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.

How Language Softens Our Resolve, Part 1

I still notice a filmy skirt on a lithe body jauntily strolling down the walk. Anything wrong with that? I’m a delightedly married man and wouldn’t consider trading my wife for any sweet young thing. …but I notice. Is that bad? Can I help it? I was “born that way” so it can’t be wrong.

But what happens after I notice? I was also born wanting to take impulse into action, is that still okay… since it’s “natural?” What comes after the first heart palpitation? Some people refer to pretty women (especially pictures of nude women) as “eye candy.” Naturalists tell us that evolution has hardwired the male for pursuit and conquest. So I guess that’s just my luck. Evolutionary genetics would declare me quite alright. I’m not lustful; I’m poly-erotic.

Wait. Problem. My wife doesn’t believe in evolution, at least not the kind that would excuse any philandering. (There’s nothing like a threat to our social sensibilities to make us commence vigorous Bible-thumping.) God said, “No,” and Jesus said, “Don’t even think about it.” Starkly clear, if you ask me.

But what if some naturalists are right, and “God” is just the personification of one particular moral code? What then? Do I only imagine a God who frowns on lust, because someone sometime invented God as an icon for a set of moral behaviors?

(Hmm… back up a minute: Why is it that the naturalist personifies their worldview as “evolution” and we blindly accept their pronouncement as somehow scientific, i.e. “true”? “Hardwiring” (a term they use) is a result of intentional action, not dumb luck. “Evolution has hardwired…” this is blatant personification. We’ve got to be honest about it when it happens. So “The male is hardwired” is a naturalist’s statement of personified personal opinion, not empirical fact. The fact that we see some human males acting like creatures of less nobility, does not prove a point.)

Or what if God is real, but His prohibitions—stated clearly in both Testaments—were only the personal opinions of those particular authors? Couldn’t something written 2,000 year ago in a very different cultural setting no longer be binding on us? Maybe self-control was necessary when pregnancy and disease were harder to control. Perhaps modern science, medicine, and technology have made moral restraint unnecessary. Again, my wife would assert that on the issue of sexual self-restraint, the Bible is still wise. Okay, but I really didn’t start this post to write about that.

Here’s what happens in me after the first head-turning moment when my eye wanders. I have a choice. I can, as a happily married man (who would like to remain so), entertain either of two thoughts. First, I can give in to Old Man Naturalism and say, “I was designed this way for some purpose important to our species, so even though I believe in marriage, I’ll just enjoy a little daydreaming. It is my heritage.” The problem is that I’m not an innocent little boy. My adult, sophisticated daydreams lead into all kinds of dark alleys and dead ends. So, yes, I can give in to a brutish interpretation of what it is to be human, but why? Why volunteer for a fractured life where the mind and heart follow a path which is forbidden to the body?

Well, here’s a bigger problem. Those who choose to freely explore the meanderings of mind and heart usually find a way for the body to join in, at least secretly. I recently read an article in Psychology Today where four women faced this problem. Each had a marriage that was less than perfect. Think about that; what a shame. But if they gave out a gold star to every person who is currently in a perfect marriage, there’d be a huge warehouse of unawarded gold stars, I’m thinkin’. “Perfect” doesn’t happen very often in this real life.

Anyway, each wife found a different solution. One found a lover and has decided to enjoy the romance without her husband’s knowledge, indefinitely. Another found a lover and then, after some emotional turmoil, induced her husband to find a partner and then to agree to an ongoing marriage “with extras.” A third moved a long way from her husband to take a job on the opposite coast. She is free to do as she will while on her own, and they manage to work up a spark for each other on their rare times together. A fourth has simply invited her lover into their marriage and though it causes some tensions, it’s “working.” The psychologist reviews all four as viable options and dissects the pros from the cons of each case. Curious that he didn’t find the wife who refused an extramarital partner. Perhaps she never needed the “advantage” of his counseling. Maybe that’s why he was unaware that she, and thousands more, still believe that fidelity, with all its challenges, still works better.

Here’s a second thought I can entertain. I can follow Charles Wittschiebe’s advice. During his heyday as Adventism’s sex doctor back in the ‘70s, Wittschiebe suggested that men enjoy the beauty God has created. “God made all kinds of beautiful things in nature, and the female form is one of them. Enjoy, but don’t let it lead to infidelity.” This advice is preferable to the naturalist’s because it has the remembrance of God in it. And I have great respect for Wittschiebe and his attempt to counter misconceptions about God and sex. But I, personally, have a hard time “enjoying” a plate of brownies that I know I will never taste. Gazing at them makes it all the worse.

So whether I am “naturally hardwired for conquest” or I am a “justified lover of beauty,” I still have a struggle ahead if I have chosen to live by God’s law. In the two following posts I will look at additional features of our language that make it even harder to prevail in that struggle.

"God Is Love, And..."

In January of this year I wrote “God Is Love, But…” Now I see that we not only have problems with our “buts,” we also have problems with our “ands.” Sometimes “and” can be as dismissive as “but.” So in the spirit of letting God have His way with us, here goes!

“God is love, and… my dietary shortcomings have nothing to do with His final commandment that we love one another.” (For the purpose of this post, I will limit my illustrations to dietary ones which are easier to talk about than more serious failings. But I believe the logic will hold for any “work” we have to do.)

We reason that God asked us to live a pro-social life. We are to love others, and that will be visible in the things we do for them and to them. Whether or not my hand reaches out for one more chocolate seems trivial in the shadow of the Greatest Commandment. Anyway, I want the freedom to live as I wish, and I don’t want my wishes scrutinized. I’m even willing to give more offering, help more strangers, be more courteous; if it will allow me to continue eating, watching, spending, and thinking as I want.

“The whole salvation issue is not about chocolate” True enough, but in reality it’s not even about treating others well. Salvation is really about whether we trust Him enough to allow Him to mess around in our lives and transform us. Looking to any set of behaviors—yes, even the hallowed pro-social ones—is legalism.

Did He provide pardon for our sins through His death on the cross? Yes. Did He promise to prepare a better place for us? Yes. Did He promise to come back and receive us unto Himself? Yes, but… (and remember the “but” is always about something outside of God.) …but He told us that the fish will be sorted, the grain will be separated from the chaff, and the ones without robes will be cast out. This work of judgment, this reaping what we have sown, is clearly outside of God. It is only the natural result of habitual choices.

