Happiness

What if you could actually do whatever it was that made you happy?

I don't mean the freedom to go out to dinner whenever you wanted, purchase whatever your heart wanted to purchase, or snub a person just because you don't feel like talking. I'm talking bigger, purpose level stuff. What if you could actually enjoy life, day in and day out, doing exactly what you always wanted to do, feeling fulfilled in your work or daily life, finding that your joy was overflowing with each passing moment?

That sounds like a fairytale, and in some ways, it is. The fact is that even if you actually got what you wanted, and you could do, day in and day out, whatever it was that you most loved to do, hard moments were going to come and there would be seasons of sorrow. I was reminded this past week that Solomon himself said this in his letter of Ecclesiastes, after having lived a storied and privileged life if there ever was one, that in spite of having the ability to do and attain whatever he desired, he found that at the end of the day it was all meaningless.

There is a Christian thought that says that the chief end of man is the enjoyment of God; that is, once we have come to taste the pleasure of our salvation that is found in Jesus, we will increasingly grow in our delight of him so that, in the end, our greatest pleasure is giving honor and praise and glory to God, through whom we have received this great joy. I would never argue this theologically; in fact, quite the contrary. It is one of the principled themes that guides my life. We must find great joy in God himself, through Jesus Christ, or our faith is worthless. Why would I want to put my confidence in something that robbed me of pleasure? This is contrary to my entire being; I know, without having to learn it, without having to be taught it, without anyone having to tell me, that in my innermost being I will pursue whatever is most pleasurable to me. When I choose to pursue something otherwise, it feels profoundly off, like choosing the wrong path at a fork in the woods.

We are so guided by pleasure, in fact, that there are times when we are not even aware that we are doing it. There are times where the initial decision doesn't appear to be for our own pleasure at all, but the outcome is far more desirable. In other words, we choose the difficult path now because the long term reward is far better. There is something about us that knows the decision will end in pleasure even if, in the moment, our senses tell us otherwise.

I have sat on the exit row on an airplane on more than one occasion and every time I have listened to the flight attendant tell me that, should I choose to sit there, I would be responsible for ensuring that the other passengers made it safely out the door and down the slide, in the event that an evacuation was even possible (something I always assume will probably not be the case). I believed that the appeal the attendant was making was to my reason, and indeed, that is true to a certain degree. We human beings have the ability to choose against our natural instinct to save ourselves, and instead hang back in a dangerous position in order to let other people go on ahead to safety. That is a uniquely human characteristic, that we can choose reason over instinct. Yet, there is another factor at play as well, and this is the appeal to our pleasure.

It is our natural instinct towards pleasure that I may say unites us with the creation itself. My dog might choose the safety of my own family over his own family, much the same as I might choose the safety of the other passengers over my own, but this has nothing to do with reason. My dog puts my family first because his instinct is to serve; to say it another way, it is his pleasure to do it.

You might wonder how it is possible that there is any pleasure at all from putting ourselves in danger, or how remaining in danger is more pleasurable than running on to safety, but consider the outcome in either case. If we decided to disregard our responsibility and jump out of the exit door before anyone else had a chance, we would probably survive, along with at least a few others. Indeed, it is entirely possible that everyone would survive, and our act of cowardice would be inconsequential to the outcome. But we would have to live with it; we would have to live with the knowledge that we bailed out in what may have been the greatest moment of responsibility to others we have ever faced. It would have been a great displeasure to us to have to live under that shadow; we would be safe, but we would also be ashamed.

On the other hand, had we taken our responsibility seriously we may end up dead. Perhaps we would survive, in which case we would be lauded a hero. But if we did die, at least we would have had the pleasure of knowing that we went out helping others; we would still be lauded a hero, we would just not have the knowledge of it. Nevertheless, most would say, better to die as a noble person than to live as a coward.

The point of the story is simply that, even if we didn't immediately recognize it at the moment of decision, the end result was that our pleasure would be increased. It brought us more pleasure to set aside our inherent self-interest in order that others would be led to safety. We may not have known it when we sat in the exit row (a decision largely made for our own pleasure and increased leg room) and we may not have immediately known it when our exit services were actually required, but when it was all over and as many as could be saved were off the plane, we would have remarked that it was "our pleasure" to assist however we could.

So our pleasure is our chief motivation; God is our chief end. This truth has led many people to learn contentment and joy despite their circumstances. Many Christians, despite tremendous difficulty and suffering, can nevertheless say that they have joy because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. It was worth whatever they had lost! It was like a treasure in a field that they sold everything to get. Yet I would argue that despite the theological truth, and the experiential reality of having enjoyed Christ in spite of suffering (and having seen Him enjoyed by others), the dimension of our pleasure that we have too quickly set asunder in our modern era is the reality of our humanity.

I have come across many people, and I may include myself in this, who have found themselves in unpleasant circumstances, but rather than change the circumstances for their pleasure have instead attempted to will themselves towards joy in Christ. I wonder how often Jesus might have curiously suggested that they simply change whatever it was that they did not like.

Indeed, there are moments where we cannot change what brings us displeasure, humanly speaking. We cannot simply will away cancer or decide not to have it. In those moments, we will be glad to know that we find our great joy in Christ. But what of the person who is miserable because they do not live near their family, or the person who is miserable in their job, or the person who lives in a place where they have no friends, or attends the church that they do not enjoy? To what degree are we expected to find joy in Christ in circumstances where our joy might be renewed simply by changing something?

Perhaps we assume that making a decision based purely on whatever will make us happy is unspiritual. I would argue that this is precisely the case, and precisely the reason we should do it. In one sense, we know that all of life is spiritual; that is, there is nothing that is not in some way affected by our relational status with God the creator of the universe. But in another sense, we are flesh and blood; we are irrevocably "earthy" in our existence and unmistakably unspiritual, which is exactly how God intended it to be. If it is impossible for us to separate the spiritual from our decision making process, it is equally as impossible–and equally unwise–for us to separate our humanity from the decision making process. We may even find that it is our earthly situation that is robbing us of our spiritual joy in Christ!

I was asked the question once whether I felt like I would be disobeying Jesus if I did not plant a church. "What a spiritual question!", I thought. Of course, I had no answer to it, as I hadn't really considered whether or not Jesus' call to me was one that I could obey or disobey, or whether he would be pleased or displeased with my decision. To that point, I had simply considered that this is what I should do. I had weighed the alternatives. This seemed right. It seemed like something worth exploring. By the time this person had asked me whether or not I would be disobeying Jesus, I really didn't know. I supposed that I could be perfectly obedient to Jesus doing any number of things, but this was the one that, for now, seemed to be the right one. I don't even know what I answered when the person asked.

Standing where I am now and considering the question through the lens of hindsight I see the deep flaw in it. To me, it spiritualizes what is in many ways a very human question: what do you want to do, and why are you doing it? For as much as Jesus calls us to come and die to ourselves so that we can live for him, it is also a deep truth of the good news that Jesus meets us precisely where we are. I would suggest that the way we can know a call is from Jesus is if the outcome fills us with great pleasure.

