Vision in Stone

Paul stands, mallet in hand

and eyes the ancient chunk of rock

He sees an angel in the stone

And chips away at all that’s not

And we watch his sweating work

And we see the pieces fall

And we try to build some logic

From the gravel on the floor

But we miss the angel rising from the pounded piece of stone

We prefer to grasp the sculptor’s sturdy tools

And press them to our modern uses

But they blister softer hands and souls

And we walk away, frustrated

While the angel weeps, alone.

(My response to Romans 5)

"As Little Children"

How are we to become “as little children?” Many sermons have been preached on this phrase. They often focus on the wonder of childhood, the innocence, the trusting nature of children, the supposed purity of kids. Considering that Lao Tzu wrote this phrase 500 years before Christ, perhaps the traditional thoughts have been correct. But this morning I had a new impression.

I was praying that God and I walk this day together, and I mused “Am I wanting You to join me? More likely I should be joining You.” For a split-second I felt I had been presumptuous to think of God coming to match my short-sighted stroll: “Best that I match His.” But just as quickly I thought of God’s incomprehensibly gigantic gait, and I realized that He has always shortened His stride for us. And I felt like a little child proudly hustling along trying to walk as grown up and important as his Daddy who is certainly “the strongest man in the whole world!”

And suddenly a realization came to me about birthday-counting kids; namely, they focus on growing up. How do we come to the place as adults that we think we have finished that? Walking in the shadow of our great big Daddy, we must know that only One has ever been able to match God stride for stride and honestly say “It is finished.”

Oh, the Good Health of Laughing at Self!

This week Ginger and I lay in bed characteristically catching up on the little events of each other’s day before letting the night carry us off into Nirvana. True to form, the conversation was quite free to flow where it would as she played Words With Friends, a form of Scrabble, on her iPhone, and I enjoyed being prone and relaxed.

“Oh,” I remembered, “and I also called Mom today. While I was talking to her I heard ‘Blliiing! Woooga, wooga, wooga’ in the background.” It was my best attempt at mimicking the sound Words With Friends makes when it gives you new letters. I figured Ginger would be happy to know Mom was playing the game Ginger has found to be such a good way to unwind.

But as soon as I told Ginger this homely little bit of news a warning bell went off in the back of my mind. When Ginger is “in a far country” and calls home in the evening, she wants my full attention and quickly detects if I am doing something else as she is talking to me. She finds that quite offensive. 

Yup, sure enough, she didn’t pause to ponder the possibility of having a new playing partner, instead she asked, “She was playing while you were talking to her?”

“Yes.”

“How rude!” she erupted.

“I’m talking to you…” I offered, in defense of my mother.

Ginger’s hypocrisy hit her like a ton of bricks. I could see it crash into her consciousness as she paused mid-play. (Split-second of silence, then…) Gales of laughter! She saw the silliness of her knee-jerk pronouncement while caught in the very act she was denouncing. Oh how that gave her the giggles! It was a joy to see her so amused! It’s one of the many things I love about her.

When my own laughter subsided, I mused, “What a different end of the story it might have been if the Pharisees had laughed (like you just did) when Jesus held up a mirror for them.” Ah, if it could only have been that way for them, then, and that way for each of us now and always.

My Sad Allegiance to Confucius

I love Lao Tzu and see in him as refiguring Christ. Lau Tzu promoted the growth of the human heart and healthy consciousness. Confucius embodied the Roman solution to the earth’s problems: power, authority, calculation.

While I was reflecting on my need to be more positive in my communication with Ginger, I heard the unexpected words coming straight from my own lips. “My desires are with Lau Tzu, but my allegiance is with Confucius.” In my heart I hope for following the example of Christ, but with my mouth I dwell on what’s going wrong, what’s about to be lost, what trend society is on, ad nauseum.

This squinty-eyed vigilance comes from my enneagram 6 personality. I trust in numbers more than in people. That’s my nature, the foundation of my personality. And if I want to defend that skepticism by saying that people are not inherently trustworthy, then I should remember my Hawaiian passage on this very point.

In Hawaii I experienced rapid-fire proof that people really aren’t trustworthy, but simultaneously I learned to trust God. In the light of my confidence in Him, it was as though I learned to trust others. I would even tell people, “The more I learned to trust God, the more I learned to trust others.” Now I can state it more accurately, “The more I trusted God, the less I feared the machinations of others.” I found that God could bring good from all things.

