Freedom of speech is an opportunity, not an excuse

Posted on January 17, 2015 by salooper57

On the same day that twelve people were killed in the attack on the French satirical weekly paper Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly), I heard a commentator interviewed on National Public Radio say that people “are going to, you know, perhaps hesitate for a moment, think about security considerations. And that has a chilling effect on free speech…”

I had to stop and think about stopping and thinking. Was this commentator saying that hesitating for a moment and thinking about security concerns (or anything else – people’s feelings, for example) was somehow am unwarranted limitation on free speech?

The killings at Charlie Hebdo were wicked and inexcusable, and decent people everywhere must say so. But I very much doubt they were an attack on free speech. The murderers were not plotting to curtail free speech but to take revenge and, perhaps, as The Christian Science Monitor conjectured, to radicalize other French Muslims.

Charlie Hebdo’s free speech, exercised week after week, was rude, crude and intended to offend. While I defend their right to free speech, even if it is offensive, I also exercise my right to criticize what they say. Je ne suis pas Charlie – “I am not Charlie.”

Making fun of people, mocking their values and beliefs, and offending their sensibilities is not a way to promote positive social change. Such behavior betrays an arrogant conceit and a narrow outlook. It may be necessary to allow people to speak in such ways, even necessary to defend their right to speak like this, but that does not mean we approve of or condone what they say.

As a student of Jesus, I have learned that speech – what we say and how and why we say it – is of the utmost importance. Indeed, Jesus taught us that “by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Freedom of speech is a political concern, and a vitally important one, at that. But the truthfulness of speech, and the love in which it is spoken, is a spiritual concern that is of even greater import.

Speech is, by its nature, revelatory; that is, our speech reveals who we are on the inside, under the layers of social sediment and public pretense. Jesus explained, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” As such, speech, when properly understood, expresses a person’s heart – his or her values, hurts, and commitments.

This is especially true of unguarded speech. A preacher’s unplanned remarks will likely reveal more about who he is than his carefully crafted sermons. A politician’s speech on the Senate floor may hide his true designs, but his speech on the sofa in his den will reveal them.

Because Jesus understood how this works, he said that “men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.” It’s the careless, unplanned words that most clearly reveal character.

Jesus taught his students to refrain from using speech to manipulate others into a course of action, even if that course of action would prove helpful to the other person. He disallowed the use of rejection or condemnation as a means of forcing people into doing the right thing.

Jesus also cautioned his students against trying to talk their way to success. For many people, speech is nothing but a tool to get what they want, and they know all the tricks of the trade – rhetorical devises, exaggeration, sales techniques – to make that happen. But Jesus says, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

A Christian’s speech ought to build people up, not tear them down. St. Paul said, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up …” For the Christian, freedom of speech is not an excuse to belittle people but an opportunity to help them, build them up, and make the world a better place.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/17/15

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Salvation-lite: Great Benefits…Less Responsibility?

Posted on January 10, 2015 by salooper57

It was once quite common to hear people say, “I was saved in Vacation Bible School,” or “I was saved in a small group Bible study.” What did they mean by that? Saved from what? Saved for what? In what sense saved?

There was a time when the church employed salvation language frequently, but in the mainline church that changed years ago and has, more recently, been changing in evangelical circles, too. Salvation-talk is out of fashion. No one these day wants to say, “I’m saved.” It seems self-focused and more than a little politically incorrect.

And yet the Bible is full of salvation talk. Salvation is seen as our most pressing need and as God’s great concern. That may be difficult for us to understand because in our time the breadth and richness of salvation has been drastically understated. Breadth and richness don’t sell in a culture that produces lite beer, lite soft drinks, lite computer software and lite radio stations. We want to reduce the calories, reduce the complexity and reduce the effort of just about everything, including salvation. So we have salvation lite: Great Benefits…Less Responsibility.

What is salvation lite? It’s what’s left of the rich biblical teaching about God’s salvation after cutting everything from it that is not about me. When that’s been done, the only thing left to salvation is a free trip to heaven when I die. That’s salvation lite.

I once urged a young man to give his life to God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He told me that there would always be time for that later, and he was planning to do a lot of living until then. When he was old, he said, “Like in my seventies, then I’ll get religion; then I’ll get saved.”