In fact, I may go so far as to say that I am convinced that Jesus greatest call on us is to whatever it is that will bring us the most pleasure.

It is important to understand that that Jesus knows better than we do what will bring us pleasure. There are dark desires of my heart that may fool me into believing that they will bring me pleasure, and in the moment, they might, but in the long run, will lead to my destruction and actually rob me of joy. Whereas, a temporary denial of that quick pleasure will lead to lasting joy. Jesus desires my greater pleasure, the one that fills me with lasting joy, and not a temporary high.

Yet there are many things in life that bring great joy and are not sinful, or guilty pleasure, or pleasures that are fleeting, but are good, God-given pleasures that are flawed because we are flawed but are good because God in his mercy has made sure they remained good. If your family is anything like mine is is deeply flawed and yet it is good. I live in and with a community of people who are deeply flawed and yet profoundly good. I live in a town with deeply flawed leadership and yet, somehow, by God's grace, is still good. There are good things that abound around us and that bring me great happiness.

There was a moment in my life when I would have moved anywhere for God, and many times did. (I am thankful that God has not called me to international missions, and I am not sure how I would have responded if he had.) We moved to many different states and cities, and would have moved to many more, in order to pursue the calling that we felt he had placed on our lives. Why did we do that? It was our great pleasure! There was something about the continual call, the next step, the bigger ministry. We weren't bound by time, place, or relationships. We would go wherever God called!

But was that more or less spiritual than our current desire not to ever move again, desiring that we stay here for a very long time, even if it means ministering in relative obscurity for the rest of our lives? This, too, is our great pleasure. To remain in a place where our children are loved, where we are cared for, with people that we love, with people that we care for. You might ask, what if Jesus has called us to great influence? I would suggest that Jesus has not called us to influence; he has called us to joy.

And so I return to my humanity and my joy and pleasure and family and all the things that make me me and you you. What are we doing or not doing under the misguided belief that Jesus has called us to contentment despite our displeasure? Perhaps Jesus has called us away from our displeasure so that we will find our contentment. I have run into those who lived in displeasure because they felt they were called by God to do so; I can't help but wonder if they are missing his purest call. Maybe contentment means deciding to take a lower paying, less influential job simply because it is near family, and family makes us happy. Maybe it is to not take the next promotion because it would mean more time away from home, and home makes us happy. Maybe it would be to move to the shore, because the shore makes us happy. Maybe it would be to move to a small town by a lake in the woods, because nature makes us happy.

Jesus has called us to pleasure in Him. What I am suggesting here, for myself and for you, is that if we really found our deepest satisfaction in Jesus, we would find ourselves far more free to choose whatever makes us happy in this life. Do you want to find another job? Find another job. Jesus is okay with it. Do you want to move closer to family? Then move. Jesus is just as much there as he his here; you may find him to be more pleasurable when you are near those you love. Actually leaving behind all those things that Jesus calls us to leave behind so that we can pursue him means that we don't have to feel like we are bound by those things anymore; instead of feeling enslaved to a job or to a location or a place or whatever, we are actually freed from the bondage so that we can enjoy them. Jesus doesn't just bring us spiritual joy; he frees us to experience human joy as well; the type of joy that comes from sitting next to a brook or fishing on a quiet pond or hiking a mountain or turning off our cell phone and just sitting there, unreachable for the rest of the world, playing a game with our kids, reading a book, doing a puzzle.

Finding our joy in Jesus reveals a freeing truth: Jesus doesn't need us to save the world. He's already done it. Which means that you can go and enjoy Him, forever.

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.

Speculating on Jesus: Where to look?

Given that the vast majority of American's already believe that Jesus was a historical figure, the challenge for the Christian person is to define who Jesus was, rather than that he was. The fact that he existed is assumed to be true, but this raises several difficult questions. The first question, "Why should I care?" is covered in this post. We must clarify for ourselves and for those around us why we should have any interest in researching who Jesus actually was; what is it that makes him stand out from all the other historical figures that we could study? This, of course, leads to the second question. If our interest in Jesus is piqued, where should we actually turn to find out more about him? That is the topic of this post.

For now, let's set aside the third question that I presented in the first post on the subject. That question, "how can I trust what I'm reading?", is so important to this second question that I debated whether or not it should come first. Upon reflection, however, I decided that it was better to set it aside for now and simply address what the material related to Jesus life actually says. As we approach Jesus to find out more about him, I think that we will find that our assumptions about him are that he is fairly innocuous; the image that we have is of a kind, caucasian gentleman with a lamb cast around his shoulders. Surely this Jesus cannot be much of a bother; this Jesus won't demand much from us. He is safe. As such, questions of whether or not we should put our confidence in what is actually recorded about Jesus won't really arise until after we've examined the material and found that, far from being innocuous, he is actually quite dangerous; far from demanding little, his claims are actually quite demanding. If not for us, at very least for the way in which we view the world. After coming into contact with who Jesus actually is and what Jesus actually teaches, we find that–if we are to trust him–we cannot go on the same way we have been prior to this moment. Everything changes if what is said about Jesus is true. And that is the point where most of us will be awoken to our senses and we will actually ask the question, "should I trust this material?" And when we ask it, then we will answer it. Until then, we'll just consider where we should look.

The place to begin, of course, is in the four account of Jesus life that are often referred to as "The Gospels". These four accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each take a particular perspective in writing about Jesus, and each of them has a particular audience in mind. They were written by four different authors at four different time periods. Yet despite those differences, we find an amazing cohesiveness between the four books. If we begin with these accounts, there are at least two things that we will begin to see; to data points, if we can call them that, as we discover who Jesus actually is.

First, we'll discover what the very early followers of Jesus though about him. Two of the writers are Jesus disciples (Matthew & John), one of them is a close follower of Jesus who would later spend time with Peter (Mark), and the other is a historian who spent extensive time researching Jesus life and traveling with the Apostle Paul. Certainly, their perspective on who Jesus actually was ought to be important to us. They were the ones who saw him, walked with him, heard him, and ultimately believed in him. These four biographies of Jesus life give us all that we need to make a clear determination of what the early church thought about Jesus: namely, that he was Savior and Lord.

Second, we'll discover what Jesus thought about himself. Jesus was not shy about making radical claims about his identity, and his biographers do not soften these claims. This in itself is worth noting. If the early followers of Jesus knew that he made claims about himself that they did not believe were true, they would have taken great claims to scrub them from the record, as it were. Yet they didn't do that. This indicates that, not only did they believe Jesus, but it also gives us confidence that Jesus believed these claims about himself as well. The most outrageous claim, and the one that finally got him sent to his death (at least from the religious leaders perspective), was that he was God, the creator of the universe. Again, this is an outrageous claim that, were you or I to make it, would make us look like absolute fools. Indeed, Jesus would have looked like a fool too, had he not proved it with his death and resurrection–or at least, that's clearly what his early followers believed about him.

