Freedom from Condemnation & Parenting

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.

I was sitting next to a friend last week in a seminar on age-graded ministry. He currently works in youth ministry; I used to. The seminar/discussion was related to ministry in the church for specific age groups, and striking the balance between offering age-focused ministry and honoring the fact that it was the parents who were called to lead their children spiritually. A few of the pastors in the group seemed to tread pretty close to the, "I tell people how to raise their kids" line, and my friend leaned over to me and asked, "so I'm supposed to watch you parent and then parent my kids the same way?" It was a tongue in cheek question. His kids are older than mine, and he's older than me. He has five kids. I have five kids. We can learn from each other, but it would be foolish to suggest that somehow I've got the one-up when it comes to parenting.

I had been thinking about this idea of freedom from condemnation and how it relates to our parenting. For one thing, there are a lot of parents who feel condemned in their parenting. We live in a day and age when everyone and there mother wants to post on social media about their parenting best practices. We never stop to consider context, economic status, or whatever. It's easy to buy all organic food when you have one kid and are in the top financial tier of society. It's not easy to do that when you have five kids and are surviving on an average salary (or nearly any salary, for that matter.) That's not to suggest that eating organic food is wrong or bad in some way; it's not, and it's commendable if you can do it. You can't hold it up as a parenting law, however, and make others feel bad if they can't attain that standard. That's the condemnation we're supposed to be freed from.

The other related idea, though, is not just how we as parents feel condemned, but how we raise our children without making them feel condemned. How do we teach our children to obey the law, something we are commanded to do, teaching them to essentially live out their lives according to God's ideals, without making them feel guilty and shamed when they inevitably fail?

Here's why this relates to my story about telling parents how they should parent. My role as a pastor is to help people see how the Gospel relates to their parenting; not to tell them how to parent. That fine line is important. If I fell too heavily on the telling people how to parent, I will inadvertently create a law that may or not be in line with God's expectations. I will lead parents into condemnation rather than Grace. On the other hand, if the Gospel relates to our parenting, so that we live in the beauty of God's call on our lives and yet our total freedom from condemnation, perhaps we will find joy in our parenting rather than guilt, both for us and our children.

(For the record, I think the other people in the discussion I was a part of believe that too, but it didn't come across that way. Hence my friend's somewhat snarky comment.)

So how does the Gospel relate to our parenting? I'll address the two that I already mentioned, starting with our own sense of failure as parents.

FREEDOM FROM OUR OWN CONDEMNATION

It takes very little to feel condemned as a parent. We don't call it condemnation. We call it "feeling judged", but it's the same thing. Every time you get "the look" from the patron in the restaurant, you immediately feel it. It's that feeling of failure; it's the knowledge that that person believes they would raise their children better than you would. "The look" conveys what they are thinking. Their kid would never act like that in a restaurant.

And then, of course, the next time you are in a restaurant and your kid is eating their french fries, and someone else's kid is acting up, you can't help but glance over, wondering, "what's wrong with those parents? Why don't they stop him?"

Even worse, some of you just read that last paragraph and thought, "I can't believe he feeds his kids french fries."

You get this condemnation from strangers, from friends, from parents, and from siblings. Every younger sibling who has no children believes that they will raise their children better than their siblings. "My kids will never act that way; I'll never let them get away with _______________". 

Every child feels it from their parent on at least one occasion. Grandma or Grandpa tries to enforce their will on your children, whether you are around or not. "We didn't raise our kids to act like that."

There are two parts to this problem. The first part is that we, as people, are incredibly self-righteous, and we believe that whatever it is we think we will do, we are doing, or we have done, is the right way to do it. That's what "righteousness" is. It's the "right way". And we think we nailed it.

The second part is that we, as people, have all these little areas that we haven't really embraced the freedom of the Gospel, and our parenting is one of those little (or not so little) areas. We want to be free from condemnation, but every time we feel that look there's a part of us that thinks they are right, and we really are a failure.

