The Road Goes Ever On and On

Man, the Glorious Ruin

Last post I shared my personal experience as a hybrid, a mix of good and evil.  I'd like to borrow from Francis Schaeffer and broaden that idea.  It was Schaeffer, by the way, who coined the title of this post.

Glorious ruin.  A very keen insight into human nature.  We are created in the image of God, lovingly designed and bestowed with gifts and powers similar to our creator, if not in extent.  But the gospel also points to our fallenness, our need of a savior.  We are ruined by sin, disconnected from our original intent and purpose, which is to know God, enjoy him forever, and reveal his glory. 

Instead of living for the glory of God, however, we live for number one, numero uno, me, myself and I.  Our selfishness separates us from God, each other and ultimately ourselves, for if we are living for our own pleasure and not God's pleasure, we rebel against our fundamental reason for being.   Fulfillment never comes from a steadfast focus on ourselves, even if it is a passionate desire for self-improvement.

Most of us focus on one half of our nature and ignore the other.  Some folks have low self-esteem, seeing only the ruin.  Others succumb to pride and see only their own glorious potential or current greatness.  Oh, we might piously speak about our faults, but if we truly face the extent of our sinfulness, it would be devastating, so we pretend it's all "under the blood."  But we are a mix of both good and evil, and denying one or the other is unwise.

God sees us just as we are and loves us dearly.  He knows our potential and greatness.  He also knows our ruin, the ugly side we desperately try to hide.  When we view ourselves as we really are, we can grieve our fallenness, and graciously accept God's grace.  We can accept our humanity and limitations and live honestly.  We embrace the fact that we can't live up to our full potential every day.  There are just too many variables, known and unknown, in our heart, emotions and world to live on top all the time.  But the love which envelopes us doesn't draw away in the presence of imperfection.  To the contrary, it is the needy cry of our hearts which draws God close to us, not our accomplishments.

But we can also humbly accept the compliments given when we do come through.  When I'm there for my kids, when I say or do just the right thing for my wife, I can feel good about being the husband and father God intended me to be.  But my worth doesn't depend on my performance.  So the flip side is that when I don't come through, when I'm tired, grouchy, or just plain selfish, it doesn't devastate a fragile ego because I'm not trying to maintain a fictional character, the perfect, awesome "Me."

So failure doesn't destroy us and accomplishments don't validate us.  We are glorious ruins, people with faults but also  great strength; in a word, hybrids.  The pressure is off.  We are free to be real people, that beautiful, volatile mix of all things human.  We can receive both correction and compliments, avoiding depression or pride.  We can succeed, we can fail, we can be known by God and others and mostly we can live and take risks because the father will never stop loving us. 

Life as a Hybrid

I read once about a family that adopted a hybrid dog.  It was half-dog and half-wolf.  The hybrid apparently made a great pet.  Until it attacked their son and killed him. 

Being a human being, and specifically a man, is a similar situation.  I'm not saying I'll go out and kill someone, but the seeds of murder do lie within my sin nature, and to deny that fact is arrogance.

Men are like the force; we all have a light side and a dark side.  Every day we choose the impulses to which we will listen and respond.  We have all experienced both the good side and dark side of masculine strength.  The good side is found in the policeman and fireman that put their lives on the line for our safety, or the good samaritan who stops to help us change a tire.  The bad side can be discovered in the abusive father, the cantankerous old man, or the Bernie Madoff shyster.  But the world isn't divided into good men and bad men.  As Solzhenitsyn once said, the line dividing good and evil is found in every human heart.

I will be a hybrid till the day I die.  What blows my mind is to see them operate at the same time.  For instance, I've been in situations where a young, single, attractive female is in genuine need of masculine strength and encouragement.  I've been able to step into a fatherly role and speak into her life.  While doing this, the wolf side of me whispers in my ear about taking advantage of her vulnerability.  The needy part of me that wants feminie attention would like to take this opportunity for self-gratification. In those instances, I choose to take life or give life.  Fortunately, by the grace of God and solid, intentional accountability, I haven't acted out on my dark side in those situations.  But the temptation is there.

I long for the day when the church will be more open to using and accepting men as they are, not the angels they wish we were.  Jesus attracted and discipled men, hybrids like me whom he redeemed and used for his kingdom. They could be real in his presence, and still accepted.  It's much easier to deny the dark side and pretend our churches have only perfect men and women with their lives all together.  But reality eventually bites. 

Land of the Free

Yesterday I read something by Eugene Peterson (the guy who translated The Message) commenting about why he wrote one of his books.  In essence, he wrote the book (can't remember the title, sorry) as a pastor concerned about American Christianity.  His main idea was that those living in the land of the free and the home of the brave should have a bit more spontaneity in their lives.   Instead, we live very boring, secure, insulated lives.

I don't want to come across as a cultural critic, because I value security just like the next guy.  But you can't take all the variables out of life, nor should  you try.  That is where faith comes in.