Once we have come into contact with what the early church thought about Jesus, and what Jesus believed about himself, we turn our attention to the next question: what did Jesus believe about the rest of the universe? Or, what did he believe about God? What was his belief about how the world operates, and why it was that he needed to come and offer some sort of salvation? We'll find in short order that what Jesus believed, and the "scripture" that he used, was the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians would refer to as the Old Testament. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus opens to the center of that Scripture and claims that he is ushering in the fulfillment of all that it promises; at the end of his ministry, Jesus takes time to show that everything that was written in the Hebrew Bible pointed towards him. At very least, what we learn from this is that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as trustworthy. They were so trustworthy, in fact, that not only did God deliver them to his people so that they would know what it was that he expected of them, but then, in a great cosmic act of mercy, fulfilled the demands himself. This is the reason why Jesus can say to his followers that the only way to get back into God's good grace, as it were, was through Him. He was the gate into the life you've always wanted, that you've always tried to create. 

Finally, we come to the implications. What does this all mean? For that, we turn to what Christians refer to as the New Testament. A collection of letters and teaching that were written by the very early church leaders and distributed amongst the churches. They, too, were considered authoritative and trustworthy. In the letters we find the early church leaders instructing the people on how the fulfillment of God's law ought to impact our lives, today. One thing that stands out: the expectations of God still matter, it's just that our failure to live up to them isn't held against us. The good news of Jesus is that since he has fulfilled them, our failure to fulfill them will never be held against us again, so long as we put our confidence in his efforts rather than our own. It was unacceptable to the early leaders that you would want to have Jesus, but disagree with him about what he viewed as sin. You couldn't have it both ways. If you acknowledged that Jesus was God, Lord, and Savior, then you also had to agree that what Jesus believed about how God intended the world to be (evidenced through Jesus' scriptures and his own teachings) was actually true. You couldn't claim to follow Jesus, but reject what he taught, even if those teachings led to some discomfort in our lives.

This discovery is what causes most people to stop and question whether or not this source material can be trusted. After all, there are only two ways to make Jesus safer than he actually is. The first is to reinterpret what Jesus said so that it fits our pre-conceived agenda. This is the theological equivalent of having our cake and eating it too; we like the idea of Jesus, but we simply cannot accept what he taught about sin, sexuality, divorce, money, or anything else for that matter. I'll take the free gift of salvation, but functionally I'll reject the reason salvation was necessary in the first place. Surely, things cannot be that bad. The great danger of this softening, or "safening", of Jesus is that it's almost always an inside job. It comes from Christians who know that they cannot totally disparate the text, or the Bible as a whole quickly becomes untrustworthy. Better instead to reinterpret what Jesus said so that it is more palatable for the modern person. The trouble with this approach, however is that it requires us to assume that what was written about Jesus is supposed to be cryptic in nature and it's only we who have discovered the hidden code. Jesus wasn't quite as serious about sin as we make him out to be, see, we have finally discovered it. Of course, if we believe anything about the Bible, we know this is highly unlikely to be true, since it is God's word evealed to us, and a hidden or cryptic meaning would not be much of a revelation at all.

Finding that we cannot simply reinterpret Jesus claims so that they fit with what we wish he would have said, we move on to the second approach to making Jesus safe, and it is simply to question whether or not the text can be trusted at all. And this is the question I alluded to at the beginning of this post. This is when our sensibilities kick in: when we realize that what Jesus is actually calling us to is much more than simply believing he was a moral teacher or an all around good guy. Jesus claimed that he was God, that God required perfection, and that anything less than that resulted in death and eternal separation from God. "Death" is the equivalent of separation from ourselves; our souls are separated from our body. "Hell" is the equivalent of separation from God; our souls are separated from the life-giver. Yet Jesus also claimed that he was the solution to that separation. We could either try to fix the problem ourselves, or we could trust him to fix it on our behalf. Those are the two options that he presents. And if they are true, then it means that he is infinitely more important than perhaps we have previously assumed. But it can't be true, can it? Surely, his biographers must have gotten it wrong. Surely, these texts can't be trusted.

And that will be the next challenge that we will have to answer.

Speculating on Jesus: Why Should I Care?

In yesterday's post, I referenced a recent survey that indicated that while the vast majority of people in America believe that Jesus was a historical figure, we have vastly different opinions on what he was actually like. The good news is that, even in a post-Christian America, very few people are questioning the historicity of Jesus insofar as he was an actual person who walked the earth. This means that the challenge for the Christian has much more to do with who he was, than that he was, since the second piece is taken as a given for the vast majority of people we will come into contact with. This challenge, though, has at least three parts. The first one is why anyone should even care. Jesus being a historical figure is one thing; that he has any relevance to my life or that I should have any concern over who he was, taught, or did, is a different thing altogether.

I mentioned that, as simply a historical figure, most people have as much knowledge about–and interest in–Jesus as we do any other historical character we might name. Our functional knowledge of Jesus is about the same as our knowledge of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte. We know their ethnicity, a rough sketch of what they did, and that's about it. As far as learning more about them, well, that's for the historians. Why should we feel any differently about Jesus?

The main reason I think we should care is because the chief difference between Jesus and most other historical figure is that Jesus is one of a handful of people in history who made universal claims. What Jesus claimed to be true wasn't just true for people in his day, but was presented as true for everyone, in all times, in all places. This is typical for other religious teachers, as well: Muhammad, Gautama Buddha, etc. Their claims transcend their historic footprint. Even here, though, Jesus is different.

The claims that Jesus makes are more than just universal truth statements; they are universal truth statements about himself. Jesus didn't just claim to have a message from God, he claimed to be God. Jesus didn't just claim to have the secret to transcending the natural order of life and death, he claimed to be the secret to transcending the natural order of life and death. Jesus didn't just claim that there was a message of "getting right with God", he claimed that he was the message of getting right with God. Jesus didn't just preach; he practiced what he preached by prophetically claiming that he was going to die and rise again, and then dying and rising again. This is why Jesus stands out. He didn't just claim that he had a new way of religious living figured out; he claimed that the was the new way of religious living, and called people to put their confidence in him rather than in their own efforts. In other words, Jesus stands out from all other historical figures because he was one of the small group of people making universal truth claims; he stands out even further from that group, because the claims he was making were about himself. His teaching was so radically different from even the teachers in the same historical category, that it should cause us to go deeper than his historical existence.