The Gospel re-focuses our parenting so that we can keep first things first. In my initial post on freedom from condemnation, I said that one of the things that this freedom allows is that we can evaluate expectations that we our others place on us and decide whether they are really relevant and worthwhile. Most of them aren't. Freedom from condemnation gives us a filter to judge what is really important in our parenting, since we are now free to examine what God desires of us, without the need to feel like the people around us will think we are a failure if we disagree with what they desire of us.

Surely, there are expectations of the Christian parent. We are called to raise our children to love Jesus. We are called to teach them the ideals of God. We should desire that our children understand God's word and grow to love God's word. We should be concerned with our children's  "heart, soul, mind, and strength". We should ensure that they are healthy in their mind, their spirits, and their body. They have been assigned to us, by God, so that we can show them the good news of Jesus and the greatness of their Father God, to the best of our ability.

In spite of all of that, or perhaps because of all of that, we are free to live without condemnation, even when we mess up or don't live up to the expectations. The Gospel is the reminder to us that we can't save ourselves, and we can't save our kids. That's God's work. So even when we mess up, we can have the confidence that we couldn't do any of it without God anyway.

As for other's expectations on us, it requires a two-way grace. First, the grace to apply to yourself to remind you of your freedom, and then the grace to apply to them, to realize that they are still a self-righteous work in progress as well.

FREEDOM FROM CONDEMNING OUR CHILDREN

This is the freedom with which we raise our children. The unfortunate reality is that many, many people have grown up under the pressure of "obedience" without the pressure-release of "freedom from condemnation". Such was the case for much of my childhood. The attitude I experienced wasn't, "we want you to learn to live according to God's ideals because of God's love for you"; the attitude was, "we want you to live according to our ideals because otherwise we'll be embarrassed." One of those is obedience based on freedom; the other is obedience based on guilt and shame.

I could recount moments of "shaming" disguised as discipline, but it's not worth it. Must more important for us is understanding how we can raise our own children to be disciplined without being shamed. I've mentioned the "pendulum" of culture before. In a lot of cases, if parents grew up in a shaming household, they go the total opposite way and try to raise their kids boundary free. The wrong-headed belief is thinking that the opposite of shame-brought-on-by-law is absence of law. In other words, get rid of the law, and we'll get rid of the shame. Boundary-free, no limit parenting is the wave of the future. Even gender remains up for debate. It's "whatever you decide", and as a result, we think, there will be no guilt and shame.

Of course, it never works, in part because the law is a deeper reality than some external restrictions. We can remove external boundaries all we want, but we can't remove the internal ones. And if we could, we wouldn't want to. If we truly lived our lives as if rules and boundaries didn't matter, it would obviously be chaos. Shame doesn't get removed because we remove the law.

The Gospel actually handles it exactly the opposite of culture. If culture says, "get rid of law, and we'll be rid of shame", the message of the Gospel is, "get rid of the shame, and enjoy the law." It isn't absence of law that brings freedom, it's absence of shame. When the shame is gone, we are not only free to obey without the fear of condemnation, we are also free to receive loving discipline that keeps us on the path when we don't obey.

When my son misbehaves, therefore, what I want him to understand is that whatever consequence he may face as a result has zero impact on how I view him as my son. I don't love him less when he misbehaves, and I don't love him more when he behaves. (And just to be clear: I'm a sinner, so yes, when he misbehaves I'm annoyed with him and when he behaves I'm grateful. I feel the need to say that so that you don't think that I have this down, like the Heavenly Father loves us. If there is loving discipline in our lives from God our Father, it has zero impact in God's view of us, because he actually is perfect and loves us with a perfect love. But I digress.) When I discipline my son, I want to make sure that he knows that the reason I'm disciplining him is because I love him. When he is disrespectful to me or my wife, there are consequences. And the reason there are consequences is because I honestly believe that it is better for him to be respectful than it would be to allow him to continue in his disrespect. It's love that leads to discipline, not lack of love. It's for his good, not mine. I love him no matter what.

Furthermore, I'm not shocked when he misbehaves. I don't think less of him when he misbehaves. I already knew he was going to misbehave, and I knew it from before we got into this parent/child relationship. 

I know he's going to misbehave.

I don't love him any less because he misbehaves.