God has promised to make all things new. Maybe when we are wise enough to treat the earth with respect and tender loving care, He will give us a New Earth… and probably not until then. What would be the point? John never said, “Behold, I saw a new heaven and a new landfill.” John told us that at that time of re-creation God will also give us glorified bodies. Again, I would imagine, that will happen after we are ready to treat our new bodies like the finely-crafted creations they will be. 

Before God gives us these wonderful, new things, something in us will change. Something will fit us for life in a clean place. Something will prepare us to receive and care for the glorious bodies that He will give us. What is that something? Will we reach perfection prior to His return? Will He give us the gift of perfection “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye”? Will He give us the first 1,000 years to “finally get it right”?

People debate such things. But however He chooses to work the change in us, we all know we will be different. Even our own limited imagination does not see child molesters in heaven. We can’t even imagine some legal things like slaughter yards there. Not even some wonderfully helpful things like kidney dialysis. We will be different in that different place. And since He has never forced people’s decisions, we can assume that our change will come by our consent.

So it makes sense to begin practicing right now to be responsive to His promptings. Why not start with the little things? What’s to lose? A change in diet will improve life here, and is great practice for simply letting Him lead. And that's the point. It's not about our willpower, it's about making His voice more enthralling than our own appetites. I suspect that learning to hear and respond to His promptings is the best way to fulfill His Greatest Commandment—that we should love Him with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength.

Show the Skin, Not the Skeleton

Where would we be without our skeletons? Those strong bones give shape to our otherwise jellyfish bodies. Skeletons make movement possible. They allow us to put pressure where pressure is needed.

Skin has an entirely different purpose. It protects us from infection and provides a more expressive, softer image. Without skin, the skeleton wears a fixed and threatening grin.

When we are in a time of confrontation and we have the authority to make the final decision, it is good to feel the strength of our skeleton. It gives us “backbone” and supports our muscle for action. Yet, when it comes to our skeleton it is good to feel it, but not to reveal it.

It does more harm than good to talk of our right or our might. To stay human, stay covered with skin. It is warmer, softer, and more winning. It is more effective to explain “what’s in it” for the other person, or at least how our chosen action will serve the greater good.

Feel the power inside, but show regard outside. Certainly the skeleton gives shape to the skin, but the skin gives shape to our influence with others. 

The Lips Reveal the Teeth

Teeth don’t change. They are not bright when we are friendly and dark when we are threatening. They are what they are, solid, fixed in place. But nothing is more beautiful than teeth framed by a smile, nor more threatening than the teeth inside a snarl. The teeth haven’t changed. It’s the lips that tell us what the teeth mean.

The lips can change from one moment to the next. We shape the lips. Let’s shape them in a way that our audience always sees the strength of our teeth as interpreted by love and protection rather than our own will to survive.

Why We Thank God in All Things

Does it seem strange to give thanks to God in all circumstances? We are assured that God is working for our best in all things (Romans 8:28). That would be one reason to be thankful in every moment. But we’ve grown used to that verse, and we sometimes see it as God’s damage control plan, rather than His direct blessing.

Consider a verse that comes before it: “…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26).

Imagine praying, “Oh Lord! I can’t take this anymore! Please send relief!” and hovering over you, praying with deep groans of compassion, the Spirit intones, “Father, he’s beginning to crack. Keep it up until his empty shell of self-help is destroyed and he finds himself gently floating on the ocean of Your sustaining grace.”

If we trust that in all things God’s Spirit is praying for exactly the right thing, despite what seems best to us at the moment, then we really can thank God for every circumstance. We can turn from despair and wait expectantly to discern what good thing He is bringing us.

Christ, the Lawnmower

Jesus told us that we would do even greater things than He did (John 14:12). Hard to believe. I have never healed the lame or raised the dead. But something struck me today; the three dead people He raised are dead again. The blind He healed can no longer see. He was like a huge lawnmower cutting an impressive swath across the historical record. It got our attention, and now He’s gone and the grass is still growing. 

Here I am learning to be a Christian (a “little Christ”), but I don’t feel like a lawnmower. I can’t cut 1,000 blades of grass in one second. I’m but an ant with a tiny saw, and it takes me 10 seconds to cut one single blade. Not very impressive.

But do the math. If there are a million blades to cut, it will take the Lawnmower over 16 minutes to cut them. But if there are a million ants sent into the lawn, the whole thing will be cut in 10 seconds.

And one further point, parts of Israel were blessed by the compassion of Jesus for about three years. But for over 2,000 years the world has benefited from the charity of unsung Christians in all corners of the globe. A multitude of feeble little Christians today continue to bring the love of Christ to the whole world.

What God Isn't

A friend is carrying a heavy burden right now, and I have sympathized sharing tales from my own times of disappointment. And it dawns on me that the testimonies we share in public are the things we believe that God is (all nice things, of course.) But in private, and in loss, we share what we have discovered He isn’t. Generally those words are more encouraging to the grieving, and more helpful to our growth in faith.

Is it possible that He sometimes withholds Himself from us so that we can learn to be a better support to each other?

What's in a Name!

An ancient story comes to life with new meaning when we look at the names that were involved. 

Orpah means “neck,” “girl with a full mane,” or “rain cloud.” Some take these images to mean “stubborn.” Ruth means “friend,” “companion,” or “vision of beauty.” Both pledge to stay with Naomi which means “pleasantness.” However, in the face of bitter disappointment and searing logic, Stubborn turns back while Friendship stays firm. And it creates a story of unparalleled beauty.

Isn’t it the same with us? Crisis and logic can twist us around and steal our vision. Our friendship with God is the stabilizing factor in our lives, and it puts the starch in our moral commitments. Stability and starch are necessary if we are to bring our Vision of Beauty to life on this earth.

In short, Pleasantness is fragile. It needs an unreasonable Friend.

Microscope Vs. Radar

My son once said that the rational mind is a wonderful servant, but a horrible master. There are things in our world that cannot be measured or logically outlined yet which make a huge difference to outcomes. Whether you think of those things as angels or psychological quirks, something puts a twist in the cause/effect chain of human life. All faculties must be used in charting our reality as best we can.

It struck me that examining the material of the physical world is like using a microscope. I can bring a relatively small object under the close scrutiny of my eye and conscious observation. It helps me get familiar with the subject. But to see the big picture takes a different instrument. I was going to say, a telescope since it helps bring the horizon closer. Now on further thought, I’d say “radar.” A radar helps us see 360. It gives us an awareness of what is around us. But like the radar, our faith, intuition, emotional intelligence, etc. may alert us to a "blip," but they do not provide the details and clarity of the microscope. Still, national defense would suffer if we limited ourselves to the clarity of the microscope.