As a man who is stepping over the threshold of middle age, I find myself bored in many ways.  Don't get me wrong; I don't want to hear that my wife has cancer or one of my kids has a meth addiction.  But does our demand to insulate ourselves from the messiness of life also insulate us from some of its blessings?  It can be like the couple who refuses to have kids because they fear bringing them into the world, they aren't sure they can afford them, or they just don't want to sacrifice a secure income. And then you miss out on one of life's greatest blessings, nurturing another human being to maturity. Yes it is messy, risky, and downright difficult.  But the payoff can be one of the greatest joys in human experience.

I want to live more like Jesus, who didn't have a place to lay his head, yet lived to the full, in dependence on his Father, bringing the coming Kingdom into the world now.

Modern life can confine and even imprison us in our security, simply because we don't want to take risks or mess with the challenges.  But I'm asking God to show me how to live with "responsible irresponsibility instead of irresponsible responsibility" (Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase).  I'm asking God to lead me from the secure slavery of Egypt into the unknown freedom of the promised land.

You Just Don't Get Me

"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" - Matthew 5:10

We have come to the end of the road.  Jesus, the original maverick (sorry, McCain), again pitches conventional wisdom on its head and ends not with "they lived happily ever after", but has to go and mention the "P" word, persecution.

The ending IS happy, in that we are now identified with God and His kingdom.  The unfortunate part is that those whose lives are not shaped by kingdom values will not understand us, even fear us and ultimately persecute us.

There are many reasons, and I won't claim to know them all.  Some may hate us because they have chosen at some point along the beatitudes road to leave it, and our lives convict them.  Others may be totally unfamiliar with the road, and persecute us because they do not understand our passion and love for God, that nothing else in this world can satisfy us.  Others simply want to rid the world of boundaries, including the ones we live within; our insistence that we are meant to live in loving obedience to the Father galls them.

The reasons are many and the bottom line is to not come unglued when persecution comes.  It will.  But at the end of the road, a kingdom without walls or ceiling, a kingdom without boundaries, a kingdom infused with the presence of our beloved is ours.  Will we suffer in the short term for this?

The Family Business

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be sons of God" - Matthew 5:9

Near the end of the beatitudes, we come to the end of a long journey.  From acknowledging our poverty before God, we finally arrive at a place where we resemble Him.  After going through the process, we do the work of the Father.

Notice we aren't known primarily as peaceful; we make peace in the world.  That takes guts.  UN Peacekeepers don't usually do tours of duty in the Bahamas, they travel to war zones and make peace. 

As peacemakers, our lives reflect the heart of our Father God who gave everything to bring shalom (wholeness, peace, and well-being) to our lives.  We walk as Jesus walked, inviting others to walk the same journey we are traveling.  As we walk, we are still destitute on our own, we still mourn, we suffer, we hunger and thirst, but ultimately we are involved in the family business, i.e., seeing people made whole in a loving relationship to their Father.

The primary example of Jesus was a life lived in total obedience to the Father.  At the end of the beatitudes road, our lives will be known by the same characteristic.  The result is peace within and the ability to share it with others by our living example.

 

Purity = Focus

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."

When I was growing up, the common interpretation of this verse would have a lot to do with your outward appearance.  Hairstyle and clothes for the men generally made you look like a narcotics agent.  Things were more strict for the women; you had to look like your husband's mother in order to reflect purity; that meant prairie dresses past the knee and your hair bunched on top of your head in what was called a "beehive."  Not only your appearance, but your conversation, interests and pursuits had to strictly adhere with approved "Christian" topics.  It made for a very plain, vanilla, and to a kid, a very boring culture.  I don't want to stereotype or make caricatures out of some very loving, giving, and yes, holy people; there are also good memories of a vibrant church community, but the  legalism left a bitter aftertaste. 

Holiness, or purity, had a lot to do with how you presented yourself in accordance with the approved conservative agenda.  How pointless it all seems now.  Jesus's words to the pharisees, that outside they were nicely tended gravesites, but inside full of dead men's bones is most revealing.  Purity doesn't have a lot to do with your appearance; it is all about the heart.

And purity here seems to mean focus.  Is God your one and only hope?  Or do you trust in a lot of things to make life work, like income, career, possessions, etc.?  By the time a person has walked through the beatitudes and arrived here, they realize nothing in themselves makes them acceptable to God.  They have given up and mourned the loss of finding fulfillment in anything other than  God, and he is the focus of their life.  And that pretty much defines  purity of heart; there isn't room for much else in the passions of your heart than for God alone. 

It isn't a legalistic decision, that in order to find God you must forsake everything else.  No, it is more of a desperate cry of the heart, that nothing else satisfies, so those things do not dictate the course of your life.  Instead of holiness from the outside in, trying to look holy in order to be holy, it is from the inside out; your purity of heart dictates the course of your life.  And when your life asks, seeks and knocks for God, you are given the promise that you will find him (Matthew 7:7).

Mercy and the Upwardly Mobile

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."