I correct him because I love him.

That's the Gospel. If there is loving correction from God, it has nothing to do with whether or not he needs me to behave. He doesn't. In his eyes, I'm already perfect. If there is correction, it is for my good and ultimate joy.

As a result of this, we are free to discipline our children without leading them into shame and guilt. We can at the same time teach them that there is a way to behave, and not shame them when they fall short.

I fail at this all the time, but I'm trying, and by God's grace, I'm okay, and so are my kids.

Freedom from Condemnation & Repentance

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

After writing last week about our freedom from condemnation, I began to think about all the ways that this freedom actually plays itself out in real life. The idea that I've really been wrestling with is this view that what we is ultimately destroyed by the cross is our condemnation, but not the law, even though the law is a shadow. So as the author of Hebrews states, the sacrifices are done away with because Jesus in his perfection is the final sacrifice; there is no necessity for further sacrifices, not because the law is destroyed, and not because we will perfectly fulfill the law, but rather, because Jesus has perfectly paid the just due for all those who would be imperfect and break the law. Again, the condemnation is gone. We are freed. We are viewed as perfect in the eyes of God, because he sees us through Jesus.

The interaction of this freedom with the rest of life came out in at least three ways that I started considering. One was the idea of "drivenness". Some folk are just driven people; often, that drive is fueled by internal or external expectations, and while that might be a good thing, the challenge is to maintain the drive while losing the fear of condemnation. Another area was that of "parenting". Obviously we teach our children to "obey"; that's our parental duty. Additionally, we punish our children when they don't obey. How do we square that with the idea that we are no longer condemned? And finally, a third area was that of repentance. What does repentance look like in the Christian life? It is this third one, repentance, that I decided to cover first.

Freedom from Condemnation & Repentance

I was sitting at a luncheon with some friends when one member of the group said that they felt the need to repent of something that had happened the night before. Honestly, most of us probably didn't even know it happened, and the way that it was addressed made it even more awkward than if he had never addressed it in the first place. I wasn't sure whether it was awkward because I wasn't used to people repenting, or because I just didn't think that's what repentance meant. In other words, was repentance something that was done verbally, almost in an AA-like manner, where you have to confess to the people you feel you may have offended? Or was repentance something that was less about the verbal confession and more about the change of heart? To state it differently, was repentance about identifying what happened yesterday, or about what you were going to do tomorrow?

Answering those questions in depth would take a different post. The short answer is that it's a little bit of both. On the one hand, it's clear that confession is part of repentance. (1 John 1). On the other hand, it's also fairly obvious that confession without some sort of change in behavior or outlook would be fairly empty. I might say that confession indicates recognition of the need; the change in behavior or outlook is the evidence.

In any event, this week I've been thinking about repentance in relation to our freedom from condemnation. How is it that repentance is still required of Christians, and should mark our lifestyle, while condemnation is not? The question can only be answered if we understand that the law is still valid and good, even if it is only a shadow of the true reality which will ultimately be the kingdom of God, where there is no need for a law because we would all live perfectly according to God's ideals.

The fact is that repentance is only possible when we understand that while the law still exists, condemnation does not. Ultimately this is the reason that anything we do as Christians matters. God's ideals are not destroyed because Jesus was perfect; quite the contrary. Instead, we are finally able to live in freedom, without the guilt and shame of our own imperfection, because Jesus has a) already identified the problem and provided the solution and b) already dealt with any lingering doubts that we might have by giving us his perfection for free.

What that means practically is that we can live under the goodness of the law of the Spirit that is constantly transforming us and aligning us with God's ideals, and we can live under the freedom from condemnation which means that we can freely admit when we fall short. If there was no law, there would be no need for repentance, because it would be impossible to be a rule-breaker when there are no rules. There would be nothing to turn from. Since there is a law, and God's ideals actually exist, there is not only something to turn from (inability to meet the ideal whether willingly or unwillingly) but there is also something to turn towards. Furthermore, since the condemnation has been removed when we do fall short, we can repent without implicating ourselves in our own crime. We can actually admit, without guilt, and without shame, that we have fallen short; we don't do it out of fear or out of embarrassment but out of freedom, with the full knowledge that the very foundation and need for the good news of Jesus is the reality that we can't save ourselves, and that we are always constantly destined to fall short. 