To be fully attentive means to use each instrument available, and history has proven that faith has been a great complement to accurate perception and social action.

Personal Congruence: A Work of the Spirit

“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). 

Our confidence comes from having been made competent (See 2 Corinthians 3:4-5). But our competence is not from fulfilling the letter of the Law while our spirit yearns for something else. Instead, His Spirit fills us, wins our spirit, and brings our deepest desires into congruence with the way He designed His universe. It has always been about becoming compatible with all that is holy, beautiful, and sustainable. 

Praise God that His Spirit seeps down into our smallest cells and begins reconstructing our DNA. What bubbles back up to the surface is a body that obeys, a heart that wants to, and a mind that has quit looking for excuses. Oh, the joy of unity within oneself and towards God!

Signed, Sealed, and About to Be Delivered

“You show that you are a letter from Christ, … written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3). 

The Word of God lives in this world. It is not flat like ink on paper, but is deep and powerful like the Spirit that first wrote life into existence. It is not brittle like granite, rather it is breathing and moving and able to reproduce like the flesh into which it is written. 

We are the letter from God. We need to be in the mailbox with the flag up!

Unconditional Hate

Reading in Amos this morning I saw “Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:15). “Makes ya feel like a rousing Crusade or an invigorating Inquest, don’t it?” 

“Well, no. This is the age of Christian love, and Jesus taught us to love our enemies. After all, this isn’t even about how to treat our enemies. It says ‘hate evil’ not ‘hate people you think are evil’.” 

Still hate is a sensitive subject. We try to suppress hatred. We wish it would disappear from the face of the earth, but then we ourselves feel it, either at certain times or towards snakes and spiders, or perhaps certain medical procedures. Perhaps Amos is appealing to that deep human emotion to show how far we should run from distorting justice in order to advance our own interests or those of our buddies.

Jesus, Lover of our souls, also used shocking language when He commanded us to hate our fathers and mothers (Luke 14:26). No one believes the Holy One was promoting domestic violence or even the end of “unconditional love.” Rather He was saying dramatically that we should not allow their pleadings to turn us from our pursuit of God’s will in our own lives.

Unconditional love (agape) means that our hearts stay inclined towards a person regardless of what they do. Perhaps there is an appropriate unconditional hate that means our heart stays averse to things that dishonor God and break down society regardless of who promotes those things and regardless of how they may benefit us.

The Hot Dish, Self-pity, and the Cross

I should be studying, but had to post something for this resurrection day. We are still trying to fathom what happened that Sunday morning. The blinding sun struck diamond and split into thousands of dancing sparkles. I hope that this short reflection (or should I say refraction) will one more dancing light of gratitude.

During a very hard time, life wasn't working well for me, and it kept my mind and stomach in knots. One day I was carrying a hot dish from the oven to the table where my kids were waiting for dinner. I had snatched the bubbling casserole out of the oven using a nearby dishtowel. Thin spots in the towel passed fiery pain into my fingers. I began to run towards the table hoping to set the dish down before my fingers blistered. I had to run around three sides of our breakfast bar to get there, but I made it. Slamming the dish down hard I danced around waggling my fingers in the air, much to my kids’ delight. I was angry with the dish, the distance to the table, and my life in general.

That display of misapplied tenacity opened my eyes. I saw that my greatest pain was caused by my unwillingness to set the dish down. The breakfast bar had been beside me during the whole race to the table. My fixation on reaching the table blinded me to the relief that was constantly beside me. Then it dawned on me that I carried my psychological pain in much the same way. Pushing for resolution, replaying the agony of my situation, hoping and wishing; it was all a way of pressing ahead with my soul in blisters.

That kind of tenacity is not necessary. There are some burdens we shouldn’t continue to carry. The cross is God’s promise that we can afford to set them down. Anything that sears our souls can be set down so that we can rest and heal. The cross is a reminder that there is One who knows more, cares more, and sees farther than we can. When we set our burden down, whatever it is, our pain subsides and His joy increases.

But we don’t set our burdens down, because we are angry. We have been wronged and we will set things right even if it kills us. “In fact,” we must subconsciously reason, “if this burden crushes or chars us, it will only show them how tragic our life really was. It will show them how unspeakably thoughtless they were to stand by while we so heroically got flattened and incinerated.”

It’s called self-pity, but it is only an adoptee into the family of pity. Its biological parents are anger. We pity ourselves because we are enraged that everyone else is too blind to see, too deaf to hear, and too calloused to lend a hand. So we destroy ourselves as though we were our tormentors, the ones we would wish to punish.

I recently saw the statement that no animal, even at the point of death, seems capable of self-pity. We humans have a corner on that, and it torments us.

The cross reminds us that there is One who cares more than the ones we are venomously trying to punish through our stoic self-abuse. When we understand even the basics of the cross, we see that there is nothing left to prove. No one left to punish. It has all been done. Not only did Jesus take our guilt and pain, He took them because of the worth He sees in us. We need no other audience for our travails. We could hope for no better solace, no better victory, no better Companion.

Our Phobias Mangle Our Vocabulary

My Andrews chums were sharing their personal redefinitions of leadership and I went on the following rant.

I have a personal resistance to rewriting our dictionaries too flippantly. Consider how we have worn out many words for kids who don't learn as quickly as others. "Idiot" was replaced by a kinder word that took attention off their mental capacity and focused more on the slowness of their learning. That word was “retarded,” which has now, by its association with the low IQ we dread, become an insult. That word, once compassionate, is now rude. Then came “learning disabled” then “special ed student” All those words took on the flavor of our phobia and began to feel like insults. So for now the word is “exceptional” which is technically true; they are the exception to whatever norms we expect in the classroom. However, it will only cripple another word. “Bill is an exceptional student” tells me nothing about which end of the bell curve he's on. So you get teachers asking “Really exceptional, or the other way?” (Whatever sense you can make of that question...)

Our problem is that we have an unexamined assumption that having a low IQ is shameful. Therefore, every euphemism used to describe it will become shameful by association. Then we will replace it with a new short-lived euphemism.

I believe a similar problem plagues the word “leadership.” Some people are uncomfortable with it because they distrust leaders (Girl Scout research shows few young people want anything to do with formal leadership roles, because they perceive it to be all about telling others what to do, and who wants to be bossy? You'll lose your friends. So by extension, who wants to be “the boss”?)