Where did he get the idea that he could put God on hold for fifty years? What made him think that salvation was unnecessary until he came to death’s door? Sadly, his reasoning was based on the salvation lite teaching he had heard from church people. In his mind – and in most people’s minds – salvation remains inoperative and irrelevant until one dies. It is a boarding pass to be produced at death so that you can fly to the heavenly skies.

Such an idea of salvation would have been incomprehensible to Peter, Paul and the rest of the early church. For them, salvation was rooted in God’s actions in history, bloomed at the coming of Christ and will come to fruition at his return. They understood that, though God’s great work of salvation is unfolding all around us, salvation is not our personal property. Individuals may and must be saved, but that doesn’t mean salvation is individualistic.

In recent years our nation has gone through a spiritual earthquake, but reclining in her spiritual La-Z-Boy, the Church has hardly noticed. We are in the midst of a mass exodus from the Church and from Christianity – perhaps ours is the time of apostasy to which the Apostle Paul referred. (According to the last census, the number of people claiming no religious affiliation was the fastest growing religious category among Americans. It also showed that over one-third of the people who now call themselves irreligious are under the age of 30.)

I’m sure there are a variety of reasons for this apostasy, but one of the main ones is this: the salvation offered by the Church seems to a growing number of people to have nothing to do with real life. It seems completely irrelevant. It hasn’t even occurred to them that salvation might be important to their relationships and their work and their satisfaction in life.

But that is because they don’t understand salvation. They think of it as a boarding pass for a trip they don’t want to take to a place they don’t care to see. In reality, salvation is a rich, satisfying (and eternal) life – “more and better life than they ever dreamed of” (John 10:10, the message).

First Published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, January 10, 2015

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We need the Answerer more than the answers

Posted on January 1, 2015 by salooper57

Our church has been on an emotional roller coaster in the last few weeks. We had three young families, all expecting their first babies within a few days of Christmas. The first of the babies, a beautiful little girl named Christina Rose, had a heartbeat when her family reached the hospital parking lot, but was stillborn. Christina’s family thought that her memorial service message might help other families grieving lost. What follows are excerpts from that message.

“Christina Rose spent nine months with Zach and Kathryn, and since the day they first realized she was with them, she’s been the biggest thing in their lives. These were exciting days, filled with anticipation. They talked to her, probably sang to her and told her she was loved. And Christina was apparently a very social child: when they spoke, she responded. When they sang, she did a jig. And she could kick like Mia Hamm. They may have thought she would be a future soccer star.

“The Kiehnau’s were getting to know their daughter before she was even born. They already had ideas of what her personality was like – the girl had an attitude, waving her arms and kicking her legs when dad came home and dancing around when she heard grandpa’s and grandma’s voices. Kathryn and Zach were beginning to wonder what is was going to be like to raise this little live-wire. And they were not only getting to know their daughter, they were coming to love her more and more, as were their families.

“If you’re like me, you wonder “why?” Why would a loving God let this life be conceived, why would he let Kathryn carry this child for nine months, why would he let Zach and Kathryn give this baby a name and fall in love with her, even before they met her, if he wasn’t going to let her survive her birth?

“Now please understand: I am not suggesting that God is to blame for Christina Rose’s death. He didn’t do this to her – or to you. He is not putting you through this pain because of some secret reason, or even for “your own good” — though nothing can stop him from using even this for good. (He knows from personal experience that even the terrible and unjust death of a dearly loved child – in itself entirely evil – can bring about great good.) But he did not do this to you. Yet we think, even if he didn’t do this, he could have stopped it. There’s the rub. He could have stopped it, and he didn’t. So why?

“The answer to that question – or answers (there may be millions) are beyond our ability to comprehend. But let’s go back to the original question: Why would a loving God let Christina Rose be conceived if he didn’t intend her to survive her birth?

“Framed that way, the question casts doubt on the goodness of God, doesn’t it? But I think it is the wrong way to frame the question, because it grossly misrepresents the situation. Christina Rose did survive her birth. The loving God did not allow her to be conceived and become a human being in order to die but in order to live forever. It’s true – and it is very sad for us – that she is not living here, but she is living.