We are free, then, to unload the burden of our failures through repentance, without the fear that if we do so, "whatever we say can be used against us in a court of law." It can't, and won't, be used against us. Repentance is the true mark of freedom, because when we repent we are again reminding ourselves and those around us that we can't save ourselves, but that Jesus has saved us by his cross. In a sense we are staring down the face of punishment and turning aside, relieved. The punishment can't touch us anymore. We're free.

If we are in a context that makes us feel like repenting will mean guilt, shame, embarrassment, or defeat, then we are not in a gospel context. Repentance is freedom, because only a person who is free from condemnation can truly repent. If condemnation still exists, then repentance is done out of fear. But if it doesn't exist, then repentance is done out of freedom, and if it's done out of freedom, it leads to life.

That's the joy of the Gospel.

Freedom from Condemnation

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

I've been reflecting on our freedom from condemnation over the last several days. On Sunday night, as I was closing out the Youth Retreat that I was leading, the message of freedom from condemnation was the message I wanted to send them home with. All of our life is filled with law that leads to sin and death. It's law that kills us. Law that reveals our inadequacy and failure, whether the law is the biblical law, some internal law that we create for ourselves, or some external law that others place on us. They all carry condemnation. They remind us that we cannot ultimately succeed. Paul's claim, and ultimately the claim of the Gospel, is that the Christian person is set free from the expectation that we can ultimately attain our righteousness through the law.

The tension for the Christian–and really, it is no tension at all, but it is one that we create–is trying to figure out exactly what that means. One tendency, and the easy one to debunk, is to believe that Paul must be mistaken and that, while Jesus death covers our past sins, it is now on us to make sure that from here on out we fulfill the law more than we break the law. This is simple to throw away because it is not good news. I can't keep the law, and I'm reminded daily. In fact, this is the very thing that the law is designed to do! So if I have to earn something now that Jesus has covered my sins, I'm in deep trouble.

The other tendency is to believe that the law no longer exists, or no longer has any value. Thus, to be set free means that the law has been erased and therefore has no hold on us. We find this idea challenging to accept, and rightfully so. If it's true that there is no law and therefore no expectation, then what has Christ's death really done? It has certainly freed us, but freed us to do what? Has it freed us to sin all the more? Paul is clear that this is not the case, but then by which measure do we understand sin, if there is no law?

No, the freedom Paul speaks of is freedom from the condemnation of the law. That is, because the Law (of God) has been so ultimately fulfilled by Jesus, we no longer live under it's condemnation. It is still completely valid. It is right. It is good. It's just not condemning for us. We don't worry about our own ability to perfectly fulfill what God has commanded, because Jesus has perfectly fulfilled it on our behalf. We don't consider our accomplishments in relationship to the Law to increase our righteousness either. We are already perfectly righteous because of Jesus.

The reason we create a tension where there doesn't have to be one is that we cannot comprehend of a legal system where the law is still valid but the punishments are not. It doesn't make sense that "murder", for example, continues to be wrong, but if we do murder, we get off free with no condemnation. If it is the case that we are truly free from the condemnation of the law, then we really are ultimately free from the law itself. In other words, we are free to live however we wish to live. "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Thus, the tension: is it possible that we are saved, and so therefore we can sin freely?

At the most basic level, the answer is "yes". If it is true that we are totally, one hundred percent covered by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, so that there can be nothing held against us anymore, that there can be no accusers, that we can no longer be condemned, then we are truly and radically free and no amount of sinning after the fact can change it. That's freedom.

A more nuanced answer, however, will be "yes, but we won't". That is, yes, we can sin. We can live however we wish. But we won't, because we have been utterly transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Since it is the Spirit who sets us free, and makes us new, it is the Spirit who empowers us to actually carry out the very spirit of the law; it is the Spirit that enables us to truly love God and love others, and that is the crux of the whole matter. So while we are totally and radically free to go out and live however we want, the transformation in us is such that we will actually begin to live more fully the way that God intended in our love for God and others, so that even without the law we are fulfilling the law. This is why the same apostle who so radically declares our freedom from condemnation and the law can at the same time express confidently that what will be evident in us is fruit; the Spirit will be working. It is not optional. We are being transformed.