However, I think most people over 30 years old hold an unexamined assumption that leaders are superior, so labeling one person as a leader seems non-inclusive. It’s a put down to all the rest of us who are worth something. So now “we are all leaders.” Dandy. We do all have influence to varying degrees, but leadership wasn’t only about influence; it was also about visibility and accountability to the public. It was about being able to see a little further towards the horizon. But now that we’ve made everyone a “leader” of one sort or another, we've had to invent longer terms to designate the phenomenon of people in positions of authority, power, and public visibility. We still want to study that so we need a word or more likely an awkward, gangly phrase for it.

Incidentally, the same thing has happened to the word “hero” I'm sure you’ve noticed. We are all “heroes” if we return somebody’s wallet, brighten someone’s day with a smile, volunteer with a local charity, or sign a pledge not to bully.

Maybe someday we’ll lose our fixation on intelligence and we won’t have to conscript ill-fitted euphemisms to describe those who are not highly intelligent. “Retarded” then may again feel like a kind term. Only our current fear and loathing make it ugly.

Just so, maybe someday we’ll actually internalize the worth of people who are not commanding ships, boardrooms, and businesses, and we won’t have to tell ourselves that we’re all leaders and heroes. In that great day when we all “get” that all of us really matter, we can let the word “leader” return to its earlier work of describing a person in a visible role of responsibility and to whom we look for facilitating new ways around problems.

In the meantime, our shared and unchallenged phobias will continue to sour our attempts at inclusive language. Until we truly are inclusive (clear down to our bones), our language will repeatedly fail to be.

God as Dog

Bible writers have employed many metaphors for God: a mother hen, a rushing wind, a pillar of cloud, a burning bush, a light, a door, a path, even, oddly enough, an old man with long white hair. Of all the metaphors I discovered, I’m pretty sure a dog is not one of them. But as I ponder the shift in my thinking about the character of God a vivid dog metaphor comes to mind. 

As a child I was told that God could not forgive us for a sin we hadn’t confessed. This meant that each night I had to think over the day and name each wrong I had done, confessing it and asking for His forgiveness. I was terrified that I would forget one of the sins on one of the days (as though I was even capable of recognizing and naming them all, let alone never missing one night’s session of confession.) One time I heard someone suggest that I could end the confession with “and any other sin I may have forgotten.” From then on that’s how the list of confessed sins ended, with one personalized twist: “… and any other sin I may have forgotten on any day or night since my very first.”) 

This, of course, let me gain the upper hand since I could knowingly sin, confident that this evening’s or next week’s confession session would obligate God to let me off the hook. In my simplistic and crafty mind, God was a careful guardian keeping riffraff out of heaven. He didn’t actually see me, His only job was to see through me like an x-ray machine looking for that speck of cancerous sin. But, boy!, if He did see that speck, then “x-ray” became “ray gun” and zap! I was a goner… unless I was gibbering out a confession just in the nick of time. I was pretty confident of my timing since God seemed to swing by mostly at bedtime. 

But that’s the problem with essentially human solutions to sin. It’s the “pagan problem.” It way underestimates the depth and complexity of sin, and I has no concept of the depth and compassion of God. 

Anyway, the study I’ve just completed on the evangelical views of hell left me with a similar picture: God is a snarling Rottweiler wandering freely around the castle walls of heaven. We’re hiding in the bushes hoping his great sense of smell doesn’t detect us. Maybe if we can sneak past the vicious dog, we can be “home free” in heaven. 

But my study of Colossians and Romans 8 tells me that God is more like a noble Saint Bernard roaming far and wide. He has His little flask of brandy and we are perishing in a snowdrift hoping against hope that His great sense of smell will lead Him to us. If this Hound of Heaven finds His way into our hearts we will already be “home free.” And whatever comes next will be gloriously up to the One with whom we can trust our very lives.

The Holocaust: A Reflection Rather Than a Result?

As I pondered the Book of Esther, I was gripped with a new realization of how horrible, demoralizing, and devastating the holocaust was, not only nationally, but also spiritually. Imagine standing in the shooting pit on the unstable surface of warm, freshly-fallen bodies. You see the men with the rifles and you hope, you wonder, “Could there be deliverance even now?” The story of Esther, the story of Elijah, the story of the Hebrew Worthies, those and many more would give you a sliver of hope. Some Jews in the pit were reciting the Great Shema: “Shema Yisroel Adonoi Eloheinu Adonoi Echad.” Which is translated several ways including “Hear O Israel! The LORD is our God; the LORD alone.” But then, the silence of heaven and the roar of guns.

I know some people have been calloused to the sufferings of the Jews because they were “Christ killers.” That has been a cruel excuse for hideous Christian behavior. Instead, what if the holocaust and the many other sorrows of the Jews were not a punishment for, but a reflection of Christ’s suffering? Some modern Jews, weary of waiting for Messiah have begun to wonder if Isaiah’s Messianic prophesies might have been about them as a people. Could the rest of the world be healed by their stripes, their afflictions and chastisements?

As a Christian, I don’t believe that anything can take the place of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but what if the horrors of the holocaust were providing what was still lacking in the sufferings of Jesus? Paul used that phrase in Colossians 1:24; I didn’t make it up. Is it possible that the world, especially the Christian world, has not fully understood even the human side of the suffering of Christ on the cross? Is it possible that God must continue to let us see the depravity of humankind’s self-centered, self-justifying ways? Is it possible that the suffering of the Jews is yet another wake-up call? Can it awaken deep sympathy in us and a desire to understand and prevent beastly evil in humans… at least in ourselves? Many in the world today are seething with the fear and hatred that make holocausts possible. Can the rest of us rally and work to quell the anxieties that are likely to erupt into self-righteous violence?

We could see the Jewish people’s despair in those dark historical hours as a solidarity with the Messiah, a reflection of His suffering rather than a punishment for the actions of the political bullies in Jesus’ day. Could we, and possibly even the Jews, join the likes of Mother Teresa who came to accept her despair and sense of alienation from God as an answered prayer to know the heart of Jesus? Maybe the suffering of the Jews is only one more reflection of the evil and the agony of the cross. How many more “crosses” will we have to see before our eyes have had enough? How many more holocausts before we own and surrender the violence that lives within?

Haman and Mordecai, Not So Opposite

This post could offend the Jews that I know and respect, but I hope it doesn’t. I do not wish to steal any good thing from the Jewish people. I hope they, and others, can read the deeper message. Jews delight in the story of Esther celebrated each year at Purim. They have made it fun for their kids to delight in the name of Esther and to despise the name of Haman. I would too; he was a monster who sought to annihilate them all. It’s understandable that Esther is the symbol of nationalistic pride and their power to prevail. And it is on just that point that Haman and Mordecai may yet have a message for them… and for everyone else. So please read this to the end.