“So let’s frame the question another way, which I think more accurately represents the situation. Why would a kind and loving God allow Christina to be conceived, even though she wasn’t going to live here on earth? And now the answer leaps out at us: he wanted her to be conceived so that she could be his forever; so that she could live and thrive and become something so magnificent that we cannot yet imagine it. He wanted for her the same thing he wants for all of us: glory and love and joy inexpressible, and not even her death can disrupt his plan. Our path has led through an extended preparation period on earth. Hers did not, yet God created her and us with the same end in mind.

“But why let her spend nine months becoming part of Zach’s and Kathryn’s lives? Why let them fall in love with her, if they were only going to lose her? But they haven’t lost her. They know where she is and they will meet her again. And the next time they meet, it will not be in sorrow but in joy, overflowing joy, joy too great for a human to contain; joy that will spill out of them onto all those around them; joy that will overflow those around them and return to its source in God.

“I think that on the day you first meet her in heaven, you will recognize her. You won’t say, “Is that her? Is that her?” but, “There she is!” And how glorious she will be. Her whole being will radiate joy and gladness and power, so that you will be astonished and filled with wonder and gratitude that God allowed you the great privilege of bringing this glorious creature to life in his world. And you will love her. That love will not be diminished by the intervening years, nor will it be clouded by the grief that accompanied her entrance into the world. You will see her and your heart will leap for joy.

“And she will see you, and she will not say, “Is that them? Is that my mom and dad, and grandmas and grandpas and uncles and aunts?” She will know you. She will honor you – her parents and her family – as God’s chosen instruments through which she came to be. And she will love you. For you too will radiate joy and gladness and power, though you may not be aware of it. And then you and she will fall silent or better yet, find yourself singing – for in that land all that is not silence is music – because you will stand in the presence of Joy himself, shining like the sun and full of gladness and power.

“In that day you will need no more answers. You will have been answered, and your questions will already have been forgotten. I’ve heard people say, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get to heaven is ask God why” – why my daughter died, why my wife left, why he allowed a drunk driver to take my husband; there are all kinds of questions. But the truth is, if we are so graced as to get to heaven, to stand in the presence of Eternal Joy, we will no more think of those questions than a man in his prime agonizes over the difficulties of his time in the womb.

“Because you see, we do not need answers as badly as we need the Answerer. Answers can satisfy our minds and still leave our souls starved and perishing. The Answerer satisfies our souls, comforts us in our grief, and gives us hope. And when we’ve met the Answerer, the strangest thing begins to happen: we, who were insisting upon an answer, actually become his answer. It’s what the apostle had in mind when he wrote about, “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” We become the Answerer’s answer to others in their time of suffering.

“All this is because Christ is the answer God spoke to us. His suffering became the source of our comfort. His death becomes the source of our life. On this difficult day I commend you to him, our hope for eternal life and our grace to live this life to the full. Amen.”

 *******************

 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new!” (Revelation 21:3-5a)

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Away – or rather, the way – in a manger

Posted on December 20, 2014 by salooper57

A man asked God how long a million years was to him. God replied, “It’s just like a single second of your time, my child.” So the man asked, “And what about a million dollars?” The Lord replied, “To me, it is just like a single penny.” So the man mustered his courage and said, “Well, Lord, could you spare me just one of your pennies?” And God said, “Certainly, my child; just a second.”

God just doesn’t seem to see things the way we see them, nor does he always do things the way we would like them done. We want our friend to be healed; he is not. We want the bank to come through on that loan; it does not. We want our adult children to live near us; their jobs scatter them throughout the country. Why doesn’t God get with the program?

But the biblical witness, along with the testimony of saints throughout the ages, suggests that God goes about his business in ways we never would. The classic example is Christmas. What was God thinking, sending the world’s savior as a helpless baby, born into a poor, working-class family, stuck in a forgettable village like Bethlehem? It was impractical and it was time-consuming – as any efficiency expert could have told him – and the cost was staggering.

