Self-Denial in an age of Indulgence, Part 1

Last week I got tricked into doing a diet for lent. My wife suggested that we go on the diet together, and I was more than happy to comply. Thirty days of eliminating some bad stuff that we don't need. I'm all in. It wasn't until after we started that she gave me the spin:

Hey, since we started on the first day of Lent, we can just do this until Easter!

So instead of 30 days, now it's 40. Oh–and today I remembered that Lent is actually 46 days, plus Easter, because Sunday's aren't counted as part of the 40. And worst of all, if we fail, we're failing Jesus. Great. Just great.

The problem with this "elimination" diet, where you remove all of the stuff in your diet that the dietician you've chosen as your guru tells you is junk is not just that you realize all the garbage you've been eating, but you realize all the garbage that you could eat, if you really wanted to. And not because you'd fall off the wagon and go on a bender at the grocery store. You'd just need to open your pantry or your fridge. It's all right there. The garbage is around you all the time. You're surrounded by all this stuff, and unless you make a conscious decision to turn away from it, you're going to embrace it.

Participating in some form of Lenten self-denial, even if it was accidental, has made me realize how easy it is for me to indulge in basically anything that I want to indulge in, and not just that, but how often I actually do it. Food, stuff, entertainment. Whatever it is. When I want it, I can get it. That's the age we live in. And unless I'm making a conscious decision to turn away from all the things I could indulge in, I embrace it.

I'm not sure I have any sure-fire solutions to this problem, but over the next few days I'm going to offer some suggestions that we have been trying. I realize this is sort of like asking someone for some advice on dealing with suffering while they're in the midst of it, or asking someone the best way to parent when their kids are still toddlers. Everyone thinks they know the best solution when they're in the middle of it, but they don't really know until they're through it. It's usually better to ask them how they dealt with suffering once it's over and they're still mentally healthy, or to ask a parent how they did it when they're kids are functioning adults.

So maybe this is more for me than you. Either way, time will tell. So here's the first suggestion:

Give self-denial a try.

I hate this. Period. But the truth is that until you deny yourself something, you don't really know whether you could live without it, especially if it's a luxury item.

That glass (or three) of wine every day? You know you could give it up. You just don't want to. I get it. Me neither. But how do you actually know you could give it up? How do you know that you haven't become dependent on it, even if only emotionally? I'm all in on the daily glass of wine (or daily cookie or whatever your comfort food choice is) but if you never deny yourself, you'll never know if it's controlling you or you are controlling it.

I read a super-convicting statement before we went on this diet, that said something like this: no one forces you to cheat on your diet. A glass of wine doesn't magically appear. You don't accidentally have a piece of cake. No one forces you to eat unhealthy. It's your choice. Which means, you can take control, and stop being controlled by your circumstances.

Yes, we live in a world that encourages me to indulge in everything I want, when I want it. But I don't have to. That's my choice, and I want to own it.

But I hate it. Which, ironically, is exactly the reason I need to do it from time to time.

Lake House Weddings & Family

I have four sisters. This past weekend, the fourth and youngest of them got married.

Instead of doing the traditional wedding, where you invite every Tom, Dick and Harry that you've met over the last twenty years and treat them to a night of dining, dancing, and drinking on your dime, my sister wanted to do something smaller and more intimate. She rented a large lake house outside of Charlotte and invited the immediate families on both sides down for the weekend. The wedding would be Saturday afternoon.

Everyone arrived on Thursday or Friday, we spent the day on the lake Friday, Friday night we BBQ'd and hung out at the house, Saturday we golfed (the guys) or lunched (the girls), and Saturday afternoon we had the wedding in the backyard. Afterwards, we had a catered dinner on the back patio overlooking the lake. The party went into the night, and then everyone went home on Sunday.

Aside from it being a great weekend, it also reminded me what really matters about a wedding, and why we do them in the first place.

The first reason, of course, is that marriage is a visible reminder to us of Christ's relationship with the church. It reminds us of the covenant that God makes with us, through Christ, that he is going to love us because he loves us, not based on the deservedness of the beloved, but simply because he has decided he will love us. It is unbreakable; it is unending. Marriage reminds us of this.

When we have a marriage ceremony, this is what we are commemorating. This solemn service is a reminder of the enormity of the commitment of marriage. It symbolizes far more than we typically think; more of us would do well to take it seriously.

