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.

Angels & Demons

One of my boys has been curious about Angels and Demons lately. He asked me the other day what Satan’s name was when he was an angel in heaven. “Lucifer”, I told him.

On the way to school today he mentioned to me that there were Angels outside of the car, flying as fast as they could to keep up with us and keep us safe. My other son chimed in, “and they are with us on the playground.”

Then one of them asked me, “where is Heaven?” To which I responded, “that’s a good question, buddy.” And left it at that.

Most of us are at least curious, and at time fascinated, with the spiritual realm. We know that Angels and Demons exist; we know that there is more going on than what we see. What we don’t know is what exactly that looks like or how exactly it works.

The popular novels “This Present Darkness” and “Piercing the Darkness” set the tone of the conversation when I was growing up. I remember the fascination that I had, and others had, with the idea that if we could just look hard enough, or distort our view in some fashion, we’d be able to see the demons nearby or the Angels singing along with us while we worshiped. We treated the spiritual realm like one of those computer generated posters that you have to stare through until suddenly, at just the right angle, a 3D image pops out and you have a whole new perspective. Like those posters, the hope is that once you’ve seen it, you can’t not see it.

I remember talking to a woman once who had just lost her job at a Christian School. She was convinced that there was some impropriety going on, and that there were folks who were out to get her and that, eventually, those folks got to the right people and she was let go. As she passed the school, she said, she looked up and swore that she saw demons circling around the top of the school. The school and it’s administration, it seemed, had been possessed.

Of course, this is a person who had just lost her job from that very same school. I gathered quickly that she was extremely upset about this, but seemingly couched her feelings in spiritual talk rather than admitting the hurt. I don’t know whether or not she saw something that looked like demons, or if in her hurt she wanted so badly to believe that she was right and the school was wrong that she subconsciously fabricated something to be true. I doubt that she saw actual demons floating around the top of the school. Not because it’s not possible, but because it’s highly unlikely that the school was 100% in the wrong and that she was 100% in the right, so that they were somehow possessed and she were somehow righteous. If the school was possessed by demons, leading them to operate improperly, then she must have been possessed by demons too, since there was no doubt that she operated with some impropriety as well. If she saw demons floating above the school, I wondered why she didn’t see them over her head when she looked in the mirror.

The truth is that most of us don’t need demons to mess around with us to get us to act wrongly or to do evil. We are fully capable of making those choices on our own, and often do. Even Christians continue all the time to make wrong choices. That doesn’t suddenly mean that a demon has captured them; it does mean that we are constantly and desperately in need of a savior.

I’m not saying that demon possession doesn't exist. If it happened in the New Testament, it can certainly happen today. I don't think that a Christian can be possessed by a demon, however, because when the strong man moves in, the other strong man gets booted (Matthew 12:29). 

I’m also not saying that my sons understanding of Angels was incorrect. Surely, they protect us in the same way that demons surely tempt us. Were they flying next to the car? Are they on the playground? I don't know where they are. What I do know is that the next time I'm praying for my son, and somehow he doesn't slip when he could have slipped or he falls and doesn't get hurt or a mis-thrown rock doesn't hit him that could have hit him, there's a high likelihood that an angel has intervened, protecting the children of God.

It seems, though, that unless there is a specific message that God wants to send to you, it is highly unlikely that you are going to see one. The same goes for demons. We are living in a world that was once under the rule of the Devil, and is now slowly coming under the guaranteed rule of Christ. The Devil has been overthrown. The New Strong Man is here, and the minions of the devil have no power over us anymore.

In the meantime, there's a lot going on around us that we have no idea about. And some day, that dimensional curtain will be torn back and the world will be renewed and this world will fully coincide with that world and we'll see what has been going on all around us the entire time.

But not yet.

More Than One Question

If I could encourage you in one way, it might be this, that you not approach God with a single question and then seek to determine what you think about God based on his answer to that question.