No, if we were rescuing the world from its mess, we would form a committee, begin raising funds, and hire an advertising agency. We would enlist support from government leaders, from intellectuals and from celebrities. We would ask both our propaganda department and our military experts to devise a campaign of “shock and awe” with which to launch our operation.

But God’s ways are not our ways, and every Christmas we are reminded of the fact. If you ever doubt that, just look back to Bethlehem. God obviously wasn’t kidding when he said, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways.”

There is a profound mystery in Christ’s strange arrival on our planet. The mystery is not that God invaded the world. That had long been foretold. People were expecting him. It is not that he came “to do away with sin.” The prophets repeatedly warned that he would. The marvel is that he invaded the world as a baby.

When God came to his world, he came with love, not irresistible force; with grace, not with threats. People had believed for a thousand years that God would do away with sin, but they assumed he would do so by destroying sinners. It’s probably how we would have done it. But not him. He did not come, as he once said, “to condemn the world but to save the world.”

“To save the world.” God’s plan for Jesus was not merely to get people into heaven when they die, but to give people a meaningful way to live now. It was God’s intent (so says St. Peter) to free people from the pointless way of life handed down to them from previous generations; to give their lives meaning and fill them with love.

Yet people continue to pursue empty and pointless lives. They invest their time and energy in accumulating stuff, hoping that it will somehow bring them happiness. The wild rush at Christmas time is just one more expression of humanity’s compulsive attempt to fill its emptiness. Yet when the presents have been put away, people’s souls are often just as empty as the discarded boxes that litter their floors. They have missed the real treasure of Bethlehem.

Bethlehem’s treasure was not a diamond bracelet or a new iPhone, or whatever else this year’s advertisements are trying to convince us we can’t live without. It was not even gold, frankincense or myrrh. Bethlehem’s treasure was packaged in flesh, gift-wrapped in swaddling, and laid in a manger – with your name on the gift card.

When he came to earth, he was not just away in a manger; he was the way in a manger, the way to a meaningful life now as well as a glorious life forevermore. Of all the gifts ever given, this one is the most precious.

First Published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/20/2014

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Good thing Jesus isn’t afraid of dirt

Posted on December 13, 2014 by salooper57

In 2013, a record 2 million people visited Bethlehem. It was estimated that there were 75,000 tourists in the Holy Land for the Christmas holiday, and most of them were expected to celebrate Jesus’s birthday in the city where he was born.

Yet a survey taken several years ago listed Bethlehem as the world’s third most disappointing tourist destination, just beating out the Polo Lounge in Hollywood and the Monte Carlo casino in Monaco. Why is it that people find Bethlehem disappointing?

It might be that tourists come with unrealistic expectations. They come, expecting to see something holy or even magical. They find themselves looking for a strange light in the sky and expecting a thrill down the spine, as they reminisce about the silent night that changed the world. That’s what they come looking for, but that’s probably not what they find.

What they find is a noisy town, crowded with pilgrims and secured by armed soldiers. Before they can enter they must pass through a checkpoint, show their passports, and walk through a metal detector. They flock to Bethlehem’s most important site: the Church of the Nativity. But it’s smaller than they expected and divided into Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox sections. Apparently these followers of the Prince of Peace can’t get along with each other.

If tourists find Bethlehem disappointing now, one wonders what ancient travelers must have thought – because the place doesn’t seem to have been all that great when Mary and Joseph were there either. The biblical text suggests it was overcrowded, inhospitable, and (remember the stable) dirty. If Joseph and Mary had submitted a review to TripAdvisor, Bethlehem would have been lucky to get two green dots, and that would only have been because they were generous.

So people are disappointed in spite of Bethlehem’s close connection to Christmas. Or are they disappointed because of it? Christmas is, after all, the most disappointing of the holidays. We expect gifts, we get debt. We want excitement, we get stress. We pray for peace on earth but we get crowds at Walmart. We hope this year’s Christmas gatherings will be characterized by “good will among men,” but once again we get ill will among co-workers and family members.

Could it be that Christmas lets us down because we are looking for the wrong things? I once spent eight days in a remote spot in the Ontario wilderness, a hundred miles north of where the road ends. I went outside almost every night, hoping to see the northern lights as I had seen them once before, full of fire and color. They weren’t there and I was disappointed, even though the sky was magnificent, filled with stars that burned white hot and lit up the night. Because I was expecting one thing, I almost missed another.