The second reason we have a wedding, however, is so that the vows that we make are done in the presence of witnesses. If it were just about the solemn reminder of what we are doing, the ceremony could be done in my office. I could put the fear of God into the couple. Or, perhaps a judge, with black robe, hidden behind a large wooden desk, raised up so that the poor couple is put into a submissive position by design. Yet it's about more than the reminder; it's about the witnesses. And these witnesses to the vows aren't just witnesses, they are people who, ideally, will actually hold the couple accountable to the vows that they have seen them make. They will remind them of what they said they would do; they will help them keep those vows when life is difficult. They will be there for them, supporting them, so that when life or marriage gets hard, there are other people to lean on.

Whittle down the multitude of people at any given wedding to the handful of people who will actually take their "witnessing" seriously; who, when the hard part of the vows (the worse, the poorer, the sickness) becomes the reality of the vows, will actually be there to make sure that the having/holding and loving/cherishing will actually be maintained until death does the couple part; you might find that it's not much more than the immediate family anyway. 

Well-intentioned people want to celebrate with the couple getting married. They are genuinely joyful at the celebration the couple is experiencing; genuinely desiring to honor them and help them on in their marriage and in their life. But life is long. Memories fade. "Witnesses" forget what they saw. There are only so many commitments we can be a party to witnessing before it is beyond our ability to hold them all up when the difficulties come.

It's fun to have huge parties, but sometimes it can overshadow what it is that we are actually witnessing, and why we are even there to begin with. It was nice to know that as I looked at the faces of the people witnessing this couples vow, they were going to be with the couple long after the party ended...

VW Diesels and our Complicity

Yet the Volkswagen scandal is a reminder of how our human sinfulness, in ways both individually and corporately, holds us back from shalom. It’s a story of greed, pride, self-deception and outright lies, mostly by engineers and corporate officials. And even if I didn’t know about it, on some level, no matter how clean my fossil-fueled vehicle seemed to be, I remained complicit in a world economy that is damaging creation.

My bro-in-law has one of these VW Diesel's that were included in the scandal. He purchased it because, quite frankly, it's a sweet car and got great gas mileage with low emissions. Two out of three of those things remain true. Unfortunately, it's just polluting a lot more than anyone thought.

The first response to something like this is typically anger. Angry at the system, at Volkswagen, corporate greed, and just generally feeling lied to and cheated. The second response, though, is frustration. Frustration at all the things we were angry about, and how it feels like we can't change them, but then the general frustration of realizing that, no matter how much we wish we weren't, we're part of the problem.

VW had some motive (largely financial) to lie about the emissions of these vehicles. They knew that with the right combination of performance and the perception of being green, these things would sell like crazy. And that's what happened. The problem was, it wasn't actually possible to put those two things together. It couldn't perform as well as it does and still be as green as they had hoped. So they cheated.

The pessimist in me says that VW knew that there was a whole crop of people who would love to drive a green vehicle, but had no intention of sacrificing performance to do it. That's not necessarily wrong, but it's also not necessarily green. Lots of people would be "green" if it didn't cost them much...

Connecting the Discriminatory Dots

As Christians, we want our institutions like private, Christian colleges, to be able to set a standard of conduct for the employees of the organization that, as employees, they must agree to abide by. This includes both conduct related to the job (the employee may not teach heresy, as the organization defines it) and moral conduct unrelated to the job but which the institution assumes the employee either implicitly supports by their presence, or has agreed to support in their behavior even if it conflicts with their personal view. All are welcome to apply. All are welcome to disagree. But if an employee takes the job, there are certain mandates which they must adhere to. If they find that they can no longer adhere to them, the organization has the right to terminate the employee and the employee has the right to resign. As a result, Christians do not believe that this is discriminatory.

Our Government, as an institution, wants to set a standard for the conduct of it's employees that the employees must agree to abide by, which include conduct related to the job (the employee must issue marriage licenses, how the government defines them) as well as conduct unrelated to the job but which the government assumes the employee either implicitly supports by their presence, or have agreed to support in their behavior, even if it conflicts with their personal view (the employee will support President Obama, even if they didn't vote for him and hate his policies). All are welcome to apply. All are welcome to disagree. But if the employee takes the job, there are certain mandates which they must adhere to. If they find that they can no longer adhere to them, the government has the right to terminate the employee and the employee has the right to resign. As a result, many Christians think the Government is being discriminatory.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that we should be more careful in calling something discriminatory when we want the right to be able to do ourselves, lest that (real and important) right be taken from us.

Equality & Law Enforcement

Back when the events in Ferguson, MO were going down, I had a conversation with someone where the person admitted that he couldn't figure out why things transpired as they did. On the one hand, he couldn't figure out why a man might get shot or even hassled by the cops. On the other hand, he couldn't figure out why the end result would be rioting. This kind of thing didn't happen in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Of course it doesn't, I told him, because the people in Saratoga Springs, where he was from, were wealthy.