The question is not whether people are trustworthy, but whether God is. I believe that people can mess things up royally and God can use the mess to the good of anyone open to His voice. He can use anything as an object lesson leading us to greater understanding. I believe that, so I should talk from that position of trust, if not in people, in their Creator.

If I am so taken by Lao Tzu’s confidence in the Way, I need to quit calculating the perils as though I clung to Confucius’ more mechanistic philosophy.

God of the Selfless Heart

Satan loves to see smiles on the faces of people he is robbing of their later healthy and harmony. Satan also delights in the agonized, twisted, and shrieking faces of anyone that he’s tired of, or who has refused to glide into his ruinous forms of “happiness.”

God, on the other hand, doesn’t care what kind of face you bring—bitterness, joy, peaceful contemplation, extreme frustration; He doesn’t care; it’s all good as long as long as you’re allowing Him to give you the things that are needed for sustainable health and harmony. His own face twists in agony when ours does. His Spirit groans with our groaning.

Satan delights in our semi-conscious frivolity and in our suddenly-conscious despair. God doesn’t feed on our moods, He interprets our moments by where they are trending. Our face is free to reflect our perception of our current situation. His face reflects the joy or sorrow of where our current responses are leading us. He is about restoration despite the current cost.

This is because God is about us, and Satan is about himself. We have accepted a picture of God that makes Him seem as egocentric as Satan… “but in a good way.” However, viewing God as “all about Himself,” whether we see Him as generous or oppressive, is our first error. Satan is the one who is all about self, and his delight is when we adopt the same self-focus and even project that onto God. God is tied up in His people; Satan, in destroying them.

When I experience the thrill of schadenfreude I am tasting the sweet frosting on Satan’s sick cake. When I delight someone because I am angling for something I want, I am again sharing in the heart of Satan. When I please another in order to win their loyalty, I am again straying from the way God acts. The only time I share in the heart of Christ is when I desire to bless someone else, free of any payback—even paybacks as intangible as their gratitude or my desire to be seen as a good person. I believe it’s good to enjoy their gratitude, but if its absence causes hurt and resentment in me then I am acting from the wrong heart. 

How Language Softens Our Resolve, Part 3

Is it possible that our soft language of tolerance is one more gyration seeking to skirt God’s law? Must our colorful lexicon of inclusion become blind to the black and whites of conviction? Not everything is a shade of “okay.” Like oil and water some approaches to life are simply incompatible. Identifying polar opposites can give us the power of clarity. I need this power of discernment, this gift of shock, this occasional rude awakening. Calling something “sin” sets it across the line from where I want to be.

Why has our language become so tolerant of the things that fragment families; so passive towards that which causes profound pain; so accepting of moral junk food? At the same time it has grown intolerant of those sentiments (e.g. purity, fidelity, and moral restraint) that once protected families.

Perhaps our language has only followed our passions. Sexual pleasure is our Achilles tendon. Rightly working, it propels our walk. Twisted, it cripples us. A twisted sexuality promises us “no limits.” It prods us to experience that intense pleasure, that transient sense of intimacy and completeness, with any object we find desirable. It creates a need for self-deception so that we can do what we know is unhealthy and unsustainable. So our language volunteers to deceive us, to lull us into that very thought that there are “no limits,” we can sample all the dishes without blowing our diet.

Intellectuals are just as biological as the rest of us. So once their passions are hooked and finally warped, their persuasive speech and rationalizations turn to the business of eroding the very foundations of moral sensibility. They pose arguments and experiments to build a case against ultimate meaning, against moral absolutes, against the notion of a Creator; especially one that might encourage self-restraint.

When I’m surrounded by others who have eaten of that fruit, it is easy to accept the social and polite language. That language, after all, offers me the freedom to minimize the evil that would be unleashed by my own moral failure. Yet, it’s not just a “failure,” it is sin. Sin is evil. Sin is myopic self-focus. Sin is anti-God, and sin is a beginning of a long chain of heart-rending sorrows. Calling a sin by its right name should provide a strong desire for escaping it.

I will likely keep using the preferred language of politeness while in the social world of “personal choices,” but in my own life I need the power and clarity of calling a sin a sin. Doing so, immediately reminds me that there is One who has an opinion about the sins that destroy His children. Gratefully, that One is always ready to clean me up and nourish me when I bring my bleeding and poisoned mind back to Him.

This life is not some kind of “pre” school. I can’t just messily finger paint whatever comes into my meandering mind. I must develop the mature discipline of an artist who is creating a masterpiece of a life that means something. There are color combinations and techniques to use and others to avoid. There are surfaces we paint on and those we don’t. I want my completed painting to be a thing of beauty, sensible and reliable to all who depend on me, and transportable into the next generation, perhaps even the next world.