This is the first response to the tension we feel in response to our freedom: the "law" that we are now under is the "law of the Spirit"; the transforming spirit that enables us to carry out the intentions of God from the very beginning, which is to love God and others.

The second response to the tension that there can be a valid law without condemnation is really the heart of the Gospel message. Jesus himself says that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The law continues to carry with it punishments. The great breach of the law was the failure to love God and to love others; the punishment was, and is, death. Jesus repairs the breach and takes the punishment. He perfectly loves God and others, and assumes on himself the punishment that the breach required. We are free from condemnation not because the law no longer carries condemnation–in fact, it does–but we are free from condemnation because Jesus was condemned on our behalf.

The law and the punishments remain in full force, so I have a few options. I can either perfectly fulfill the law, and therefore avoid the punishment, or if I can't perfectly fulfill the law (which I can't), then I can assume the punishment myself. Since I can't perfectly fulfill the law, I can't please God. In fact, my very efforts to do so become hostile to God! So then, since I am a lawbreaker by nature, the still-valid punishment must be satisfied, and it will be satisfied either by myself or by a substitute. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus is the substitute.

So then not only is the law valid, but the punishment is valid as well. For the Christian, however, the punishment has been taken by Jesus, so that we can confidently declare that no matter how much we break the law going forward, there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. The law is still good and right! But we are not condemned when we fail, because of Jesus.

That message of freedom from condemnation not only applies to the biblical law, but to the internal and external law I mentioned. One author (Paul Zahl, I believe) referred to the internal and external law as the bastard children of the law. They are the natural outcome of attempting to define our lives, our righteousness, and our justification by our own efforts, and then taking those expectations and applying them to others, so that we also view their righteousness and justification through that lens. Freedom from condemnation takes those expectations and turns them on their head. They no longer define us. Our life now is defined by Jesus. Our law is defined by Jesus. The things that matter, the expectations of God, are defined by God himself. Even when we fall short of those expectations, we are not condemned; we cannot be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

That is the perspective by which we measure both the internal law and the external law. In both cases, attempting to earn our "rightness" by fulfilling the law will ultimately lead to oppression. This is not to say that there are no good expectations for ourselves; we may expect that we will perform well at our job, for example. There is nothing wrong with that expectation, it is good and right. What the Christian understands is that they are no more righteous if they meet that expectation, just as they are no more condemned if they don't. Their identity is in Jesus. He defines the expectations that matter.

Freedom from condemnation means that we are free from accusation when we don't measure up to expectations of ourselves or others. As a perfectionist, the most freeing thought I can have is that I am still free even when I don't meet the expectations that I place on myself. I am not bound to that perfectionism. Not only do I not have to be perfect, but I don't have to worry about whether or not other people think I'm perfect either. I do not stand condemned anymore. Because Jesus accepts me and has paid my dues, it really doesn't matter much whether others think I am measuring up.

But perhaps even more importantly, however, is the second reality:

Freedom from condemnation means that we are able to disagree on whether or not an expectation is valid to begin with.

There is no doubt that Paul instructs the early Christians to certain standards: they will be hard working, for example. If you are lazy, you are not considered "needy"; you are considered "lazy". There are other expectations that he allows, but doesn't necessarily condone. Celebration of certain religious feasts, for example. It's not harmful, he would say, so long as you don't think you are earning your righteousness from it. If it helps you focus on Jesus and his righteousness, enjoy it! But since you earn no righteousness from it, you can't expect others to join you in your feasting. It's not a necessity; it's a false expectation.