The second reason, however, has to do with the people around us everyday who have been impacted by this message. Even if all we think about Jesus is that he was a historical religious figure who taught people how to live "right", it would be difficult to deny the power of his teachings. Tens of billions of people in the last two thousand years have made it a point to attempt to live according to his teachings. Countries were built on these principles, or in defiance of these principles. The message–even if it is only a self help message–continues to inspire people to live selfless lives. I would argue that Jesus teaching were significantly more than just a self-help message, but even if they aren't, the very fact that so many people throughout history have said that his claims are the basis for their worldview ought to be enough to get us to inquire what it was that he actually said. That should be enough, I think, to at least take a cursory glance at his life and teachings and see if they have any relevance to our life today.

One final thing that may help with this first challenge, specifically for those who claim to already believe in Jesus. Do you have any desire to inquire further into his life and teachings? There are a lot of people who claim to believe in Jesus who have little to no idea what he actually said, taught, or did. They have accepted Jesus based on the historical claim that he existed, but have not actually considered what it is that they actually believe about him (or what he believed about himself.) If that's the climate of the church–where we, functionally, believe that Jesus existed but have little interest in finding out more about him–we should not be surprised when that is the climate of culture as well. Perhaps if you want the people around you to be interested in who Jesus is or what he said, the place to begin is taking a serious interest yourself!

Why the Resurrection Matters

Another Easter Sunday has come and gone and with it, the temptation to let the "Resurrection" fade into the background much the same as Christmas fades into the past and we are left paying off our credit cards from over-celebration. We don't celebrate in the same fashion for Easter. Despite the attempts to commercialize it with the Easter Bunny, new outfits, and candy, it still remains primarily a religious holiday that isn't recognized by people other than those who identify with Christianity. Yet the temptation to move on with our lives and compartmentalize the truths of the resurrection is just as much of a temptation as it is to throw out the wrapping paper and mentally move on to the next big event.

Easter is fundamentally different than Christmas, however. While the events of Christmas are incredibly important and contain a great deal of doctrinal truth, they don't stand on the same level as the events of Easter. In fact, the events of Christmas have no value whatsoever apart from Easter, since the death and resurrection of Jesus are the culmination of everything that he came to accomplish. If they never occurred, then his birth, life, and whatever else occurred would still have been interesting, miraculous, potentially life-altering even if we chose to use Christ's life as an example, but not near as important as they are because of the events of Easter weekend. I'm not sure if the importance of the resurrection can be overstated: if it doesn't happen, there is no hope, there is no ultimate salvation, and practically there is no foundation for the church. The first two points are theological in nature and I won't address them here. It is that last point–the practical necessity of the resurrection for the church–that I want to address.

As we examine the broader culture (at least of America) it's easy to notice that there are some very sharp disagreements regarding how we view various cultural issues. Pick any issue you'd like, and chances are you can find not just diverse views on the subject, but polarizing views. Our tendency is to believe that these disagreements are themselves the problem, but they aren't. They are a symptom of the problem. The real problem, as it turns out, is that we are standing on fundamentally different foundations.

Imagine that the two of us were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and we began to describe to one another what we see. To a certain extent, our descriptions may seem similar. We might describe a deep gorge, the relative color of the dirt and clay, the vastness of what we are viewing. As we go further in our descriptions, however, they inevitably begin to diverge. One of us argues that the canyon is a thousand feet deep, the other says it is only a couple of hundred feet. Perhaps we argue about the vegetation, or what it is that makes it so beautiful, or how the sun sets–or rises–on the opposite end of the canyon. Soon we would find that our disagreement is so sharp, that it is impossible for us to figure one another out. We end up completely polarized, convinced that the other person is a lunatic.

Of course you may have already figured out the problem. We are viewing the same canyon, but from two different vantage points. Where we are standing makes all the difference in recognizing why it is that we disagree on our perspective. Once we understand that we are not even fundamentally seeing the same things, we can come to terms with the fact that we disagree.

This is why the real issues of culture have nothing to do with our perspectives on the issues, and have everything to do with the foundation on which we are standing. Christians in particular have taken for granted that for the vast majority of the history of the United States, most of the population stood on a similar foundation. Call it "Judeo-Christian values" or whatever you wish, but really it was just the foundation that there was a God and that we could find out more about him in the Bible. I don't assume that the entirety of the country was Christian, let alone religious, but at very least the foundation was roughly similar. Thus, if there were disagreements on certain subjects, they weren't extreme. We might be arguing about the color of the clay in the canyon, but at least we are looking at the same clay.

Unfortunately that foundation has shifted and the vast majority of culture is no longer standing on the same foundation. This is the effect of post-modernity that claims that there are no universal truths. One of the impacts of this was the supposed destruction of the meta-narrative, which is by it's nature a comprehensive truth claim. Of course the theory falls on it's head. Even saying that there is no universal truth is a comprehensive truth claim about how the world works, it simply shifts the responsibility for decision making to the individual, rather than the universal. Again, claiming that every decision is up to the individual is a universal claim. Thus the meta-narrative was not done away with, but simply changed, and as a result, we find that when we are describing what appear to be similar issues, they are not the same at all. Those of us who are Christians are standing on an entirely different foundation than those who are not-Christians, and vice versa.

This in itself is not a bad thing, it is just something that simply "is". If anything, it provides an opportunity for Christians to have more clarity about what it is that they actually believe. I also think that it should provide Christians more opportunity to have grace with skeptics, since we ought to understand that the issues is not a disagreement, per se, it is a foundational issue. We are not standing on the same footing. We aren't looking at the canyon from the same angle. I can't expect my skeptic friend to see the world from the same perspective that I do, unless we first understand where it is that we are standing.

All of this brings me back to the church, and my original point about the practical need to remember the resurrection. Over the past decade, at least, and perhaps longer than that, post-modernity has come into the church in a variety of ways. The easiest entry way has been to offer differing perspectives on traditional Christian perspectives. Some of those perspectives have been healthy and offered appropriate correctives in the church. Like all institutions (and individuals, I might add), when you have held onto a particular belief long enough, you typically end up abusing it in it's application. For example, the longer you believe you are a safe driver, the less likely you are to use your seat belt. The better you are at a particular activity–skiing, for example–the more likely you are to push the limits verging into the unsafe, even for an expert. The same goes for churches. What might begin as a helpful doctrine or tradition can end up being abused in the long run, in desperate need of correction and a reminder of where the application should begin and end. Other perspectives, however, have not been corrective in nature, but downright incorrect. As a seminary professor said, "the only corrective to bad theology is better theology." Unfortunately many of the critiques in the last decade have not been better theology, but just more bad theology from a different perspective. The pendulum might swing to embrace it, but it doesn't mean that we are any better off. Change for changes sake is not necessarily a good thing. So how do we combat these perspectives? The answer is the resurrection.

The resurrection provides Christians with the foundation on which unity can be built as a church, for at least two reasons. The first reason encompasses both Jesus death, and resurrection, which puts all Christians on the same plane. If Jesus death and resurrection are real, historical events that happened and on which Christianity is based, so that faith and confidence in those events is essential to being a Christian, then the very nature of them mean that all of us arrive into this new kingdom of God on the same train. No one gets in on their own power. No one is more righteous than another. In fact, we all have the same righteousness from the same savior and get in on the same ticket.