Let me be clear: that is not intended to be a character statements about wealthy people. There is no shortage of sin and brokenness at every level of affluence. Wealthy people commit just as many, and quite possibly more, crimes than poor people. Wealthy people are often just as rude to the cops and sometimes, distrusting in different ways. The reason that things like Ferguson don't happen in Saratoga Springs is not because the people are better or more moral or more ethical. It is because in Saratoga, the people have the money to keep the police just.

If a police officer in Saratoga Springs hassles someone unjustly, it's likely that the person he is hassling has the financial means to right the wrong, should it be necessary. Even if the person he hassles doesn’t have the means, the general community does, and they aren’t going to tolerate even the possibility of being hassled or treated unjustly. The police officer understands that his authority and power are held in check by the very people that he is called to police. If he does not do his job, he might lose it; if he takes advantage of his job, he might also lose it. The people in a wealthy city like Saratoga Springs have at least as much power as the police officer, and as it turns out, that’s the only scenario in which law enforcement can truly operate effectively.

Again, law enforcement can only function effectively in a society where the citizens have just as much power as the law enforcers. There is actually a biblical principle for this that comes up over and over again throughout the Bible, because it’s based on the very character of God himself. The principle is this: True biblical submission can only take place in the context of equality. 

In the New Testament, there are authoritative/submissive commands for various relationships. Husband and wife, employer and employee, parents and children, and so on. Some people misunderstand those passages and attempt to do away with "authority/submission" language to soften the blow; in other words, they deemphasize the structure, in order to draw attention to the equality. Others misunderstand those passages by attempting to emphasize the authority/submission language, and often end up losing the value of inherent equality. To understand it properly requires that we view these commands through the Biblical lens which does not emphasize one over the other, but actually demonstrates that true authority/submission can only happen within true and real equality. 

The early missionary and writer of much of the New Testament, Paul, emphasized on more than one occasion the equality of all people in the sight of God, while also emphasizing that within that equality there is a mutual submission that consists of authoritative roles and submissive roles. As it turns out, this is the most clear reflection of the nature of God, where we find that God is both equal with himself–that is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equal in their divinity and in their power and in their essence–and yet, are also submissive to one another, so that the Son is submissive to the Father's will and the Holy Spirit is submissive to the Father and the Son. Submission can only exist in the context of equality.

A healthy society, therefore, will emphasize the equality of law enforcement and the citizens. In a society where the law enforcement has all the power, you will end up with a domineering police state that hassles it's citizens without repercussion, and carries out it's "justice" inequitably amongst the people. Such is the case in many lower income areas, where the people do not have any power to keep the police in check. On the other hand, a state where law enforcement is deemphasized and disrespected also ends up with just as much injustice. Those with access will bend the law to their will, and the officers of that law to boot. The officers will end up serving some, and neglecting others. Instead of a balance of power, the people have the power (by which I mean, the wealthy people), the law enforcement become their pawns, and ultimately just as much injustice ensues.

No, there is only one way that law enforcement works in a healthy society, and that is when both the enforcer and the enforcee recognize their equality and thus their equal share of power. Both parties therefore enter into a mutually beneficial agreement; you will respect me, as a person, and my sovereignty, yet will nevertheless enforce the societal laws that we all agree on.

So why do "things like this not happen" in Saratoga? Because in Saratoga, there is a balance of power between those with the legal power and those with the financial power. They hold one another in check. In Ferguson, and in almost all places where we see this type of unrest, they do not hold one another in check. One side has all the power, and it's not the people. It's law enforcement.

That's why injustice happens, and that's why people respond in anger. They have no other choice. They have no other power. The only way to get something to happen is to get noticed, and hopefully, they will see justice.

If you can't understand why they would do that, my guess is, it's because you have other ways to fix the problem.

Can a Christian Smoke Marijuana? Maybe.

Within my lifetime there has been a significant shift in the cultural perspective on marijuana usage. Just today, as I sat in Starbucks sipping my decaf coffee (I didn't want to abuse the drug caffeine), I was simultaneously reading a forum discussion between Pastor's on the subject of whether or not Christians should smoke weed and eavesdropping on a conversation between people next to me who were discussing their perspectives. Both parties at the table next to me discussed the rampant drug use in the high school that they were familiar with; one of them said, "Marijuana has replaced alcohol as the drug of choice. It's so much safer! It's all natural, too." The other (apparently after the other person had left, because I wasn't watching them and there was no response), gave the traditional perspective: "It's so dangerous...it's a gateway drug."