False expectations abound. "All good parents feed their kids organic food." "All cool teenagers play sports." "All men make a lot of money." "Successful people drive brand new cars." "True Christians read their Bible an hour a day." And one my wife is particularly passionate about, not for her sake but for other moms who feel the pressure so powerfully, "All good moms have immaculate houses." Here's the thing about this expectations: some of them are just wrong and unbiblical ("Successful people drive brand new cars.") Others might work for you, but aren't binding on others (Buying only organic food or keeping an immaculate house). Freedom from condemnation means you are free to make the distinction between the expectations that matter, and those that don't. The key is remembering that if you can keep them, you aren't more justified, and if you can't, you're not more condemned.

You are totally justified, and never condemned, because of Jesus. This is the freedom of the Gospel.

Extreme Cold and the Youth Retreat

"Sure, I'll lead the youth retreat in Upstate New York in the middle of February", I said.

And thus I sealed my fate.

The good news is that several days ago the forecast temperature was a high of -6 and a low of -20, so it appears that those numbers have increased. It's going to be downright balmy at 7.

Feel Good Faith and Thin Christianity

Most of life happens on a pendulum. I don't mean life as in the living and breathing essence of who we are, but I mean life, generally. Our worldview, our culture, and societies values.

A couple of things came up yesterday that started me thinking about this. The first was that a basketball player at a Division 1 college quit the school and will be transferring next year or as soon as possible. He was a starting player, and he quit mid-way through the season. His rationale? From what I understand (this was second hand delivered to me), the locker room was a disaster. Racism, drugs, alcohol abuse, sexuality, and on and on. Not that this kid was a prude. But at a certain point, it becomes too much.

I commented to the person telling me that this is what we can expect if we decide as a culture that value judgments can be made by the individual. What boundaries are we willing to set? Where are the lines that we draw? And then, on whose authority do we set them or draw them? It might be the institution itself (in this case, a University), it might be the government, or it might be something else, but at the end of the day someone has the authority to set the boundary points and effectively declare that this is as far as they are willing to go. As long as it is the individual, then functionally, we have declared that "no boundary marker" is the real boundary marker.

Setting it based on the authority of a human institution typically doesn't fare much better. This is precisely what causes the pendulum shifts in our culture. Most human institutions can be changed either by popular opinion, by uprising, by votes, or in many modern cases simply by the subjective opinion of appointed judges. If we don't like the boundary marker that a particular institution has set, there is typically some way to change it. And since most of us are not overly prone to moderation, our views tend to go from one extreme to the other. We go from prohibition to license in a few generations; give it a generation or two more, and we might see the pendulum swing back.

The other conversation I had related to Christianity in the first century. A friend is preaching on the book of Revelation; I am preaching on the book of Acts. A commentary on Acts that I was reading pointed out that the way to really understand Acts, or to really understand Revelation, was to read them together and see that they are talking about the same thing from different perspectives. Acts is the historical narrative; Revelation is the spiritual one. One of the descriptions is on this side of the curtain; the other describes what we cannot see, unless it's "revealed".

I shared it with my friend and he mentioned some of what he was reading in terms of the persecution of the early church and the heinous measures that the Romans would be willing to go to either in the name of sport or simply torture. It raised an important question for us to consider: how many people would still be in our churches if they knew that simply being there could get them killed? It was sobering to think about, not just for the people in the pews, but for ourselves. Would we be willing to endure brutal torture for the sake of Christ? We both believed we would, but mostly just hoped we'd never have to truly find out.

It strikes me that the Christian faith is almost always counter-cultural, and when it isn't, it suffers. I don't mean this in the way that it's typically presented, however. For example, it's easy to say that Christianity is counter-cultural when sexual promiscuity, for example, is celebrated. This is the way that we typically mean that Christianity should be counter-cultural. I'm suggesting that it should also be counter-cultural even when the values of culture appear to be in line with the values of Christianity. That is, Christianity is ultimately just as counter-cultural when it is sexual suppression that appears to be valued, as could be argued was the case in the mid-20th century, and two married people having the same bedroom was considered too risqué for TV. For one thing, sex is a gift that Christianity and the Bible celebrate. It's not embarrassing, it's good. That alone ought to have been a counter-cultural message during that time.