The second reason that the resurrection is necessary is that it proves that Jesus is the king of this new kingdom, and thus, he gets to set the expectations. I believe that one of the chief reasons that some of the sharp disagreements that the church has experienced with the culture have become sharp disagreements within the church itself is that many within the church have unwittingly shifted their foundation. This was more evident than ever in the week leading up to Easter when a variety of articles were published claiming to come from Christian sources, but as I examined them, I noticed that they weren't Christian at all. They claimed to have a similar value structure, but they so minimized the death and resurrection of Jesus that those two events were no longer the foundation on which they based the rest of their so-called "truth". Realizing that meant that I could accept their conclusions at face value–as the author's opinion–but also realize that they weren't Christian perspectives, even though they claimed to be. It has become increasingly easy for people in the 21st century church to disagree with Jesus, or try to change his words to fit our meaning, and the reason that we can do it is because we, essentially, deny the power of the resurrection or take it to mean something it doesn't mean. The resurrection is not hope just for hope's sake; it is hope because it revealed that Jesus really was who he said he was. Jesus really was God incarnate who had the ability to defeat death on our behalf. The power of the resurrection wasn't limited just to him; it's a power that all who put their faith in Christ have access to. Far from being just some nebulous, ill-defined hope, it is a hope that very clearly identifies Jesus as God of very God, and King of every King. In other words, if we believe the resurrection is true, we don't get to disagree with Jesus.

As believers, then, the starting point for our unity must be the resurrection of Jesus. This is what gives him His claim to authority, as well as clarifying for us why we don't get to be authoritative in our own right. The Resurrection is the foundation on which the Christian views the rest of the world. When we stand on the power of the Resurrection, then we may still discuss and dialogue about what, exactly, Christ believed, but we don't get to disagree with Jesus or the rest of the Bible, or interpret it to fit our cultural milieu or cultural understanding at the time. Rather we stand on the authority of Christ himself.

If there are sharp disagreements in the church, I am much less interested in knowing what you think about the disagreement, and much more interested in knowing what you think about Jesus. Is he the risen Lord, or not? If he is, then you and I can both submit our opinions to his. If he isn't, then we're not on the same foundation to begin with, and I don't care much that you disagree with me. We'll never agree on what the canyon looks like so long as we are standing on different lookouts.

This is why we can't put Easter in the past. Easter Sunday, and what it represents, are not just a day in the life of the church calendar, but the foundation on which every day must be built. To the extent that we remember that, we'll have a united church. To the extend that we forget it, we'll be divided. It might really be as simple as that.

The Logical Fallacy of the Progressive Theology of the Cross

Is it possible that Jesus death was nothing more than the perfect example of selfless love?

As Easter approaches, and Christians around the world begin to celebrate and commemorate Christ's death and resurrection, I'm reminded that there will always be people apparently within the fold who will nevertheless question the historical understanding of what was accomplished on that weekend long ago. Traditionally Jesus' sacrifice on the cross has been understood through the lens of "penal substitutionary atonement." In simple terms, the traditional view is that our rebellion from God, and everything that separates us from God's perfection (what we call "sin"), required a punishment. So God, in his great mercy, and Jesus, in his great love, came up with a solution: it would be the solution of the substitute. If Jesus, in his perfection, paid the penalty for our sin, then we could be reconciled to God. For us to be reconciled to God (atoned for), we need someone who would stand in (substitute) to pay our penalty (penal).

It is shocking to me that there remains in the Christian church a group of people who would wish to redefine this and reframe it so that it appears to make more sense to our modern sensibilities. Today the group would bill themselves as "progressive" Christians, but it's just another name for what has historically been referred to as "liberal theology". It's an attempt to whittle down Christianity to "good deeds", as if this was Jesus ultimate goal: just to get us to act right. The reason I'm continually shocked by it is because of the glaringly obvious fallacy that it presents, particularly as it relates to the cross of Jesus.

The assertion of an article circulating this week is that Jesus message was ultimately only about love, and so Jesus death on the cross could not have had anything to do with penal substitutionary atonement. In fact, if that is what the cross was about, this author wanted nothing to do with Jesus.

The argument goes something like this (and again, it's just rehashing an old argument): Jesus whole goal in his life and death was to demonstrate that the heart of the law is simply "love". Therefore, when the Bible says that Jesus fulfilled the law, what it means is that demonstrated what it means to live out the heart of the law, which meant standing up to the power structures, living for the oppressed, and ultimately, on the cross, giving up his life for a friend. Jesus death, then, was the ultimate example of selfless love. This is what he requires of Christians. God's not mad, he's just trying to get us to love one another. Jesus showed us that by his death, and so now we should go and live that out and do what he did.

The logical fallacy that is presented by this argument has to do with the very nature of our reconciliation with God, if such a concept exists at all in this theological construct. Even this progressive author agrees that sin has separated us from God; in fact, this is the extent of the definition of sin: whatever separates us from God. So far, so good. But then the question is raised: if we are separated from God, how is it that we go about becoming reconciled to him? The issue with the argument outlined above is that you are left with only one of two options: either everyone is reconciled to God, or no one is ever reconciled to God.

The truth is that no matter how loving we wish to be, the reality is that we will still fall short. Every person, every Christian, no matter how loving they try to be or actually are knows that they don't measure up to the example set by Christ. If it were possible that some other figure, a non-divinity, some purely human character, could have eventually met the standard, then we wouldn't have needed the example of Christ. Even if it were only by pure accident, surely over time one person would have gotten close, and someone else gotten closer, and on and on until eventually we figured out that the "law" really only intended us to get to the heart of the law, which is love. This is the nature of human progression, after all. We see something that works, or looks better than what we already know, and we build upon it to progress forward. Surely the same thing would be true of our ability to meet the law and live in harmony with how God requires.

The very fact of Jesus existence reveals that this is clearly not the case. We won't eventually "figure it out". Even this construct admits that an example was needed, and a perfect one at that. A model that we could follow. Someone who made the ultimate sacrifice, and gave his life for a friend. Now, according to this model, the Christian must replicate that with their own lives. Yet anyone who is honest enough to admit it knows that they are a poor example, at best.

Again, Jesus may have showed us the way to reconciliation, but it is nevertheless on us to ensure that we live out that path if we actually want to attain the reconciliation. If Christ's death on the cross did nothing for me other than provide me with an example, my confidence is not found in what he did but in my own ability to replicate what he did in some meaningful way in my own life. "Salvation" is found in my ability to live out the same type of life, to the same degree, as Jesus did. As was already pointed out, we all fall ridiculously short of that mark. To say otherwise is to be a fool.

