgiveness of others.
I’ve found it freeing to shift the weight of my life onto Him--it’s peaceful to live without fear, without anxiety. This is not suggest the temptation isn’t there, nor is it to suggest the simplistic notion that placing faith in Christ will eradicate disorders of anxiety, though I’m confident it helps. His presence ensures meaning’s bedrock, even if my intended meaning falters. It’s quite freeing to know I possess something I cannot lose, a foundation that sustains all the vulnerable parts of my world: I’m free to treasure them, yet not insist on needing them. I can affirm and enjoy life’s temporal qualities, knowing there’s an eternal essence behind it all: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13).
God has offered me peace with him, reconciliation to him. He has initiated. He has absorbed the cost of forgiveness. The absolute best decision of my life was to accept. Indeed, my brief sojourn in the land of estrangement confirms my never going back to that.
So as the pastor asked me, I ask you: Who is Jesus Christ to you?
After exchanging essential pleasantries, he hit me with an obvious, yet completely unexpected question: “Who is Jesus Christ to you?”
I sat there, eyes blinking . . . lump in my throat rising . . . tears welling up. I cried.
“I guess your tears mean Jesus Christ means a lot to you?”
I nodded, inarticulately blubbering through an apology for the awkwardness of it all.
Clearly, Christianity has to have objective qualities to determine the truth or falsity of its claims, yet it’s a highly personal, highly relational, and therefore, a highly subjective belief system as well. Belief system does not do it justice. Christians actually enter into a reconciled relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And as anyone with any relationships knows, a relationship goes quite far beyond mental ascent or creedal acquiescence.
Essential to my relationship with God is the death of Jesus Christ, God-in-flesh, the God-man, Son of God. It seems strange to suggest my relationship with God is dependent upon His sacrificial death, yet if God is God and I am me (which is the case), for the relationship to exist, he must initiate. And he has. And that initiation involved a cost he was willing to pay.
While I fully acknowledge “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19), in this post, I will not so much be addressing the world’s or other people’s reconciliation to God. Instead, I will be focusing on God’s and my reconciliation.
To be reconciled implies that the relationship was previously broken. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been born into a fallen humanity, a humanity estranged from God. For me, that estrangement expressed itself in a distorted identity, wherein I believed accomplishments, achievements, relationships with the right people, having an enviable guy would somehow make me somebody. Of course, it was an identity based on the ever-shifting sands of endless comparisons.
Beyond the distorted identity, justification was another estrangement symptom. My wrongs had to be excused, rationalized, justified, explained away somehow. My hatreds, cruel words, seeing others as means to ends, my negligence and omissions--I had to weave a victimized rationale for it all, even resorting to the standard, “what’s the big deal?” All this so I could still apply the term “good” to myself--a sociological construct reached again only via comparison.
Of course, to some degree I was a victim. Other sinners had hurt me. At times the fear of being the victim encouraged me to be the victimizer or the “go-alonger,” not actively participating in an injustice, yet simply ignoring it. The approval of the identity-bestowers surrounding me carried the day.
I also remember the fear, the fear of the loss of meaning if I failed or lost approval somehow--the symptom of insecure vulnerability--as if the weight of my life was resting on a tenuous point, like an inverted triangle.
Back then, I would not have expressed the above as symptoms of estrangement from God, even though I knew the concept. I just believed it was life. I didn’t link it to anything to do with him. Most Christians in the inherited-belief-system mindset sadly think this way. Their faith is the occasional church thing with no internalization. Yet what is Christianity if its not internalized?
Needless to say, there are more symptoms of estrangement from God than I’ve listed. We live the global, economic, sociological, political, national, natural symptoms. Others live with different individual symptoms. Here, I just wanted to center more on my journey.
God becoming human in Jesus Christ, suffering and dying on the cross is perhaps an unexpected cure--salvation is the word. Yet at multiple levels, his life and death have been and more and more continue to become my salvation. Please note that I’m not particularly focusing on life beyond the grave here. I’m speaking of my now.
In responding affirmingly to God’s initiation of peace and reconciliation, I’ve noticed and continue to experience the following transformations:
I’ve received the gift of identity, the identity of the beloved, the ever-increasing awareness that I’m loved just as I am . . . and not just because a kind, loving family may have said that--their opinion would be clearly biased in my favor. Though that's warm and healthy, for something so vital, I'd prefer something more objective: God’s coming to earth in human form and shedding his blood for our reconciliation establishes my identity as the beloved. “For you know that it was not with perishable things like silver or gold that you were redeemed [...], but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (I Peter 1:17-18). To know that no amount of success or failure, no amount of rejection or approval alters my core identity as someone worth his life is salvation indeed. As a result, it’s freeing to get off the comparison track. I cannot improve on or lessen my identity regardless of how well I compare in any venue. I value the cross as the most concrete, absolute expression of my self-esteem. I’m now free to be me.
My identity is further expressed as I step out from under the weight of my justifications. He has provided for my justification, so I can let go of the rationalizations and face myself frankly in his love: I’m not inherently good, and I’m not putting myself down here. I’m just being honest. If I say I’m good, well that's motivated by comparisons against the broader culture; however, God’s standard for loving motives, words, and deeds is volumes higher than anyone surrounding me. So I can delude myself with my purported "goodness,"but all the designation does is craft my need for rationalizations so I can hang onto the “good” tag. It’s more realistic and honest to be frank about it: I’m not inherently good, but I have inherit worth. I’m a sinner and my rationalizations only distort reality. I need forgiveness. I need genuine justification. I value the cross because it melds the dual realities of my sin and my belovedness. I’m now free to face me.
While yes, the cross does affirm that I am a victimizer--Jesus did die for my sin, it also affirms that I’ve been a victim. In affirming that my sins against others matters, it also demonstrates that others sins against me matters. While we like to downplay our own sins, we tend to “up-play” the sins of others against us. In Christ, both are just as real. Requesting forgiveness never equates to "what's the big deal?" Accepting forgiveness is never saying, “it was no big deal that you hurt me.” Actually, forgiveness is agreeing to absorb the pain of the sin and not exact it from the offender. This is precisely what Christ did: He absorbed the pain of our sin, so not to exact it from us. Christ died for my sins and for the sins of others against me. Therefore, I’m called to forgive. What greater price would I have the offender(s) pay? Is the blood of Christ not good enough? And while salvation lies in my being forgiven, it’s inextricably linked to my forgiveness of others. I value the cross because it represents my forgiveness and my forgiveness of others.
I’ve found it freeing to shift the weight of my life onto Him--it’s peaceful to live without fear, without anxiety. This is not suggest the temptation isn’t there, nor is it to suggest the simplistic notion that placing faith in Christ will eradicate disorders of anxiety, though I’m confident it helps. His presence ensures meaning’s bedrock, even if my intended meaning falters. It’s quite freeing to know I possess something I cannot lose, a foundation that sustains all the vulnerable parts of my world: I’m free to treasure them, yet not insist on needing them. I can affirm and enjoy life’s temporal qualities, knowing there’s an eternal essence behind it all: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13).
God has offered me peace with him, reconciliation to him. He has initiated. He has absorbed the cost of forgiveness. The absolute best decision of my life was to accept. Indeed, my brief sojourn in the land of estrangement confirms my never going back to that.
So as the pastor asked me, I ask you: Who is Jesus Christ to you?
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