Jesus seems to be saying that it is important to show mercy because you are definitely going to need it one day.  But mercy doesn't seem to be very popular right now.  We live in the spin zone, where everyone tries to impress everyone else.  I find this especially true in the coporate world, and sadly, in the church world too.  If you want a job in a falling economy, you are competing with thousands if not tens of thousands of others.  The pressure to appear super-human or perhaps even as a demi-god of organizational genius is tremendous.  If you have the slightest flaw, well, we can find someone apparently flawless.  And don't even think about putting anything honest or personal on facebook or twitter; the corporate world is watching.  Talk about living in glass houses.

A near cousin of corporate perfection is christian perfection.  For heaven's sake, don't let anyone see your flaws, especially if you are a pastor or church leader!  Don't let people get too close, or the cracks will show.  Hire only the best qualified, Christ-like saints available.  At the slightest whiff of carnality or humanity, call the next candidate. Once hired, If they disappoint or reach their potential prematurely, let them go.  We can't waste time fooling with second-string workers, the harvest is plentiful now.  Oh yes, the church can be just as merciless as the cubicle.

But if you look at Jesus discipling a band of tax collectors, fishermen and blue-collar workers to be his leaders, it makes an amazing contrast.  Look as Jesus patiently takes a towel and washes the disciples' feet after they argued over "who is the greatest."  Look at them failing Jesus in the hour of his greatest need at Gethsemane, yet they go on to lead his church.  See Jesus as he gently restores Peter to productive ministry after his denial.  When Jesus made disciples, it was merciful, time-consuming, grossly inefficient and messy.  And  I thank God for mentors who like Jesus and had enough mercy to deal with my mess too.  Somehow they understood that people are more important to the kingdom than the church's vision statement.

I believe that when God's people create an atmosphere of mercy in his church, it presents one of the most beautiful and inviting witnesses of the gospel on the planet.  And it brings God's kingdom to earth like nothing else.  The world is starving for mercy.  Let's share it!

Hunger and Thirst; Dealing with Emptiness

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

This is the hardest beattitude for me to live out.  I hate being hungry and thirsty.  I hate any kind of emptiness or delayed gratification.  Fasting, as you can imagine, is not a strength of mine.

One of the keys to living in this world is dealing with unfulfilled longing, i.e., hunger and thirst.  When I first encountered Jesus and started learning about him, I understood this verse as a pre-Christ thing; when you come to Jesus, boom, you are filled.  Later I thought it was a voluntary thing, like fasting, where I purposefully hungered for revivial, or a deeper experience. Pray enough, fast enough, and you become a full, spiritually mature Christian.  How arrogant I was, trying to use God to make me feel better.  What I've come to realize is that the hunger is an ongoing desire. 

C.S. Lewis once said that if you find yourself longing for something you can't find in this world, maybe it's because you were made for another.  How can a lover of Jesus, someone who lives for intimacy with him and his Father, find fulfillment in a world that is not yet totally infused with his presence?  I used to hide my emptiness and longing, feeling shame for having it.  Now I understand it as an awakening of desire for the only thing that will truly satisfy: intimacy with God.

The current struggle for me is to avoid using legitimate and illlegitimate pleasures like food, sex, porn, alcohol, spending, relationships, ministry, you name it, to fill my emptiness.  Instead, I strive to offer my hunger and thirst as worship, allow God to enlarge my soul for eternity with him.  He graciously gives foretastes of his presence every now and then, and they whet my appetite for more.  But my soul still aches for that day when "I shall be filled."  Until then, I consider my hunger and thirst for righteousness as one of the most flattering forms of worship I can offer.

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. 

I Have A Grievance (Beatitudes Part 2)

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). 

"OK, Jesus, I'm willing to forgo the comfort if we can also forgo the mourning.  Pain sucks."  Just keeping it real.

But somewhere in this process, Jesus works the miracle of salvation (that is the blessing). The process looks something like a bad American Idol audition.  Step one, reality check; Simon Cowell pops your bubble.  Step two, grieve the death of your fantasized self, or even more pitifully, live in denial and keep trying to impress your drunk friends at the local karaoke bar. 

Salvation doesn't cost you anything except your idolized self.  Once the reality hits, you grieve.  It's only natural, and Jesus makes allowances for it.  Don't you find it interesting that Alcoholics Anonymous, or any of the other 12 step programs, are among the more successful addiction programs?  And step one is admitting we cannot help ourselves, we are powerless.  That is being poor in spirit, and grieving the fact that we cannot save or control ourselves; WE NEED A SAVIOR!

But it goes beyond what happens in our hearts.  Our whole world is broken.  We grieve reality.  As a pastor, I've seen it many times.  I've seen the pain, the denial, the far-away look of unbelief in the eyes of someone who just lost a loved one.  We weren't made for death or a fallen world.  We were made for life and eternity.  And when the reality of our brokeness hits, it hurts like hell.

I've seen parents grieve kids running wild when they did everything they knew to raise them right.  I've seen grief over failed careers, broken marriages,betrayal, and the list goes on. 

The only option other than grief when we finally realize we ain't living in heaven is denial; pretend we can have our best life now, that I am in control, that life is always good.  The blessing of salvation is only for those who first go through the pain of recognizing their need and lack, and the acceptance of something better to come.