So then we are left with only two options. Either God, in his mercy, for no reason other than because he realized that we were eternally screwed otherwise, has decided to save us all and we all are okay at the end of the day. No justification required. Just a blank slate, wiped clean, just because. The alternative is that we are all left striving to attain a perfection which none of us can; we are chasing a dream that will never be realized. In other words, it's back to the original conclusion: either everyone is saved, or no one is saved.

Herein lies the fallacy of this theology and where it breaks down. Aside from the fact that none of this is particularly good news, since all it does is shine a light on my own failures, there is another inherent problem. If everyone is saved, then there is no law at all. Even Jesus perfect life (which, again, matters to me not one whit) was totally and utterly meaningless if God was going to just wipe the slate clean anyway regardless. Everyone being saved sounds great. It sounds like a very loving thing of God to do, but in reality it is a chaotic sort of anti-loving God that would allow that to occur. It's a God without order, a God who doesn't give us any meaningful guide by which we should live because ultimately, obey or not obey, we end up in the same position. But then, if no one is saved, we have the same issue: if I am as loving as I can possibly be, but I will still fall short, then what is the point of even trying? I am imperfect as it is, and there is no hope of my reconciliation, then I may as well enjoy myself in the process.

The only possible responses to this are to say, either, that a) it is actually possible for a human to attain some semblance of perfection, or something that is acceptable to God so that ultimately not everyone is saved but he will save each of us on our own merits, or b) Jesus actually did accomplish something meaningful on my behalf that enables me to live the type of life that he calls me to live, without guilt or shame.

There is no in-between answer to these two things, if we claim to be a Christian. If Christ's life and death accomplished nothing on my behalf, then my reconciliation to God must be found in my own merits, or else, nothing about God's law matters at all. This was precisely the belief of the religious leaders of the day when Jesus arrived on the scene. Each person would be judged on their own merits. It's why the religious folks were self-righteous and the tax-collectors and sinners were outsides. This was the message of the power structure of Rome: as soon as you didn't perform according to their standards, they booted you out and killed you. The reason Jesus message was such good news to those desperate ears–and the reason the power structure hated him–was because they had already been told that their justification was up to them, and they found it to be terribly oppressive; Jesus message was just the opposite. "The only way to be reconciled to my Father is to go through me."

The truth is that no serious theologian denies that Jesus fulfilled the law. He did fulfill the law through his perfect life including and up to his death on the cross. The heart of the law is this: that we would love God (perfectly) and love others (perfectly). The law only serves to demonstrate that we, on our own power, cannot accomplish what we want to accomplish. But God, in his great mercy, sends a substitute. This substitute fulfills the law on our behalf by living a perfect life. This substitute pays the penalty for being a law-breaker on our behalf by dying an absolutely gruesome but perfect death on the cross. As a result, this substitute breaks the grip of death–separation from God and from one another–and rises from the dead on the third day. Salvation is found in no one but him.

Now we find that our justification, our righteousness, our goodness, our perfection, are all applied to us because of Jesus substitution on our behalf. He takes what we deserved and gives us what he earned. The irony of it all is that the decision we face is precisely the one that the progressive theologian has said we shouldn't have to answer at all, and it is this: will you put your confidence in the merits of Christ, or in the merits of yourself? The good news is that we can put our confidence in the merits of Christ. This is the what it means to have faith.

The alternative is to go on trusting in your own merits. And if you are, then I wonder what the standards are by which you are assessing your own goodness. If it is your own standard, then what does Jesus matter to you? There is no need to follow Jesus if you get to set your own standards. But if the standard by which you assess your own merit is Gods–that is, if your standard is the law of God–then how can you go on trusting your own ability? The good news is that you don't have to, because Jesus has already met the standard, and reconciled your failure, on your behalf, so you can be free.

This is the meaning of the cross.

The God Who Destroys False Impressions

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast.

Lewis, C. S. (2009-06-02). A Grief Observed (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 51). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

After C.S. Lewis' wife died, he filled nearly four journals with his thoughts and impressions, chronicling and hopefully channeling his grief. The four volumes were published under a pseudonym, for fear that if anyone knew what he was really thinking, it would turn them down a path he didn't wish them to go. It's one thing for an anonymous griever, as it were, to think such things about God. It's another thing for a cherished Christian author to feel that way. Or at least such was the theory.

Eventually the volumes were correctly attributed to him and they are fascinating because of their honesty and for the depth of thought that Lewis is known for bringing to the table. As he processes his grief, he moves from a state of anger with God, where he cannot possibly fathom why it feels like God would be so distant now as opposed to when things were going well to a state of...is it acceptance? It's a deeper understanding, that is for sure. 

One such understanding stood out to me, above. It's true that we have an idea about God. We think certain things about God. Each of us has an impression of who God really is, much of which is wrong, but all of which falls ultimately short of a true understanding. I've often quoted A.W. Tozer who said that what we believe about God is the most important thing about us. It's a true statement in it's own right. Our view of God will shape how we view the rest of the world; it is certainly to be the central thought in the life of the Christian person, but the thought is equally true of the skeptic. Not believing in God, or simply not thinking of him at all, is just as important in determining how we view the rest of the world and the cosmos and everything in it.

Lewis would agree, but he would add a caveat. Not only is whatever we believe about God the most important thing about us, but it's so important, in fact, that God himself will seek to root out and destroy any false thoughts or false impressions that we have about him. It does us no good to pray to a God who doesn't really exist; whatever we think God is, Lewis points out, is not a divine idea at all. It's typically our own idea or our own interpretation. As such, it falls short in such immeasurable ways that it is the only loving thing that God can do to weed out such falsities. We need to know the real God, not the one that we made up.

This is another of the "temptations" that C.S. Lewis points out in his book The Screwtape Letters. Wormwood the demon is instructed not so much to stop his subject from praying–although that would be the ideal–but rather to have him pray in such a way where the God he is praying to or the outcome that he is praying for is not based on truth of who God actually is, but rather is based on his own impression of who God is. Thus he will walk away feeling as if he did his righteous duty, but will have had zero impact at all, since whatever he prayed was almost certainly his own will, based on his own idea of God, rather than based on the truth of God and his actual will. 

So God takes great pains to destroy the image that we have of him that is inaccurate, and one of the ways that he does that is through suffering. We humans are somewhat of a self-centered bunch, and no matter how righteous or others-focused we appear to be the reality is that most of our efforts and energies are poured into a world that revolves around us. God's blessings toward us, his enthusiasm towards us, his love of us, all seem to wrap around our own self-interest. The second that something appears to not be in our self-interest, we immediately turn on God; we act as if he's this spiteful, vengeful being who, after all this, would make our lives terrible. But here is the trouble: it was never about us to begin with. It wasn't about our self-interest, at least not the way we define it (another mythical area of our belief, the one in which we think we have the means to articulate what really, ultimately, is in our best interest.) If it is about our self-interest, then our self-interest stems from our knowledge of the real God, the real source of life, and not the fanciful version that we learned about in Sunday School. Anything else is a fraud.

