The Road Goes Ever On and On

Meekness Isn't Weakness, And Other Half Truths

What with a computer crash and end of school year demands, my blog has suffered.  If anyone decides to continue following, thanks for your patience.  I had started a series based on the beattitudes.  I'll pick up where we left off:

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."  Jesus continues with his habit of turning traditional wisdom on its head. 

To recap, Jesus is taking us on a journey of what salvation looks like.  Step one, we are all of us spiritually destitutute, beggars, poor in spirit.  We cannot save ourselves, and are blessed when we accept this truth.  Step two, when the reality of our true condition confronts us, like a drunk finally embracing his problem, we mourn the wasted years of living in denial.  We grieve as we let go of our fantasy, the idolized self that says we are the master of our destiny or the captain of our souls.  We are blessed when we face the truth, allowing it to begin the process of change.

Step three is a total sell-out to God the Father through Jesus Christ, inviting him to come and bring his riches, his righteousness and strength to fix the mess we have made of our lives.  It is an acknowledgement of our limitations, and an active humility to follow his lead.

It is the most unappreciated of the beattitudes, based on the self-help or church growth books that are popular in Christian circles today.  They seem to borrow extensively from the business world or pop-psychology.  The thought seems to be that you can have what you want, you can be a success if you just work hard.  Jesus doesn't seem to be saying that.  If our world is fallen and we are broken, how is any amount of effort on our part going to change that?  We need a saviour.  Then the power of the kingdom invades our world through our obedience and reliance upon Jesus.  We are blessed not when we get our own way, but when we yeild to Jesus' wisdom and power instead of trying to be our own god.

The best illustration I've ever seen of meekness I heard from a Lakota Sioux.  All young males will take a spiritual journey, entering the wilderness to fast and pray four days.  The one question they pray is "Oh Great Mystery, how best can my life be offered to all living things?"  That is meekness.   We do not see all ends.  What we think of as the waste or loss of our lives could actually make the biggest difference in the world.  Look at the cross. 

Changed by Creativity

Books, music, movies; authors, performers, directors and actors.  Surely I'm not the only one who's been touched and changed by the creative arts.  I'm going to take a risk and put myself out there, hoping like Robinson Crusoe to find his Friday.  So here goes:

 Is there  anyone else out there who can say their life has been profoundly changed by a book, movie, or music, or am I just a freak?

What did it for me?  If I had to choose among many, I'd have to choose The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  First, he showed me that God can impregnate your art and life to a degree that can be felt, tasted, or touched, and yet not mentioned directly.  You don't get this from the movies necessarily, but definitely from the books.  Secondly, I could relate to the longing for the undying lands (heaven) that the characters of Middle Earth felt.  Along with C.S. Lewis's thoughts on desire, it legitimized my longing.

I could also mention The Matrix, The Education of Little Tree (Forest Carter), Braveheart, and Run with the Horses (Eugene Peterson).  So, anybody else brave enough to admit works in popular culture touched your heart?

Change Happens; Are You Ready?

After school today, my daughter Anne and I went to Borders Books and Music to do some Christmas shopping.  I love bookstores, especially Borders.  I like Barnes and Noble well enough, but they make their employees wear kakhis.  Don't ask me why this bothers me, but I like the "Hippyish" atmosphere at Borders as opposed to the Yuppy feel at Barnes and Noble.

They say that Borders may not make it as a company.  The Big Box stores like Costco and online sellers like Amazon.com may wipe it off the map.  I'll be very sad if that happens.  I know in this day and age, books are not what you think of if you ponder a start-up company.  The profit margins are tight, amd the overhead just to handle, ship and store books is high.  But then again, try telling that to Mr. Bezos when he started Amazon.

Maybe the physical bookstore will go the way of the Studebaker.  Heck, they say electronic readers will replace tree-based books one day.  I'll grieve the loss of the books as I know them, and the stores that sells them.  There's something about the smell, feel, and experience of a book and bookstore. But if you indulge nostalgia too much, you stop growing. 

Like Amazon, the key is adapting to change.  You can fight it, resist it or embrace it.  I choose to embrace it.  You cannot stop the future from coming, but you can take part in it.  I hope Borders can be creative and do whatever it needs to do to survive as a brick and mortar bookseller.  And I hope I can adapt to whatever changes may come, and be able to offer something to the world too.

Praise God for Heretics

One of my favorite bloggers is Seth Godin.  He is one of these guys who seems to be one step ahead of the crowd, anticipating what is coming in terms of cultural change.  He has written several good books on marketing and change, his most recent, Tribes.  For what it's worth, I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to see change in their jobs, businesses, churches or even the world at large.  This book will empower you.