The Book of Esther is an enigma. Few stories can match its tight plotline and split-second timing. It tells an important story with precision, paradox, and punch. The amazing turns of events could only be the work of God. He hovers in the background through the rapid-fire twists and turns. Yet, He is never mentioned. Not once. You may already know that Esther is the only book of the Bible that does not contain the name of God. But it’s weirder than that. Consider this: Religious thought is humanity’s effort to make sense of a complex and ironic world. The human mind is naturally drawn upward in times of grave threat. So as the Jew’s death decree goes out to the known world, the Jews pull out all the stops! Throughout the Hebrew settlements everyone fasts and… There it is. No mention of prayer, either.

The writer of Esther didn’t just fail to mention God, he or she seems to have excised any reference to requesting His help or acknowledging His deliverance. Fasting, in the Book of Esther, is not for the purpose of petitioning God, but it does seem to be an attempt to find remedy for the extreme danger they faced. And in the end they do make it through. Lesson: the Jews live a charmed life. The absence of the name and practice of God allows all Jews, from ultra-conservatives to merely cultural Jews, to celebrate a “Yea! We win!” moment. They need some of those. I’m not trying to take that away, but now let’s look at a dark and prophetic theme.

Haman is a proud man, whatever “proud” means. Like many psychological terms, pride is a complex thing. Haman’s pride, it becomes clear, is not simple. It would be more accurately described as a desperate wish to prove himself in the eyes of others, over and over and over. There is no honor great enough to satisfy Haman’s thirst for acclaim. He is desperate to make sure that people see his greatness; and he wants to see people seeing that. He is an approval addict. In the beginning of the third chapter, King Xerxes makes Haman the number one leader under the king. Haman is the most honored of the noblemen. You can’t go any higher without taking the place of the king, and in a story without God the king becomes a type for God.

Rather than being satisfied with nearly limitless power, Haman struts around looking for any who might not notice his exalted status. Hence, we say that he was proud. Haman finds a major irritant in Mordecai, the Jew, who will not bow to Haman. Haman could have decided to ignore this grumpy man at the gate, but it so eats at Haman’s insecurities that he plans the destruction of Mordecai and the genocide of his entire race! Haman wants to be sure there will be no refusal on the part of anyone to notice Haman’s glory. Haman probably did not feel proud; he felt threatened. This ultimate, over-the-top, murderous bully, was on the defense. He was defending and protecting his desperate, insatiable longing to be admired.

So Haman’s first fatal error was to take such drastic offense at Mordecai’s refusal to honor him. His second error was his outrageous genocidal response. His third error—the one that really moves the story along—is his designing his own “awards ceremony.” Believing there could be no other man the king would wish to honor, Haman describes exactly the excess to which he wanted the king to go in honoring Haman. He will be given all the king’s stuff, even the king’s clothing, and paraded around the capitol like a king in the king’s name. From that position all Haman would have to do to fulfill his lust for ascendancy would be to remove the king (who is like God in this story.)

Of course, the delicious twist is that the king doesn’t have Haman in mind, but Mordecai. And what a perfectly delivered punch line! After Haman makes the super-best “trophy” package of kingly honor, the king says, “Go at once. Get the robe and the horse and do just as you have suggested for… Mordecai… the Jew.” It must have made Haman’s head spin! A sickening slap of reality on a face formerly flushed with fantasies of favor. How innocently the king delivers this most painful and appropriate retribution.

So Haman’s lust for honor results in precisely the most dishonoring thing he could have designed: Mordecia, the most despised, for a day appearing as higher than Haman. Here’s where the tide really turns. Haman is blind to his true status. His desperate need for acclaim keeps him from seeing the permanence of his position in world superpower Persia. Mordecai is on a one-day pony ride and tomorrow will have nothing again. But Haman, tormented by his own demon, can’t see reality. He can’t let this go, so he sobs out his story to his wife and his advisors. From each he hears what had already been ricocheting through his brain: the death sentence. Already, Mordecai’s little flash of a party had thrown Haman into an inner tailspin of despair, but now the people closest to Haman say, “Because Haman is a Jew and you’ve treated him badly, you’re toast!”

This statement should cause the Jews, and the rest of us, to tremble rather than celebrate. Who really said Haman would die because Mordecai was a Jew? These proud Persians who owned the world including the lowly Jews? Would Persians have seen their captives as somehow magically charmed? Would Haman’s wife and advisors really have said that? Or is a nationalistic writer simply saying “Nobody messes with the Jews and gets away with it!” Or… is it God Himself inspiring the faithful recording of a perfect parable? I vote for the parable.

Haman owes the king nothing, he thinks, even though everything he has is from the king. In a parallel, the Jews very lives depended on the One they didn’t name, didn’t seek, and didn’t thank. Haman passes a tipping point and from that time on there is much bad news. The Jews, many years later, displayed the same arrogance under Rome, despising their invaders, trampling their own poor, yet negotiating for all the power and status they could get. They, too, pass a tipping point.

Where was Mordecai in the time of Herod’s great restoration of the Jewish temple? Jesus pointed him out: Mordecai was, and is, where he has always been… in “the least of these.” There are always people to despise, people to make us feel better about our lot in life. The Jews were treating their least the same way Haman had treated his. Which is the same way we treat ours. That’s why this story is not only prophetic for the Jews, but for all of us who feel we deserve something more, and that we can get it through the abuse of someone less powerful. And the Jews traveled the rest of Haman’s road: After a time of arrogance and crafty negotiation, their nation was totally demolished, “not one stone left upon another.”

But the Jewish similarity to Haman was actually recorded way back in Esther. Not satisfied with the right to defend themselves they sought, and were granted, the same heartless crime against the Persians. Why? Because all the Persians had committed a massacre against them? No. Because one man, Haman, had threatened their existence just as one man, Mordecai, had threatened Haman’s political life. The parallels are too tight to miss.

Though nearly exterminated, there are still Jews today, and they have been rebuilding their nation for the past 60 years. Have they learned anything about pride going before destruction? Have they learned that no one can afford to despise another? Have they learned that all people are capable of bloodthirsty aggression? That all people condemn aggression in others and justify it in themselves? If they have learned these things, so clearly taught in the enigmatic Book of Esther, then they still have a vital lesson to teach many, many Christians. They have a lesson to teach many, many Arabs. They have a lesson for all the people of the world.