So C.S. Lewis would say in his masterful lecture, The Weight of Glory, that we go on settling for mud pies in a slum because we cannot possibly understand what is meant by a holiday at sea. We settle for the mundane and the false, rather than pursuing the truth and the life. And God would have none of that for his most favorite creation.

The Reality of Suffering

I had one of those streams of thought this morning during that period of time where you're awake but you're not really awake that led me to this post. I read an intriguing article last week about a cocktail bar in Philadelphia and it's mysterious owner. That was the first thought. The second was about the person who posted the link. The third thought was about what I'd say if we talked. The fourth was that my worldview and this particular blogger's are polar opposites–he an atheist, me a Christian. The fifth was, your worldview is only good if it works in the reality of your life. And that's the point of this post.

Christianity is a "meta-narrative". It doesn't just explain that there is a savior, but it also explains why one was necessary to begin with. It doesn't settle at just explaining your particular situation, but it actually provides an all-encompassing, overarching view as to why things are the way that they are. This is the point that is missed by many people, I think, as they easily write off Christianity as just another crutch or religious expression or whatever. Everyone consciously or unconsciously understands the world within the framework of some meta-narrative, even when they don't know what it is or they can't explain it.

The key to the meta-narrative is it's consistency. I heard the story (one of many) of a person who, after a particularly devastating storm in which many people were left homeless, didn't feel like it was his obligation to help anyone because he had already helped so many people already, and really he was super busy. Somewhat ironically, if you asked him what the most important thing about humanity was, this person would almost certainly say "helping others". His actions demonstrated, however, that while he may have thought this was true in the moment, it wasn't actually his meta-narrative. For him to believe that sometimes he needed to help others, but other times he didn't, meant that there was no consistency in his "helping others". The only consistency was that helping others was totally random. In other words, his actual meta-narrative was "chaos" or "randomness". Such is the reality of much of the post-modern, relativistic world.

The consistency of the meta-narrative is what gives it "legs" when it comes into contact with the reality of our every day lives. It can speak to the particular realities that I find myself in. If a meta-narrative can't satisfactorily explain the common, every day life that you live, if it has no traction in reality, then I see no value in it. It strikes me that this is quite similar to the scientific method of testing: develop a hypothesis, test the hypothesis. If it doesn't work, find a new hypothesis. Obviously that's a simplistic view of both the scientific method and the means of testing a meta-narrative, but it serves the point. Much of the time the way that we know that what we believe about the world actually makes any sense is when we are confronted with a confusing or difficult situation in our lives and realize that we actually have an explanation. 

Hence, the reality of suffering as per the title of this post. Over the past few weeks and months the reality of suffering in peoples' lives has become clear and present for me. In times past it was suffering or evil itself that was used as a denial of God's existence. Philosophers have stopped drawing from that well, however, as the shortcomings of the argument have become evident. For one, you can't even define evil unless you can define good, and "ultimate evil", or evil that is always evil, only exists if there is a corresponding "ultimate good". Using the argument of suffering and evil to deny God, then, leaves you in a bit of a predicament. If there is no God, then there is no ultimate evil. If no evil, then suffering is totally random and as a result, it is totally meaningless. And that leads to the second problem with this line of thought.

There is more to us as humans than just our material being. Somehow, we love, we have emotion, we have a will, we have a spirit, we have an internal light; there is something that gets snuffed out at death and it is more than just our material ceasing to function. I've seen skeptics claim that death is like a "light switch being flipped off", but why the analogy to light? If the body is just material, then it is more like shutting your car off than it is the disappearance of light, yet anyone who has ever been at someones bedside when they passed knows that there is an indefinable "snuffing" that goes out; something more than just material decay has taken place. All of this is just to point out that if all we are trying to define is the material reality of suffering, that is, accept that it happens and deal with it as a reality of our physical being, it leaves a gaping hole in our understanding. Namely, whether or not life has any meaning at all.

To remove God from the equation of evil and suffering is to ultimately remove any meaning from our lives, whatsoever. No one denies that the reality of evil and suffering in light of a sovereign and loving God is a difficult truth to rectify in our minds; if you watch a friend go through suffering or tragedy and you act like you understand why it is happening to them, you are not an intellectual, you are a jerk. The Christian, however, has a view towards suffering that not only explains it's existence, but it also allows for the possibility of meaning within it and hopes for it's complete eradication. Thus, there is more to it than simply "suffering for sufferings sake". There is meaning not just in my suffering, but in my very existence. There is no such explanation of suffering if God is removed, other than just to say that it's all random. And if it's all random, then you are just a pawn in a deterministic universe; you literally do not matter.

Thus we come back to whether or not your meta-narrative can speak to your situation, right now, "boots on the ground". The Christian endures suffering because even when it doesn't seem to have any reasonable explanation of why it would happen to me, there is still the possibility of meaning in it. We do not enjoy suffering, like some sort of spiritual masochists, but we can wrap our minds around the reality of it's existence. And then, even when the world is closing in, we can cling to a God who is bigger than the world. We are loved, even when life sucks. There is hope, even when it's dark. And then the promise of the good news of Jesus: someday, suffering will be eradicated once and for all.

Freedom from Condemnation & Drivenness

This is part one of a four part series on freedom from condemnation. The four parts ended up being Freedom from Condemnation, Repentance, Parenting, and Drivenness.

Probably the first topic that came to mind when thinking about how our freedom from condemnation actually interacts with the reality of our lives was the topic of drivenness, but for a variety of reasons, it's the last one I'm going to mention. The reason for the delay is largely because this topic applies to me in a very real sense, and anything I write is either going to be personally convicting or hypocritical if I haven't actually applied the truths to my own life. I know that I need to apply the truth of my freedom from condemnation to my own drivenness; knowing how to do that is another matter altogether.

Drivenness comes in many different forms, but at it's base, I think it comes from a desire to meet a certain set of standards. Those standards can either be external (I want to live up to my parent's dreams for me) or they can be internal (I want to be the best that I can personally be.) They can stem from a positive experience, like having supportive parents, or they can stem from a negative experience, like being bullied in High School. Regardless of where the standards generated, the driven person wants to achieve them and meet them at all cost. The standards become more than just healthy goals; they become the expectation. Anything less is unacceptable.

We typically call driven people "ambitious" but that doesn't tell the full story. Lots of people have ambition, but they can give themselves grace when they fall short. Driven people can't. It's the standard or nothing. They push forward relentlessly. At night, they fall asleep thinking about all that they didn't accomplish. A voice in their head whispers, "you're just a big phony; you can never measure up." The next morning, the driven person wakes up to attack the voice, the standard, to achieve. 

To some of you that description will sound somewhat crazy. I'm not saying that all driven people hear voices in their heads or go to sleep depressed, but I bet it happens more than we know and more than driven people themselves would want to admit, particularly if they claim to be a Christian. They know it's not right, they know that their identity should be found in Christ, they know that they are not defined by their failures. Nevertheless they also can't seem to let go of the drivenness that motivates them to keep going.