Something similar happens at Christmas. We expect Hollywood and miss holiness. We expect presents and ignore God’s presence. We look for gifts but overlook the Gift that came wrapped in human flesh.

Matt Kooi, the Director of Spectrum Ministries in Tijuana, Mexico, once pointed out to me that even if Bethlehem is a disappointment to some tourists, it was the perfect place for Jesus to be born. True, the place was no great shakes when he arrived there, but then, neither were our lives. If dirty, crowded and inhospitable Bethlehem could provide a place for the King of kings to be born, cannot our lives, covered with dirt and crowded with cares and distractions, provide a place for the King of Kings to live?

It’s a good thing Jesus isn’t afraid of dirt.

So why do people keep going back to Bethlehem? What makes that little town a place that people the world over dream of visiting? It’s not its splendor or beauty, nor its great hotels or attractions. For two thousand years its one great attraction has been a person. He gives Bethlehem its meaning, its special beauty. He does the same for our lives.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/13/2015

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Are you infected with “solution aversion”?

Posted on December 6, 2014 by salooper57

Duke University psychologists Troy Campbell and Aaron Kay recently published a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that suggests that a person’s deeply held beliefs may alter the way he or she interprets reality.

When Campbell and Kay suggested relatively easy fixes to problems caused by climate change to conservative Republicans, they were likely to agree that global temperatures are rising. But when the proposed solutions involved governmental regulations or threatened the health of the economy, the conservatives were much more likely to deny global warming entirely.

Likewise, when liberal Democrats were presented evidence suggesting that gun ownership reduced the likelihood of violent home invasions, they became much more likely to deny that violent home invasions pose a significant problem. Campbell summarized the study’s findings this way: “If you don’t want the solution to happen, then you deny the problem exists.” Campbell and Kay refer to this phenomenon as “solution aversion.”

In The Week, William Falk references the Duke study and bemoans our inability to reason “coolly and rationally, on the basis of evidence.” Instead, he says, “…virtually all of us … reason backward to the conclusion that feels right because it buttresses what we already believe.”

The Duke study’s results are not surprising (most of us could have anticipated them), but they are a helpful. They remind us of the extraordinary importance of responding “coolly and rationally, and on the basis of evidence.” They also remind us to be honest with ourselves, to question our reasoning, and to be alert to the covert prejudices that live inside us.

I was a spectator recently to a lively discussion on an issue of biblical interpretation. The parties involved held opposing views. One of the disputants offered biblical support for a conclusion the other rejected. When he asked her why she rejected it, her answer was: “Because that’s not what the Bible says.”

It was clear that both debaters had skin in the game. They each felt that the other’s views threatened some important theological principal. As a spectator (rather than a debater) it was obvious to me that at least one of the disputants was reasoning backward from the conclusion that felt right.

The Duke study, coupled with anecdotal evidence like this, sheds light on recent research from the Canadian Bible Society that indicates the mere reading of Scripture does not contribute to spiritual health and growth. The reason, in light of the Duke study, seems clear: unless we are careful, what we see in the Bible will only reinforce conclusions we’ve already drawn.

The biblical writers themselves were aware of how this process works. The Apostle John quotes Jesus who, in the midst of a tense debate with religious leaders, tells them: “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me…” The religious leaders’ study of the Bible only reinforced a conclusion they already held and left them blind to the possibility of any other.

Fortunately, the Canadian Bible Society study went on to state that people who spend ten minutes a day (at least three days a week) reflecting on what they’ve read in the Bible benefit significantly. Those who talk with other people about what they’ve read benefit even more. Careful reflection and open discussion seem to minimize the impact of solution aversion and enable the reader to thoughtfully apply biblical truths to life.

Lest the reader concludes that solution aversion only affects (infects) religious people, let him or her remember that the Duke study was carried out with Democrats and Republicans, not Catholics and Protestants. The irreligious person has deeply-held beliefs too, a lifestyle to protect, and a solution offered – a life of faith and obedience – that he or she might wish to avert.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/6/2014

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What is it I’m not getting about Ferguson?