Memorization for Broader Understanding

In my first post on this topic I stated that the act of memorizing Scripture gives the rational mind something to focus on (the difficulty of memorizing) so that it doesn’t out-shout the text with its own biases and logic. I failed to mention that Dave Finnegan, juggling teacher extraordinaire, uses a similar trick. When I was struggling to learn five-ball juggling he told me to sing the “Magdalena Spagdalena” backwards… in German. I told him I didn’t know the song nor German, and he said, “You don’t need to know either. You just have to occupy your conscious mind with something so it doesn’t start thinking about juggling.” He said our rational mind is too slow for what the body has to do, so if that part of the brain can “take a hike” the body more quickly learns the reflexes it needs to juggle. I think memorizing similarly preoccupies the rational mind, but this time rather than benefiting the reflexes, it benefits a deeper, more intuitive and complex part of the mind itself. 

Here’s the new thought. Memorization not only helps us connect the various parts within a challenging passage, it also helps us connect the passage with other issues in the Bible, or even the events of daily life. I can’t memorize a long piece in less than several weeks. I work on it while I’m walking. Two benefits: no interruptions, and increased blood-flow to my decrepit brain. So, as the days pass, I keep walking and reciting. Life continues to happen, and bits and pieces of my broader life get mixed into the thoughts of the passage. That makes a rich source for new insights, both in my personal life, and also in my understanding of God and His Word. Here’s a current example.

We hired a contractor to do some work, and he quickly let us know he is an active Christian. Nice surprise. He mentioned that he would quit believing in hell if the Bible made that allowance, but since it is so clearly taught in the Bible, he has to continue believing in eternal torment event though the thought is totally repugnant and seems to go against the character of God. I told him I was sure the Bible did not teach eternal torment. I know that Revelation 20:10 talks of Satan, the Beast, and the False Prophet being thrown into the lake of fire and says, “They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” But there are many more verses throughout the Bible that say the wicked will perish, will fade away, and the dead know nothing.

I plunged into a personal study on the topic and read much. I have found that when it comes to beliefs on hell there is definitely “more heat than light.” One flaming fragment of the debate is “Can you take the Bible literally?” No one wants to weaken belief in the Bible as the Word of God, nor do the serious scholars want to leave the Bible open to each person’s private interpretation. Some scholars are comfortable with flames licking up flesh that will char but never turn to ash. They accuse the others with refusing to take God at His word. Other scholars cannot reconcile eternal torture with a God who gave His own life for us, even “while we were yet sinners.” They take God’s word seriously, but they don’t want to let a few texts paint a picture of a monstrous God. What to do?

So here I am on my merry memorization walk, reciting the words of Romans 8; not a word of hell in sight. But in the back of my mind, hang many things: my to do list for the day, the plants around me, how many miles left to walk, and this burning argument over whether the Bible is to be taken literally. It seems disloyal and dangerous to say we can “explain away” certain texts by saying they are not to be taken literally. I run through the words of Romans 8:18-23. I’ll retain the verse numbering so you can get the full effect.

“18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Of course, I am breaking it up into bite-sized pieces and “imaging” the phrases to help them stick. Paul had just said that we are co-heirs with Christ if we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory. So, in this passage he quickly dismisses the sufferings and begins to focus on the glory, and apparently a major part of that glory will be the miracle of bodies that won’t die; bodies that will be righteous and will live, just as our spirits live now because God is leading us.

If I were reading for “understanding” that’s all I would get, and in fact, that does seem to be the main point. However, as I keep repeating the phrases, I see all of creation—the animals, the trees, the rocks, the lakes, even the breeze—waiting. Waiting how? They are all standing there with bated breath! They are hoping against hope that soon the children of God will be finally saved so that they, too, can be saved into a non-death state.

I’m fine with that—with the thought that when God saves us people, He will make a new heaven and a new earth—but notice, this is not about the current natural world being replaced. It’s about all of our current creation hoping for its own salvation. What do you notice? Not just salvation, but hoping! All the animals, plants, rocks, and elements of the creation are thinking! They all have expectation. Hmm… maybe the pantheists are on to something. Maybe there is a soul in even the rocks and water. Maybe there are nymphs, naiads, and dryads—the spirits of trees, meadows, and rivers. Maybe the pagans, the Wiccans, and the Native Americans were very perceptive to notice the consciousness of even the dirt we walk on.

Or maybe Paul is personifying nature; referring to it with the feelings we have about it. I’m trying to memorize, but suddenly, my conscious mind erupts with, “What would a literalist have to say about this!? If they insist that all Scripture is to be taken literally—even rare verses that seem to contradict the ideas found elsewhere in the Bible—wouldn’t they have to be pantheists, or animists, or at least pagans? Even if they said, ‘Well, all creation just means the physical part of our createdness, that is, our bodies,’ they’d be straying from a straightforward reading of this text. And they’d still have to explain how our bodies, separate from our minds, have the ability to expect things, even with eagerness.

What do you think? Is Paul saying the whole creation is groaning? Can we hear that? Literally? Or do you think Paul is saying that we groan for the restoration of creation the way the Holy Spirit (appearing in the following verses) groans for us as He petitions God for our restoration? What fits best with the rest of Scripture? And if Paul is writing figuratively, is there any room for figurative language about hell? Or is hell so needed by a paganized Christianity that all of the verses about eternal torment must be taken literally, but this one about rocks that hope and groan, doesn’t have to be?

Amazing what richness there is to Bible writing when we slow down, reread and reread, and allow a non-judgmental mind simply soak in what the Bible is and isn’t saying.

Now here’s another unexpected bonus. In trying to make sense of the ideas, my mind stumbled on verse 20 which suggests that the one who caused sin to enter this world did it in hope! In hope of what?! What possible good could come from introducing sin? Does this mean that Adam actually believed that the knowledge of good and evil would be a good thing for the natural world? Oops. Read on to verse 21 and see that the first translators to add verse numbering made a mistake. Pure and simple. Not all verse numbering works. There are places where a new chapter begins in the middle of a thought. Even the punctuation has been added for modern readers. Are all those things also inspired? Apparently not, because in this case, the phrase “in hope” doesn’t refer to what comes just before it in the same verse. It doesn’t refer to “the one” nor even to what is farther before it “subjected to frustration.” Instead, it points way back to “waits in eager expectation.” The creation is waiting in hope.