The shift in cultural perspective means that in some parts of the country, recreational marijuana use is legal, and in all likelihood the rest of the nation will follow this trend. Many Christians have refrained from using marijuana simply because it has been illegal; as that will no longer be the case, they are actually forced to have a perspective on it and think through why a Christian should abstain or not abstain. If you live in one of those areas where it is already legal, there's a good chance the discussion has already come up: should a Christian smoke marijuana?

Let me say up front that I am not talking about medical usage of marijuana. Marijuana is proven to relieve the symptoms of some ailments, and the research has increasingly demonstrated potential value in cases such as epilepsy. A friend-of-a-friend uses it for just this purpose, and claims that it's the only thing that works to keep him from the seizures that he's had since he was born. My assumption is that he's telling the truth, and that if it works, more power to him. But that's a post for a different day. In this case, I'm talking about recreational use specifically.

The first place the Christian looks to see if there is any instruction or guidance on the subject is the Bible. So long as marijuana was illegal, the discussion on whether or not a Christian should partake was really just a question of whether or not a Christian was obligated to follow the laws of the land. Since the Bible makes clear that they should, the Christian response to marijunana was similarly black and white. If it is legalized, then that argument becomes moot. And since marijuana usage is not specifically addressed in the Scripture, we have to turn to related issues to determine whether or not it's use is acceptable. Those two related issues are the Bible's teaching on alcohol usage, and the teaching on sobriety generally.

Alcohol & Sobriety 

Although there are differing perspectives within the Christian community on whether or not a Christian should ever drink alcohol, it is an issue that should fit solidly into the "conviction" category of beliefs. A conviction is a belief that a Christian has that is addressed by Scripture, but not in a way that makes the conclusion obvious. As a result, our convictions–although informed by Scripture–are often heavily influenced by our personal experience, and thus we can come to different conclusions and still remain friends without attempting to dismantling the other person's faith. 

The Bible does address alcohol usage, but does so in a way that leaves open the option for Christians to drink. Those in favor of having the occasional drink point out that Jesus first miracle was turning water into wine; those opposed to drinking alcohol point out that the main point of the miracle had to do with purification, not wine drinking, and in any case because Jesus allows something doesn't mean he condones it. In his letters, Paul would encourage the early Christians to "remain sober-minded"; this is the teaching that seems to be behind Paul's exhortation not to get "drunk like the pagans, which leads to debauchery". If there is a clearly-expressed biblical principle related to alcohol, this is it. The Christian should maintain his wits about him; he or she shouldn't voluntarily submit their mental focus to anything that would negatively impact their sobriety.

The reason for this, I think, has less to do with the results of being under the influence, and more to do with the opportunity cost of the loss of sobriety. The results are certainly important, as Paul points out: getting wasted often leads us to make very unwise choices, sometimes to the point that we don't remember we made them. Those effects are temporal, however. They are for this life only. The greater tragedy is the opportunity cost of the loss of sobriety; that is, when we are not sober-minded, we will be ill-equipped to share the Gospel if an opportunity arises. This gets to the heart of Peter's exhortation to the believers in his first letter: always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have. There is much that this could mean, but it certainly includes the understanding that the Christian person should be always ready to share the Gospel, and anything that would inhibit our ability to do that should be put aside. Thus, the desirable state of mind for the believer is the one in which he or she is sober and ready to make a defense of the Christian faith.

So then, we are left with these two principles: first, that the usage of alcohol itself is never condemned, and second, that what is condemned is anything that would cause us to lose our wits. If we take the first principle to mean that alcohol usage is allowed, then certainly the guiding principle should be the second: there are limits to God's good creation! The Psalmist remarks that wine gladdens our hearts (Psalm 104), but the wise teacher of the proverbs reminds us that it can also lead us astray; to follow it would be unwise. (Proverbs 20)

These are the two principles that I would apply to the recreational usage of marijuana. Will it cause you to lose your wits? Can you occasionally smoke marijuana and still be in a state of mind to share the Gospel? If so, then I cannot see a biblical reason that it would be disallowed. This is not to say that it would be wise to smoke marijuana. That is a different question and one that I have very little interest in answering at this juncture. Everyone makes unwise choices, and often with regularity. What I'm interested in is what God thinks about it. And as far as I can tell based on what he has chosen to reveal, the best we can do is develop a personal conviction on the issue. We can decide for ourselves based on the Scripture and encourage others to see things how we see them, but we're not allowed to chastise someone for choosing differently than us, if they at least understand what the Bible teaches. If God wanted to be clear, he certainly could have been. But he wasn't. And that means that as we apply what he has told us, we might not all agree. That's what makes it a conviction, rather than an essential.

And at the end of the day, we can still all get along.

Speculating on Jesus: Reliable Sources?