Posted on November 28, 2014 by salooper57

After months of deliberations and thousands of pages of evidence, the St. Louis County grand jury decided not to bring charges against Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. Officer Wilson is white. Mr. Brown was black.

The jury, comprised of nine whites and three blacks, sifted through the evidence – 60 witnesses, 70 hours of testimony and a mountain of documents – and found much of it to be contradictory. Some witnesses clearly manufactured their stories, presumably to force a trial or to prevent one. Others presented radically different interpretations of established facts.

Reading about the incident, it seems clear to me that the grand jury could not have come to any other decision. But when most African-Americans (62 percent) read about the shooting of Michael Brown, they believe the case should have gone to trial. So what do they see that I do not see? What is it I’m not getting about Ferguson?

Just about everything, or at least that is what I suspect a Ferguson protestor might say. Can a middle-aged white guy, living in a largely white, rural community, think about the Michael Brown shooting in the same way a black American thinks about it? Probably not.

For one thing, many white Americans think of this case as an isolated incident that occurred one August afternoon on a Ferguson, Missouri street. But black Americans do not see it as an isolated incident. They see it as part of a disturbing pattern.

The Michael Brown shooting is like one of those Magic Eye pictures: stare at it long enough and an underlying image will emerge – to some people’s eyes, but not to all. Many whites, I suspect, have trouble seeing that image. But when many black people stare at Ferguson, the hidden picture takes shape, and it’s not pretty.

These are some of the images that materialize in the background of Ferguson: the shooting by police of a young man in a Walmart store, when he picked up an air rifle that was for sale. The death of a 12-year-old boy with an airsoft gun, shot by Cleveland police. The tragic death of a 93-year-old Texas woman, killed by police as she waved a real gun in the air. These incidents, and others like them, have occurred in just the past few months. It’s the picture behind the picture, the one middle-aged white guys like me have trouble seeing.

That picture is framed by facts like these: White Americans are more than twice as likely to use marijuana as blacks, yet eight times as many blacks are arrested for possession. Blacks are sentenced to as much time behind bars for a drug offense as whites are for a violent crime. One in three black Americans will spend time in prison, compared to one in seventeen whites. It’s helpful to realize that the anger that erupted in Ferguson was not just about Ferguson.

When I was in college in the seventies, I thought that racial prejudice, and with it racial distancing, was diminishing. When President Obama was elected, not once but twice, it seemed that white America and black America were at last converging into one America. That seems less likely now. I fear the distance between Americans of different races and ethnicities is growing.

There are social, political and economic reasons for this – some of which originate within the black community itself. There are many reasons, but not many solutions. If a solution is to be found, I suspect, it will be found in the Christian, and particularly the evangelical, Church.

Why? Because black and white evangelicals are numerous (a whopping 62 percent of blacks describe themselves as “born again”), and share deeply held and powerfully unifying beliefs. Those beliefs once brought unity to Jews and Gentiles, who were even more divided than America’s blacks and whites. Christ was then able to break “down the wall of hostility” and create “in himself one new people from the two groups.”

If he did it once, he can do it again. But he will not do it for us. He will only do it with us.

 

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/28/2014

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He’s not the person I thought he was

Posted on November 22, 2014 by salooper57

“He’s not the person I thought he was when we got married.”

Most pastors and counselors have heard that line from people in marital crisis. They usually mean the person they married is not as good, as kind or as much fun as they thought he’d be. They say things like, “We used to talk for hours. Now I can hardly get a word out of him.” Or, “When we first got married, he would do things for me before I asked. Now when I talk he doesn’t even listen. If I ask him to do something, he acts like he’s been sentenced to hard labor.”

There’s a lot that people don’t know about each other on their wedding day. Marriage is an act of faith. That faith is based on true insight into the other person, but insight is hardly the same thing as understanding. There will be many surprises for couples as their life together continues. Hence the line, “He’s not the person I thought he was when we got married.”

Just once, I would like someone to come into my office and say, “He’s not the person I thought he was when we got married—he’s way better! He’s smarter, funnier and wiser than I realized. I had no idea how much I would enjoy being with him.”