I make a big deal out of this not to weaken the place of the Bible in my life, but to strengthen it. Sometimes people see discrepancies between a presumed teaching of the Bible and simple human decency; for instance, that a loving God would keep sinners alive forever so He could torture them forever. Even Corrie Ten Boom is moral enough not to wish eternal torment on her Nazi persecutors, and in doing that she is following Jesus’ own advice. Why wouldn’t Jesus live by His own advice? Once this kind of discrepancy is discovered, they rightly ask, “Isn’t God as moral as people?” And some Christians who are well-intentioned but misinformed thunder back with “Who are YOU to judge a holy God?!!” It was an honest question, but the literalist can’t see through the flames, so they make it a test of loyalty, and they insist that we swallow erroneous views of God. Why? Because they have read the Bible for proofs of things rather than allowing it to wash over them and cleanse them with a living, breathing presence.

By being very attentive to how the Bible actually works—how the writers wrote, how the Spirit seems to have allowed them to express themselves, even how the Spirit today impresses us as we read—I am freed from these false conflicts. I don’t get stuck trying to defend the indefensible. Instead, I am free to see the beauty of the whole book and let colorful speech be colorful, not necessarily measurable.

That lets the Bible sing and dance and preach and thunder as a reflection of a merciful God who has pursued His children for thousands of years and has used every emotion to capture our attention and to gain our cooperation. I can’t let a literalist take one of those images and artificially use it to tear the other images apart. 

Memorization for Christian Enlightenment

My goal was to “hide His word in my heart” but I think I’m “being transformed by a [rewiring] of my mind.” Have you experienced the same thing? It came as a surprise to me when I realized what was happening. I want to describe the process for you. Unfortunately, it takes many words to unfold something so circuitous as the workings of the mind, but I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

Let me start by summarizing, then I’ll give you a concrete example. First, I believe that memorizing Scripture mimics the best of what people try to achieve in meditation. It occupies the conscious mind so that more delicate impressions or intuitive responses can be noted, and biases can be overcome. It prepares some deep recess of your mind for what some would call enlightenment. Second, memorizing allows the mind to grasp things with a complexity of relationship that more closely resembles the complex neural networks of the mind. Point-by-point outlines of theological argument are necessary for scrutinizing small segments of our belief, but they do not capture the richness of a growing relationship with God. Real life is cyclical, redundant, and complex. And third, the very repetition of memorizing a challenging passage provides “attention density” the condition that brain researchers say is necessary for grasping new concepts and installing new habits.

As you strive to memorize words in their proper order, your desire for a quick outline is suspended, and your conscious mind can gently hold several half-formed thoughts at the same time—not forcing them to support your earlier biases—since it is focused on the task of memorizing rather than proving a point. Those half-formed thoughts (images, really), then, begin to knit together in a way more natural to the text. Here’s a real-life example of how it works.

I am memorizing Romans 8 which looked like a bad choice after I got into it. The chapter has several passages I love, so I thought memorizing the whole thing, keeping the whole context intact, would be a great idea. But then I hit some of Paul’s not-so-easy writing: “And if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

“C’mon, Paul! Couldn’t you throw any more words and twists and turns into one sentence? This sentence should have been simple. Didn’t you mean to say, ‘If God’s Spirit lives in you, He will surely raise you from the dead, just as He did Jesus’?” This is where I would have left it if I were “studying” this passage. If I were struggling to understand it, I would have paraphrased it so that it made sense, and I would have moved on, collecting more building blocks for some theological idea.

However, memorizing works very differently. It partly anesthetizes your prefrontal cortex by giving you something else to focus on. Your conscious mind is always wanting to grasp and to understand. Sometimes it jumps too quickly to conclusions. Then it scurries on leaving many good things undetected. But in memorizing, the conscious mind focuses on the strategies of memorization, not on the quest for new theology. So for a time, new understandings can gently make their way into your mind like timid deer sniffing the wind as they enter a clearing.

One of the strategies of memorizing is backing up, rereading many times, and trying to see the passage more graphically. So I tried to see the phrases of Romans 8:11 in picture form. I imagined God holding out a scepter or something and Jesus rising from the dead. That’s the first phrase. But it needs to be modified. Take the Spirit of God and lodge it in a silhouette of myself. Now the image features a vaporous Spirit still raising Jesus, but this time it’s in me. Next I see the electric resurrection rays wafting out to all parts of my body, giving life. And yup, He’s still living in me.

This helped me remember the text in order, but more subtle things happened, as well. There are finer understandings hidden in the different phrases. “The Spirit of the one who raised Jesus…” compared to “the one who raised Christ…” As I am focusing on memorizing, my restless conscious mind is biting off little differences like this to chew on. After a little digestion I gain this: “The Spirit of God, and God are interchangeable. Paul does it in the same sentence. In fact, Paul doesn’t seem to care if it’s the spirit or God or Christ or Jesus. He uses them all interchangeably in some passages (like Romans 8:9).

So I don’t have to imagine some wispy Spirit; it is God Himself enlivening me, but He does this through His Spirit which means through the strong identification He has with me and I with Him. It’s the spiritual connection we share. (Too long a story to explain here.) So as I identify deeply with Him (“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…”) the resulting and natural benefit in me is a renewal of life-giving attitudes and ways of being.

I toy with that thought in the back of my mind, not committing to it, because my focus is on memorizing, not on refining my theology. Yet there it is hanging delicately in the back of my mind as a translucent image. Here’s the very God soaking through my life with resurrection power demonstrated in history in the life of Jesus. And He is able to do that because I deeply adore Him and yearn to know Him better. That image just hangs delicately in the background like a sheet of tissue paper hanging on a clothesline in a gentle breeze.

As I read and repeat other passages in Romans 8 (like verse 10), they, unbidden, have an effect on this delicate image. They either disintegrate it, or they reinforce it. I read “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin…” Is that a helpful image? It pops into my mind that Christ moves in and “Zap!” He kills your body. Okay, is this what people mean about “dying to self”? It’s another delicate image. How many of these can I hang on the line at one time without confirming or rejecting them? Apparently quite a few. Remember in memorizing we are not straining to collect and compare ideas, we are only struggling to commit words to memory.

Well, this image doesn’t even survive to the end of the sentence, because the sentence continues, “yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Ah ha! Here’s an important bonus lesson (and memorizing leads to many bonuses.) Paul sometimes leaves out clarifying transitions, or his translators do. The thought is “But if Christ lives in you, [though] your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” So the delicate image dissolves and a new tentative one forms: Christ enters and your spirit becomes more alive as it practices righteousness, even though life (eternal) has not yet come to your body which is still suffering the deadening consequences of your (or your ancestors’) past sins. This seems to reinforce the first delicate image, but doesn’t this “alive because of righteousness” somehow bring in personal works as part of your salvation? The text doesn’t say “because of His righteousness,” or “because of your righteousness” so whose righteousness is it? Whose work is this?