How Language Softens Our Resolve, Part 2

Here’s a fact: God’s law is not complicated, but our efforts to get around it are. In fact, our efforts to circumvent God’s clear directives are excruciatingly tangled. Our aversion to law is so out-of-control that we even avoid the word. We talk about “God’s way” or “God’s will” or “God’s plan.” “God’s law” sounds… well, a bit legalistic, don’t you think? Downplaying “law” is only one of the gyrations we use when we try to get around a clear “right” and “wrong”. If our hearts are bent towards something, we fashion our language to bring that thing into cultural acceptance. So, I want to keep looking at the impact of our language on the erosion of our moral resolve.

I’m all for giving other people the freedom to chart their own course, to think their own thoughts, and to agree or disagree with my ways. But the language required for polite discourse with those of other beliefs is not the best language for me as I consider my challenges. If I even get close to thinking “My, she’s beautiful. I wonder how it would feel to…” I am not making a “poor choice.” I am not considering an “alternate lifestyle.” I am not even being “irresponsible.” Whether those phrases mildly approve or disapprove of what I imagine, they are all… well, too mild. There is still old-fashioned power in the word sin, and I need that power to jolt me out of self-indulgent ponderings.

We may think that “sin” is too judgmental. We may believe there are many different “normals,” many alternatives to the Judeo-Christian worldview, especially in regards to sexual issues. Yes, there are many alternatives to Bible injunctions. But there are also many alternatives to good food, some are even tasty, but that doesn’t make them preferable. We are bombarded by ads of people scarfing down all kinds of junk with smiles on their faces surrounded by healthy families. It’s a lie, and we know it, but we still joke about our addiction to some favorite treat, and we reach for the package that hisses “ssssinfully deliciousssss.” How has the use of the word “sin” become a twisted and enticing recommendation?

Healthy-people-eating-junk-food ads create a picture of health while promoting the very things that destroy it. Morally we are on the same junk food diet. Sexual integrity is more frequently, broadly, blatantly, and subtly attacked than is dietary integrity. Even the grocery store check-out line is almost more about sex than about food. Sexual misconduct is so ubiquitous it has almost become the canvas upon which our lives are painted. It is so pervasive that we don’t consciously notice the half of it.

While we struggle to live Christian lives of personal integrity we spend time and money to avoid looking “unsexy.” Why is it that one of our best Adventist marketers used the word “sexy” as a synonym for “energetic and persuasive,” even while shooting video in a room featuring all child models? I was there. Why is it a rising young Adventist pastor initially promoted his upcoming breakout session with the title “Pimping Your Website”? I was there, too. Why is it we are told that “for people under 30 the f-word is an accepted part of speech”? We are all witnessing this.

Ever since advertising stumbled on “Don’t sell the steak; sell the sizzle,” we have been inundated with a stream of sexual sizzle. It permeates our language, and erodes our personal congruence. While we want to see others as Jesus saw them, we are constantly trained to see them as potential objects of desire, eye candy, things to exploit. Whoever is not “hot” is not worth it.

Is it that big a deal? Am I being too sensitive? Am I simply failing to change with the ever-changing language? While it is true that language constantly changes (and now even faster than ever) it is also true that change is not always good. At tightly-packed public events I stay aware of my wallet. 

Changing it from my pocket to someone else’s is not a good change. In the same sneaky way language has stolen from our society a large amount of purity. Even to the point that “purity” seems a little bit flat. It’s just not “sexy.”

We need to back up and take a good look at the culture we are swimming in. Living in America today is like attending a seminar in Las Vegas. In the morning in our hotel rooms we spend time in worship. We try to remember that God loves each person, no matter how they look. We try to maintain a pure view of the worth of others. But then we have to walk on streets carpeted with pictures of flesh for sale. It’s totally incongruous. It can even be dizzying and disorienting. And the incongruence is not limited to Vegas. Don’t we rally to end human trafficking, and then talk of pimping our trucks? Don’t we assert the value of every person only to hear our kids say “my bitch” as a term of ownership and dominance?

Our culture preaches self-esteem, but it has planted the crudest term for sexual exploitation in the center of young mouths. Can we wake up from the hypocrisy? If so, can we unpolluted the river? We can’t claim high moral ground and fight for noble moral causes while filling our mouths or our entertainment with immoral language.