The real reason that the church is counter-cultural, though, is not because we agree or disagree with the values of the culture. Again, that's what we typically mean when we say we are counter-cultural, but that should be a secondary focus. Even if the values of culture appear to be in line with the values of Christianity, what remains counter-cultural is the authority by which we set our boundary markers. This is what keeps Christianity from functioning on the same pendulum cycle as the rest of culture. Our authority is unchanging; it doesn't change based on our feelings or what we think about it. Culture can appreciate our values or think that they are old-fashioned and silly, but what makes us counter-cultural is that we define our values based on God's ideals and not based on human institution or our own perceived moral compass.

It strikes me that when culture appears to agree with the church, the church is less interested in being counter-cultural, and more interested in figuring out how we can be "mainstream" with what we believe. We try to squeeze Jesus into our already relatively moral existence. Our churches begin to look like malls, our worship events look like concerts, we give away material goods to get people to enter, we give slick, well-presented "message" that showcase our public speaking ability rather than the Word of God, and we convince people that Jesus can take their mostly-good life and turn it into a really-good life. I don't want to impugn a whole generation of churches, and I am being intentionally cynical for a reason. It appears to me that the fruit that we're seeing in the Christian church in America at large begs the question: what authority does a Christian actually follow? And if that authority is an unchanging, sovereign God, then why does it appear that his opinion changes as frequently as ours?

Again, there is much good that has been done through churches that might consider themselves "seeker-sensitive" or whatever other Christian nomenclature you might want to use. I can't help but wonder, though, whether one significant downside is that as long as our worship services look like something that we produced, or come from our own minds, whether we're not just feeding into the same old story that authority is found in human institutions. And if it's found in human institutions, if the church's authority comes from the mind of the pastor or the Elders who happen to be in charge at the time, then it's no wonder that many churches will change as quick and as soon as culture. It's also no wonder that many Christians can't fathom that being a Christian might mean that you disagree with some of what culture values; they've never been taught that what makes us counter-cultural is not necessary what we do, it's who we follow.

Imagine if the church took seriously who God was, and then took seriously who we are called to be not based on our opinion or culture's opinion of us, but simply based on God's love for us. What would that look like? 

It would be a counter-cultural church that based it's authority on God, and didn't make their decisions based on what man thinks about them, but based on who God is and what he has done. That would be a revolutionary church indeed.

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.

Variable Tuition & The Cost of Christian Education

My wife and I send three of our five children to Eastern Christian School. As a pastor, I'm often extra conscious of the schooling choices that we select for our children. I recognize that there is no "one-size-fits-all" and try hard not to make someone else feel that they have to make the same decision that we've made; in fact, even before I arrived at my church, which strongly supports the Christian school, this was one of the values that was inherent in the culture–the Pastor wouldn't have to send their children to the Christian School unless he chose to. Yet we recognize that any schooling decision that we make for our children will be scrutinized and potentially followed by the people in our church and in our community.

Not long ago I was meeting with a group of pastor's and the school administration and we raised the question that many of us pastor's had confronted at times within our own congregation. The assumption that people had was that we all had received "sweetheart deals" because of our position. That is, because we were pastors, the school had treated us differently than it would any other family who wanted to attend EC. To be honest, most of the pastor's there weren't really sure if that was true, so we asked the administration.

They said, unequivocally, "no". The conviction of the administration was that they would work with any family who has a desire to attend Eastern Christian and was serious about their commitment.

Fast forward a year or so, and our school has just announced what they are calling "Variable Tuition". In short, everyone who has a serious commitment and desire to attend the school will pay what they can afford, up to 80% of the tuition. That 80% is correct, by the way. No student at the school pays 100% of the cost of tuition because of the endowment, financial gifts, and other ways that the school raises money to reduce the cost of tuition across the board.

This isn't a post on why Christian Education is the right choice for your child. As I mentioned, I don't think there is one solution that is correct for everyone. What this is about, however, is why I believe Eastern Christian is doing all that they can to remove finances from the equation when you are making the educational choice for your children.

THE EQUATION OF SCHOOL

In my experience the greatest hurdle towards people considering Christian education is the finances. I talk to Christian School graduates who know what the school offers, who look positively on their experience, who are considering schooling options for their children, and yet, the number one thing standing in their way is the finances. I get it. Christian school ain't cheap.