Among the many great observations he makes was one he borrowed from the religious community.  He used the terms of faith, religion and heretic to draw some interesting conclusions on the nature of change and change agents. 

To understand his reasoning, you must first understand the difference he sees between faith and religion.  Faith is the foundational beliefs, the truth that changes lives and gives us direction.  Religion is the institutionalization of the faith.  It is the dogmas, practices and approved activities that are built up around  the faith.  When it helps folks understand and embrace the faith, the religion is good.  The problem with it is that it typically resists change.  When the world around religion changes, the religion doesn't want to.  It tries to engage a world that no longer exists, answering questions no one is asking anymore.  Or it pulls itself away from the culture at large and creates its own sub-culture. 

Enter the heretic.  He embraces the faith, but rejects the religion.  The religion is threatened by him, because the religious equate the religion with the faith.  But the heretic rightly recognizies when the religion has lost touch and is actually hindering the faith.  He offers new ideas, challenging the religion to present the faith in culturally relevant ways.  And  he is persecuted for his efforts.

Godin is writing primarily for the business world, which has its own religious system.  But dang!  He hits the church world squarely on the mark.  This did several things for me.  First, it freed me from bitterness I've held towards churches or denominations that refuse to change.  This is human nature;  we value security over innovation.  It's best not to take it personally.

Second, it helped me to see that change comes when heretics are willing to step up and lead with new ideas, in spite of the persecution the established religion throws at them.  I would go so far as to say no meaningful change can come unless someone is willing to pay the price to see it.  It began with Jesus, it continued with Martin Luther, and continues with those willing to take a risk and see the church become what it needs to be to reach the world.  If that's you, you are in great company.  Praise God for heretics!

A New BHAG

My wife's family is from Serbia.  Her mother can tell many stories about fleeing from the Germans at the start of WWII, living in London during the Blitz, and traveling by ocean liner with U-boats about.  I love her stories.

Anyway, my wife Kosa still has lots of family in Serbia, and her cousin Andreja sent us a link to an old European walking path built in 1901, we think in Spain.  When I saw this, my heart leaped.  I"ve gotta do this!  I made walking it a new BHAG for myself.  Check it out:

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1438490562&channel=1408963331

By the way, if you are unfamiliar with the term, BHAG stands for a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  Mark Batterson has a lot to say about it in is new book Wild Goose Chase.  I think the term was coined by Jim Collins of Good to Great fame.  Regardless of its origin, I think we all need a few God-given BHAG's.  

But they go beyond new experiences.  A BHAG may mean leaving a safe, secure, dead-end, soul-shrinking job and pursuing the work God called you to do.  It might mean stopping long enough to search your heart and discover the passion God has put within you.  Here's a hint: it will be work that makes you come alive, not dread another day.  It will involve risk.  That is the nature of a BHAG, and the only way to find God's best.  Like the path you see in the video, walking out your Big, Hairy Audacious Goals isn't safe, it's risky.  But sooner or later I think we all realize that playing it safe is the most dangerous thing we can do with our soul, and taking a risk is the best thing.

The Shack

Ok, I've just read my last review of The Shack.  Just for the record, I read it and LOVED it.  I mean, if the book were a woman and I were single, I'd be down on one knee and ask her to marry me.

But what burns my biscuits are the self-styled theologians who pick it apart.  It seems that if you don't cut and paste huge swaths of scripture or their approved systematic theology text books, you can't write anything about God without being labelled a heretic.  Some of these guys need to start doing some living out of their emotions instead of completely out of their heads (in more ways than one ;>).

When I read it, I understood Young's analogy.  The shack is that ugly place in your life, the place everybody has that is your most dreaded failure, nightmare, sin, etc.  You want to board it up and forget it.  But our sin, our failure, our place of greatest weakness is where God waits to meet us.  It is where we find salvation.  God is in our shack waiting for us to meet him there and come to terms with it.  And until you do, you will not live.

William Young isn't writing a theology textbook on the trinity.  He's writing about all of us, our need to encounter God in our broken, messed up life.  Maybe he doesn't cross all the theological "T's" or dot all the theological "i's", but he sure as hell wrote a book that is opening a lot of hearts to God's love and forgiveness.

So bottom line for me is this: I'm sick of hearing these guys say, "Leave writing about God to us professionals, don't try this at home."  "The Shack" isn't great literature, and probably won't be a classic.  But in the spirit of the incarnation, it is making reality of God's heart towards us real to the current generation.  Read it and weep.   

(By the way, I'll finish my current string regarding community next post; sorry for the interruption, but they got up my gumption).