No one has yet come to my office to tell me that. But then it’s rare for us to hear of anyone outperforming expectations, except in the sports arena: “He went undrafted and joined as a walk-on, but he has brought more to this team than anyone expected.”

Still, as a pastor, I’d love to hear someone say that about a spouse. Yet I’d be even more pleased to hear it said about God: “He’s not who I thought he was when I first believed—he’s way better than that!”

When people give their lives to God, as when they give their lives to each other, they are acting in faith. Though they may have real insight into the benefits of faith, they still have a lot to learn about the character of God. They come to God thinking it will do them good. It’s only later they discover that God is good.

That was certainly the case for me, and for others I have known. When I first came to faith – or when faith (barely the size of a mustard seed) first came to me – I knew almost nothing about God. I got that he made everything, including me, and was therefore the one in charge. I understood that he was a judge – and maybe a policeman too. But I had no idea what he was like.

It’s been a long journey since then, and I’ve learned a lot about God. For one thing, I discovered that God is happy – the most joyful being in all the universe. Creation itself is an expression of his joy. God is never frightened, lonely or bored. “Great tidal waves of joy must constantly wash through his being,” as one writer put it. And he doesn’t keep his joy to himself. He invites humans to join him: “Enter into the joy of your master!”

I also discovered that God loves us. Really loves us. I knew that in my head, but it took years (I was already in pastoral ministry) to learn it in my heart. God loves us as a father loves a child – not half-heartedly or disinterestedly – but passionately. He carries our picture in his wallet, as Tony Campolo likes to say. We don’t have to earn his love, any more than a newborn baby has to earn his mother’s love. He loves us not because we deserve it, but because he is love.

God values relationships – so much so that he lives in an eternal, three-personed relationship – and he desires a relationship with us. I used to think of that as if it were a business relationship: God is the boss, we’re the employees and the chief thing is to get work done. But God, I’ve learned, is far more interested in what we become than he is in what we accomplish.

With this business model in mind, it was only natural to think that success in the Christian life could be measured by keeping rules. But God gave us rules to serve the relationship, not replace it. He doesn’t measures success by the rules we keep but by the people – himself included – that we love.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/22/2014

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Breathe the fresh air of eternity

Posted on November 15, 2014 by salooper57

People are creatures of habit. I, for example, drink three-and-a-half cups of regular coffee a day. I drink one cup when I get up, one around ten o’clock, one after lunch, and a half-caf around mid-afternoon.

I wake up at the same time, according to the day of the week. After I pour a cup of coffee, I go into my study and close the door. I read Scripture and meditate and pray. I then walk two miles with my wife (except on Tuesdays), and then eat oatmeal for breakfast – blueberries every other day, apple, raisins and cranberries on the day in between.

On Friday mornings I leave my house within a minute or two of 6:17. I usually see no other cars on our country road. When I reach the main north-south road, I turn left and almost always reach the speed limit in front of the same house. I usually have not encountered any cars by then, though looking a half-mile down the road I see a school bus approaching.

On a recent morning I left the house at least a minute later than usual. As I drove down our country road I saw a car approaching with its bright lights on. When I came to the main north-south road, I had to wait for four cars to pass before I could slip in, the fifth of a six-car train.

I wondered where all the people had come from. There were more cars on the roads than I see in a month of Fridays. The bus that I usually meet just south of the business loop was missing, apparently having already passed. Did a minute or two really make such a difference?

If I were to leave a minute or two later every Friday morning, would I meet many of the same cars in the same places and have to wait at the same stop sign? I suspect I would. People are creatures of habit. But a slight change of perspective – in this case a temporal change of perspective – can bring a different world into view.

As I drove on it occurred to me that humans are fettered by time. We are as confined as any prison inmate, only our confinement is temporal rather than spatial. We are in temporal lockdown, incarcerated in the present. To us the past is fixed – we cannot reenter it or change it – and the future is inaccessible. So we live out our days imprisoned in the moment.

God’s experience of time is like ours in some ways, but differs dramatically in others. Like us, he does not live in the past or in the future, but in the present. But unlike us, his present includes all of time – past and future – simultaneously. What we call past and future are part of his present experience. He can walk through time the way I walk through the rooms of my house.