The final challenge that might be presented in light of the recent survey previously referenced is the challenge of whether or not the source material of Jesus life is to be trusted. By way of reminder, the survey indicated that most Americans believe that Jesus was a historical person who existed, but the opinions about what he was actually like or who he actually was varied greatly. This means that for the modern American Christian, the chief concern is not proving that he was, but who he was. This means, first, that Jesus is someone that we should care about beyond the typical historical figure. Second, it means that we need to know where to look to find out more information about him. And then finally, we need to determine whether that source material can be trusted.

As I mentioned in the last post, this third question is only posed when we realize that the source material about Jesus (his biographies) unashamedly present a man who believed that he was God. His claims were not just universal in nature, but they were actually universal truth claims about himself. If he really was God, if he really did do the things that he said, then it has tremendous implications for our life today. So much so, that if we can't rightly ignore what he said according to his biographers, then the next best thing to do is question the source altogether. Perhaps the accounts have been embellished. Perhaps, over time, the accounts have been changed to present a figure that said more than Jesus ever actually did.

This argument is quite easy to dispel, of course. Simply, if you were trying to soften the blow of Jesus' claims, or you were trying to make him more acceptable to the skeptic, you would have dialed down his claims, not ratcheted them up. In this case, Jesus' biographers would have made his words more offensive, more outlandish, and ultimately more crazy–unless they were true and he actually said them. We must keep in mind that it is recorded, extra-biblical, and fully accepted history that this group of people called Christians were being mercilessly persecuted by Rome, and particularly by the emperor Nero. Even if we wanted to make the highly unlikely and somewhat illogical argument that all of these early Christians were delusional, persecution that led to death certainly would have cleared out the insane from the sane. Instead of shrinking this group of people, however, it actually grew.

It's helpful to remember that these were first and second generation Christians who were being killed. Some of them may have been alive during Jesus ministry; most almost certainly had parents who were alive during that time. They faced this persecution precisely because they believed that the message of Jesus was true. He really did say what he said he did. He really was who he said he was. 

The Gospel writers fall into this group of people who, again, were first or second generation Christians. Three out of four definitely saw the ministry of Jesus. One of them, Luke, may not have, and perhaps that is what prompted his thoroughly researched biography that he claims to present to a person named Theophilus. Nevertheless, it behooved all of them to account for Jesus life as it actually happened. There was no benefit to making the story more than it was. They were already going to lose their lives on account of Jesus and who he was. Better to die for the real Jesus than someone they made up. Furthermore, the early church consistently verified these accounts of Jesus life as being accurate and truthful accounts of Jesus life.

All things being equal, a group that believed a known lie–and make no mistake but that the central moment of Jesus life, the resurrection, would have been a known lie were it not actually true–may have continued to propagate that truth so long as it led to pleasurable results. That is, assuming that the first disciples made up the outlandish story of Jesus rising from the dead, so long as it had pleasurable results the group might have just gone on propagating that story. What did it matter, so long as the results were good? Yet this is not what happened. While it did, for a time, produce pleasurable results, the fact is that the more one believed the message, and the more that one shared the message and lived out the implications to this truth, the less desirable the results became. If you really believed it, and you shared it, and you were obvious about the message of Jesus resurrection, you were threatened, arrested, and beaten, almost from the jump. If the resurrection–again, the single act that motivated the early church to advance–were not true, the disciples would have known that it wasn't true. At some point, someone would have cracked. At some point, a second or third generation follower would hear the story, not having seen the resurrection for themselves, and said, "this is crazy", and eventually the movement would have died. Of course, the other possibility is that the resurrection is not a lie at all, but an actual historical event that took place. Quite frankly, this is the direction that all of the notable information points. The movement really did happen. Cowards became courageous. The government and the religious leaders–two major powers who wanted nothing more than for this Jesus character to go away–never presented the body, despite knowing exactly where they put it because they guarded it with soldiers.

In the end, we might find that the message of Jesus' biographies, and the claims that he made about himself, are either outlandish or they are old fashioned. We may find that they are offensive. But none of these are the central question that we ought to ask. The question is, are they true? Did Jesus actually say and do these things? Are the Gospel accounts trustworthy? Given the historical context (not to mention the harmony of the four accounts), it seems that it would be more reasonable to ask why we wouldn't trust them. No one had anything to gain by fabricating these stories. The government didn't want to advance the message. The religious leaders never wanted to think about Jesus again. The Christians knew they would be killed for writing the things that they wrote. The only reason you'd write them is if they were, at the end of the day, actually the things that Jesus said and did, and if, at the end of the day, you were willing to stake your life on their truth. And that's exactly what the writers did.