With your judging mind still patient because of its focus on memorizing, you don’t wrestle with that question, you just keep committing the words to memory. And soon you come upon Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if you live according to the Spirit, you will live.” Wait! That is not what it says. That’s a false parallel your mind created to make memorizing easier. As you struggle to be true to each word, you see that it really says, “… but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Now the meaning of “righteousness” becomes clearer. Who gets the credit is not even the point. The fact is that you have to put misdeeds to death. 

Ouch! I am pretty defensive of those things I do that others would criticize. They’re “me being me.” Well, don’t worry about others here; God is the standard. And I don’t put to death any things judged by others (or even by myself) to be misdeeds, rather I cease doing those things pointed out by the Spirit. I have noticed in my life that when the Spirit makes something clear to me, the knowledge seems to come with power to act on it. Paul continues the verse by strengthening the delicate image that is still hanging. He immediately follows in Romans 8:14 with, “… because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”

Time for a commercial break: Do you see what’s happening? In memorizing you are freed from the word order of the passage. Since you keep repeating various segments and since multiple images are hanging lightly in the back of your mind, it’s as though all thoughts and all sequences are okay at one time. It’s like letting all the puzzle pieces float on the same surface, free to move into place as the “big picture” becomes clearer. And when a pattern does emerge, then the various images (possible pieces of the puzzle) suddenly fly together and you are blown away with the new logic of the piece. It seems to be an organic, or non-linear logic that “just fits.” All the various parts assemble into a “knowing” that may be hard to outline or explain to a friend. Yet you feel it in your bones. It makes deep, consistent sense, and in time you can outline it. This “feeling the truth of it deep in your bones” is likely what some people call “enlightenment.” It is deep and rich. You can revisit it over and over. You can examine it with the power tools of logic, and it hangs together. It is durable.

Conclusion: None of the insights I am gaining in Romans 8 may seem that important to you. Your area of needed growth may lie in a different direction. The Spirit of God knows your spiritual fingerprint and will highlight the Scriptures most restorative for you. But I hope you get the point: Memorizing helps your rational mind “chill out” long enough for the more picture-oriented, intuitive part of your mind to grasp a truer whole. Your biases are suspended as the Holy Spirit impresses you with a truer grasp of what He meant when He inspired the Bible writer. Your logical mind can go back later and begin the pick-and-shovel work of the new whole image, piece by piece. You can spend time working the rich impression into logic-bound language, but you’ll never totally convey the complexity and depth of the picture you now see. I believe this is how the Spirit leads our thinking. The process of memorizing helps the rational mind and the “affective self” cooperate rather than compete. It allows His Spirit and your spirit to breathe in harmony.

Defective and Useful

Have you ever taken a painful look at your worst behaviors and then questioned the value of your best efforts? “How useful to a perfect God is a defective person?” Well, here’s a counter question: “Is your usefulness dependent on your strengths or on His knowledge?” It’s worth pondering.

When I finished praying about this yesterday here’s what I concluded: God knows my defects perfectly, and that means I am still useful. If He knows exactly how I am broken, where the cuts, tears, and weak spots are, then He sees where the sound parts are as well. I remembered a garden hoe I had. Its handle was cracked. If I ever forgot the crack and trusted it as I would a perfect hoe, then my hand would get pinched or slivered. If I chopped with the hoe I ran the risk of breaking the handle altogether. But if I remembered the crack and picked it up carefully I could get plenty of work done. I could use the edge of the hoe with considerable force since the handle was plenty strong along that axis.

I don’t even know how I am cracked or how extensive my defects are. I have some notion of some of my weaknesses, but God knows them all. What a happy thought! He understands me so well, that He can avoid my splinters and cracks and can still get some good work out of me. I am still useful because of His perfect knowledge of my defects.

The Color of Splakna

If “splakna” sounds like a made-up word, it is. The Greeks made it up thousands of years ago. Uncomfortable, a bit splattery, a bit rocky. But more on that later.

Last Christmas Eve as we were preparing food, Ginger entertained Mama with The Piano Guys video clips. Such excellent and creative musicians! Two songs that I love are “Peponi”, an African-language version of Cold Play’s “Paradise”, and “We Could’ve Had It All”, The Piano Guys’ rendition of Adel’s hit single.

The songs are very different in message, but startlingly the same in feeling. “Peponi” strains forward, clutching a vision of a better day, whereas “We Could’ve Had It All” looks backward with the writhing sting of lost love.

I was stirring a sauce, so without the visual aid of the videos I used my ears and heart more than my eyes and head. What struck me was the emotional intensity of both songs. I said to Ginger, “If those songs were two separate stews they would share a lot of the same spices.” Yes, I felt that in my bones, but “What spices?” I mulled it over, and it became clear; the shared ingredients are wistfulness and yearning, intensely wistful yearning.

Splakna! Gut-churning, burning, drive. Here’s what inspirational film producer Stew Redwine says about splakna. “This ancient Greek word evolved from referring to the nobler entrails used in sacrifice… [The word came] to describe the seat of the affections in humans. Literally the guts, viscera, [it] became gut level compassion, visceral feelings. Splakna is at the very core of our humanity. Splakna is that feeling in our guts when something really stirs us.”

How strange that the ardent straining towards paradise and the agonized grieving of lost love could put the same intensity of wistful yearning in our guts, or at least in our songs!

Then I remembered Ginger’s short art lesson given to me years ago. She said an art teacher of hers had explained that a skilled artist will choose a color to tie the whole painting together. If it is ochre, then ochre in varying amounts is mixed into every color on the pallet. It gives the painting an integrity, a unity in appearance. You may not detect the ochre in the blues, whites, and greens of the painting, but it’s there pulling the piece together.

In that same way, the color of our existence seems to be wistful yearning. All our moments are tinged with it. It is sharply apparent when love fails us and when our souls strain towards “a better land.” But it is also there in our times of joy, spilling over even into our pools of peace. Gently we understand that nothing gets to be truly perfect here. No one is faultless. No moment is without blemish. To one degree or another we are always in the shadow of “if only.”

While wistful yearning is the ubiquitous spice of our lives, the very color of our guts, there is joy in this: Grace calls us to the wistfulness of eager anticipation, and mercy lifts us from the sour yearning of regret.