When theologians say that God is eternal, they have something more than his perpetual existence in mind. They mean that every moment of time, past and future, is always immediately present to God. He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, who “announces the end from the beginning” and is present “with the first of them and with the last.”

Because life comes to us in a succession of moments, we are often surprised by things that happen. God never is. Though Scripture states that he can be grieved, he can never be surprised. His expectations are never undermined. Whereas we see life in snapshots, he sees it in panorama. He knows what’s coming.

The upshot for the Christian (or the person contemplating Christianity) is this: We are in lockdown, imprisoned in the narrow confines of the present, but we have a wise and trusted friend on the outside. He sees what’s going on and, in the light of what he sees, can tell us what to do. We cannot see what he sees, but we can choose to trust him and do what he says.

But that’s not all. The rumor is going around through the pages of Scripture and in the talk of his people that someday we will be let out of our temporal prison to breathe the fresh air of eternity. It is a reality beyond our comprehension, but not our hope.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/15/2014

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A shadow in the shade

Posted on November 8, 2014 by salooper57

People often say, ‘I never forget a face.” I think there is something wrong with me. I never remember one. Well, “never” is an exaggeration. But I’m pretty sure my “facial recognition software” is faulty.

I can recognize a picture of a person forever, but if someone gets a haircut or puts on five pounds or starts wearing glasses, I might walk right by that person without realizing I know him or her. My brain fails to extrapolate from known features to current identity. But if I hear the person speak, I’ll probably recognize him or her; my “voice recognition software” is excellent.

This is an embarrassing condition for anyone, but especially for someone who does what I do. People expect their pastor to know them, even if they rarely make it to church, but I can walk by someone with whom I have been acquainted for years and fail to recognize him.

People also expect God to know them, even if they fail to make it to church or talk to him very often. But the Bible presents the frightening prospect that God may not recognize some people. C. S. Lewis reminds us that “we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, ‘I never knew you. Depart from Me.’”

When St. Paul writes that “Whoever loves God is known by God” he raises the alarming possibility that people who do not love God may not be known by him. A similar thought interrupts the same apostle as he writes to the Galatian Church: “But now that you know God—or rather are known by God …”

It’s as if the apostle is afraid of overstating the knowledge that humans, who at best “see through a glass darkly,” have of God. Safer to speak of God knowing us. He “knows a word before it is on my tongue,” said the psalmist. The prophet added, “You know me, O LORD; you see me and test my thoughts.” God, according to Professor William J. Mander, “knows me better than I know myself … God knows the true me; the person I really am.”

That God knows us—really knows us—is a claim made repeatedly by biblical writers. He “searches the heart and examines the mind.” He probes “the heart and the mind.” He sees beyond appearances and false fronts to the reality that lies beneath. On page after page, the Bible affirms that God knows us like no one else, even ourselves.

A person is like a deep mine. His friends know only the surface terrain and the entrance. He himself knows only the main shafts. God alone knows the treasures—or horrors—that lie in the depths. We may find his knowledge of us a comfort or a terror. Either way, he knows us.

So what are we to make of the idea, introduced by Jesus himself, that a person might be unknown to God? How is it that, in Lewis’s words, “we can be both banished from the Presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all”? Could God’s “facial recognition software” be faulty?

The biblical writers would answer that question with a resounding no. Nothing can exist apart from God’s knowledge. To be unknown by God is to lack any kind of existence worthy of the name. It is to be a negation, a nullification, an impossibility. It is to be a shadow in the shade—or to use biblical language, an outcast in the outer darkness.

To be unknown by God is to be a potentiality never realized, an idea never thought, a song never sung. To be unknown by the one who knows everything is to be nothing. To be banished from the presence of the omnipresent one is “everlasting destruction…shut out from the presence of the Lord.” It is an unthinkable thought, an impossible possibility; it is hell.

But to be known by God is to be a potentiality fully realized, an idea thought and shared and brought to fruition; it is to be a child of God. To know God—limited though our knowledge be—and be known by him is nothing less than eternal life.

 

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/8/14

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