Far too many of us approach God this way, with our single question in hand, a test for God, if there ever was one, to see if he measured up to our ideas of what he should be like. Based on his response we then determine whether he is worth our love.

The problem with this approach is that it is too simplistic. If there really is a God, it would be impossible to know everything that there is to know about him from a single question. Further, I wouldn’t even want someone to judge my worth–and certainly not base their love for me–on any single question they may ask, no matter how positively I can answer the question! If before I were married my future wife came up to me and said, “do you like ice cream?” and I responded that I did, she may love me for the moment but be quite disappointed when she finds out that I don’t like having a conversation after 7 pm. If my desire for ice cream were the only thing true of me, or at least, the only thing she knew to be true of me, then her love would be so incomplete for me that it is only marginally better than no love at all. Indeed, it may even be worse, since her knowledge of me is so small that there is a high likelihood that, in the future, she will find out things about me that she will eventually grow to hate.

On the other hand, she may ask me a much more important question than my regards for ice cream. For example, she might ask me if I ever get very angry. And I would have to respond that I did, at times, get extremely angry. I may yell and curse when I get angry, although it is not the norm. If my future wife determined that I was not worth loving because of the way I answered that singular question, it would be just as tragic or worse than if she loved me based solely on my affinity for ice cream. Her knowledge remains incomplete; she cannot possibly understand me based on whether or not I like ice cream or whether or not I ever got angry.

Too often we approach God with singular questions intended to call him out, or characterize him into someone we can understand. Sometimes we do it so we can love him based on his answer, sometimes we do it because we already hate him, but it would be much easier if we had a reason. At best, the questions are a reflection of our heart; they cannot reflect the full truth of God.

If I were to approach God and ask him if he could ever forgive me, for example, the answer would be a resounding ‘Yes!’ Yes, he can forgive you! But to ask that question, no matter how positive the response, is to have a severely limited view of God. It may be the answer we were looking for, and even hoping for, but it is not the answer we ultimately need. Knowing that forgiveness is possible is an entirely different proposition than knowing how to attain that forgiveness; knowing that God can forgive without knowing how or why he forgives is incomplete. And, much the same as my wife loving me based on ice cream is dangerous, so loving God with such an incomplete knowledge of God is dangerous as well. For if I leave his presence and all I know is that he can forgive, but I forgot to ask him how, then it may be that I will never receive the forgiveness that I had been inquiring about in the first place.

I may also approach God and attempt to force him into a corner. How many would love to question whether or not God brought about the latest suffering, or the cancer, or allowed their sibling or parent to die at such a young age? We approach him with indignation and demand from him, “did you let this happen?” When he answers “yes”, as we assumed He would, there is no need for further questioning. That one answer gave us all that we need to know; we have no interest in a God who would allow that type of pain in our lives.

The problem is in our assumption that God’s knowledge is as limited as our knowledge. Our rationale goes something like this: If I cannot possibly picture a reason why this suffering may have come upon me, then it must not possible that there is a reason at all. My future spouse would be operating according to that rationale if she chose not to give me a chance after finding out that I sometimes get very angry. The problem, of course, is that she may not know why I get angry, nor has she even considered the possibility that there may be a reason for someone to be very angry. She has made her choice; she cannot picture a reason for someone to ever get angry, and so a reason must not exist. In the same way many of us miss out on God because we don’t like his answer to a singular question. We hear his answer and determine that it’s all we need to know. God is not worth our time.

And so we’re back at the beginning: do not approach God with one question that you believe will be the silver bullet for determining whether or not God is someone who should be loved. Rather, ask the deeper questions; the ones that lay beneath your desire to have an answer to the one you think is so pressing. Perhaps there is more to God than you originally thought. Perhaps he loves you more than you know. Perhaps the answer to the question you once thought so important that it could not wait will eventually be found to be meaningless, in light of the wonder of who God really is.

Are you willing to find that out?