Let me say this first, then. I'm pro-drivenness. Driven people get stuff done. The other day I was going into a board meeting after running around between two or three different after-school events and the president of the board commented that the old saying was, "if you want to get something done, ask someone who is busy." It sounds counter-intuitive on it's face, but the point is that if you find someone who is busy, chances are, you have found someone who likes getting stuff done. You've probably found someone who is pretty driven.

The problem with drivenness, and the reason that we are in constant need to be reminded of our freedom from condemnation, is that our drivenness is almost solely based on our ability to meet the law. In other words, it's legalism. We find our self-worth and our joy from being able to accomplish the standard; when we achieve whatever standard it was, we feel justified, and when we don't, we feel condemned. The drive to fulfill the law may therefore be joy, if we can succeed, but it is also, and maybe even moreso, fear of condemnation if we fail. It is not too fine a point to make to say that if you could strip away the layers of the driven person's heart, what you would find is a person who just doesn't want to fail. Fear of failure is fear of condemnation.

This is why it is condemnation that must be done away with. Law, without Christ, always leads to condemnation. There is no other way. The reminder the driven person needs is that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The challenge is remembering this truth when we inevitably fail!

Drivenness, ambition, or whatever you want to call it is not inherently wrong. I think it's a good thing. But as good as it is, it can kill your soul. It kills your soul by making you feel like your justification, your goodness, your self-worth is found only when you meet the law. And when you fail, it's on you.

The good news of Jesus is that we are free to be driven, and yet we are also free from the fear of failure and condemnation. Driven people need grace and can live in the reality of Grace, in success and in failure. We continue to have joy when we succeed; because of Jesus, we also have joy when we fail. Our joy is not dependent on our efforts. Our joy is dependent on Christ's efforts, for our freedom.

Loving Others

A notification flashed across my iPhone this morning from a pastor's group I am a part of. The question that had been posed and was now sitting on my screen was how to address a "seeking" couple that was visiting the church but had questions about a particularly difficult cultural situation. In this case, the situation was "homosexuality", but it could have been anything. The pastor wanted to know what he should say and how he should address it.

A few thoughts went through my head as I considered what I would say to him if I responded. The first was, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" My guess is that my pastor friend already knew what he believed, or at least thought he knew what he believed, but when the question is actually posed by a real actual human rather than as a theoretical concept, stuff gets real.

I want to interject and interrupt myself for a moment, because I want to say that I did not read any further than the question, and I did not get an explanation or backstory or any details about what this particular pastor knew or didn't know or thought or didn't think. That said, there was something about the wording that made me think that this person perhaps hadn't through through what he actually believed when the rubber actually met the road; when his theology met his humanity. The word that struck me was the description of the inquisitors as "seekers".

I knew what he meant. "Seeker" is church lingo for someone who is seeking God in some fashion. They are typically "spiritual" but not "religious". They may have been raised in the church, see value in Christianity, but aren't entirely sure how to mesh what they think they believe with what they think the church believes. Often times a seeker has a particular question in mind; something that is their litmus test. For one man who visited our church, his question was predestination. He wanted to believe in God, but couldn't believe in a God who predestined people to Hell. He asked me what I thought on the way out of church, and I had to answer an incredibly complex question in just a couple of minutes with very little understanding of what was behind the question or where he was coming from. When you are talking to a "seeker", the tendency is to frame your response in a way that softens or mutes the difficult edges of your answer. We convince ourselves that the person isn't ready to hear the truth, or that the truth might offend them, and we wouldn't want that! We don't want to be the person who shoves them from "seeker" status back into "lost" territory. We better make sure that our answer is true, but not so true that it is offensive.

Oftentimes our responses in those scenarios end up being so ambiguous that they leave the person on the other end feeling like they got an answer, but not being totally sure what it was. I was watching an episode of Parks & Recreation the other day where the always-positive Chris played by Rob Lowe had recently broken up with Anne, one of the main characters. The problem was that the break-up was spun in such a positive way that Anne didn't realize that he had dumped her. I wonder how often my answers to these difficult questions so ambiguous or spun so positively that the person on the other end walks away thinking that I may have said something entirely different than what I intended.

What my pastor friend was really asking was, "How do I tell these people what God really believes about homosexuality without offending them and turning them away?" I think that's a legitimate question, but I don't think it matters whether or not the people are seekers, or whether they have been followers of Jesus their entire lives and are only just now having to figure out what God really thinks about this as it becomes a more common cultural question. Instead, I think that the real question that we have to ask ourselves is this: do you really love these people?

It strikes me that Jesus doesn't turn away from difficult questions, and he doesn't soften the blow of the truth that is in his response. Sometimes, people turned away because of it. Other times, they stuck with him. Here is the key: it was never their status (lost, seeker, found, whatever), and it was never their response (turning away or sticking) that guided his answer. It was always truth embedded and presented in love. When Jesus answered a question truthfully, he knew full well that he loved the person he was talking to. That's why he answered with such poignant truth. It was because he loved them.

I had to have a difficult conversation with someone once related to this topic. The first thing I did was ask the question: what does the Bible actually say? What do I actually believe? What does God actually think? This is what it means to love God, at least in part. It means that I actually care about what He thinks, and not just what I feel. But then, ultimately, the rubber meets the road and the theology of what God says meets the humanity and the emotion and the spirit of the person sitting right in front of you who has asked, "what does God think about this?" My pastor friend knew the right answer, but he wasn't sure that he knew the right response. My question would be, "do you really love them?"

When we really love the person we are responding to, to whatever degree our love can be totally genuine, that love will shine through in our response. I'm not telling you what God thinks about an issue to prove that I'm smart, or to prove that I can one-up you, or to belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself. I'm telling you what God thinks because I love you and He loves you and because He loves you and I love you I believe that there will be more joy in the truth of what God says than there will be if I just tell you what you want to hear, or if I couch my answer in such fluff that you leave without being entirely sure what God actually thinks. Love doesn't mean we always agree. Love doesn't mean that we always give the easy answer. Love means that we can give the honest answer, even when it hurts.

I said this to the Elders of our church a while back when we had one of these difficult questions come up and we had to respond, even though we knew that the reason the person was asking is because they were putting out their little litmus test to see if we believed in a God that they could believe in. I said, "if it is not difficult for us to respond, then we are not being Elders." Responses to difficult questions are not filled with pride; they are filled with love. It ought to matter to us when we give an answer to someone that we know might cause them to leave the church or leave the fold of God. Yet we know that it would hurt more, and be more harmful, to neglect what God said, or to answer ambiguously, just for the sake of harmony; just so that we don't rock the boat.

So yes, the question is, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" But then, before we respond, we need to ask ourselves, "do I really love this person like Jesus loves them?" If so, then we respond in truth, embedded and presented in love, not ambiguity.