The assumption here is that there is a Christian school option available to you in your area, that it is a decent school, that it is a part of your consideration, and that you would seriously consider sending your children there if the finances really weren't an issue. In other words, I'm making the assumption that you already agree with me that Christian education is a good idea, if you can afford it. I'm not trying to convince the unconvinced, I'm trying to encourage the convinced. You can do this! And here's why.

First, Christian School is not the same as private school

Okay, okay. It is a private school. I get that. But it's not a private school the way that private schools are private. You with me?

I graduated from a Christian School in Miami and our athletic league consisted mostly of other private schools in the area. When we went to those schools, there was a distinctly different vibe. The vibe was, "we are an exclusive club. We pay to be here." The parking lot looked like a luxury car dealership. The thing is, no one argued that there was a benefit to those schools or that they would like to send their kids there if they could. That stuff was assumed. But you could only access it if you could pay for it, or if you had a special talent or ability that the school deemed worthy of a scholarship. It remained an elite school because it was only for the elite.

And that's the chief difference between a Christian school and every other private school.

If a Christian school is an elite school that only some people can afford, then it's functionally a private school that has bible classes. It's not a Christian school. If it's a Christian School, that believe that the Gospel is relevant to every area of our life, and that there truly is "no square inch" of the universe that God does not control, then it also has to assume that it has value to every Christian parent and every Christian student. It must also gladly operate under the assumption that every student should have the opportunity to learn in an environment that upholds God as the Sovereign Creator and Jesus as the Savior and King.

I'm reminded of the quote, perhaps by Abraham Kuyper, that no education is religiously neutral. That is, your education will either come from the perspective that God exists–even when studying things like evolution or sub-atomic particles–or it will come from the perspective that God does not exist. The content ought to be the same, but the perspective matters.

If Christian School is important, we must be of the conviction that it is important for all Christians. And if it is important for all Christians, then it must be accessible to all Christians.

This is what distinguishes Christian School from other private school options. I know of no other private school that believes that it ought to be universally accessible. Christian school, and Eastern Christian in particular, does believe that

In fact, this is the belief that makes variable tuition possible. Variable tuition only works when we believe that Christian education is valuable and should be accessible to all Christian parents.

Most people know that some–maybe even most–families at Eastern Christian receive some sort of scholarship. What Eastern Christian is doing is just calling it for what it is. Some people pay more than others. That disparity is justified, as long as we recognize that everyone has a different financial capacity, and that Christian school should be accessible to anyone who values it and wants to commit to it with their family.

If we really value Christian education and believe it should be accessible to all, then variable tuition is the obvious choice.

Which leads me to a final point.

Variable tuition only works when everyone is being legit about what they can afford.

The truth is that if you believe that Christian education is valuable and should be accessible to all, and you are committed to it, you will make the necessary sacrifices. But how do you know?

This is one of the reasons that Eastern Christian uses a third party to help determine how much someone can actually afford. The application, if it's the same as in past years, includes questions about what kind of cars you drive, credit card debt, etc. It's a basic financial application, but it's the same across the board. That third party is processing everyone's request and making determinations about what they think you should be able to afford. Sometimes that may work for your family, other times you may need more assistance than they suggest, but it helps to provide some sort of metric.

It would be easy for those who pay full tuition–and those who don't–to wonder about their respective sacrifices. There are times when I show up in my old vehicles and someone else shows up in their new vehicles and I think to myself, this is harder for me than it is for him. But my guess is, he might feel the same way, knowing that I probably get a scholarship and he doesn't. 

Variable tuition, especially as monitored by a third party, removes that second-guessing from the equation. Instead, it allows us to say to one another that...

My tuition and your tuition may be different, but our sacrifice is the same.

My tuition and your tuition may be different, but we value the same thing.

My tuition and your tuition may be different, but we need each other.

If you are seriously considering Christian Education for your children, do not let finances stand in your way. There may be good reason to choose a different path, but "the money" is no longer one of them.

Winning

In my <sarcasm>free time</sarcasm> I am a JV basketball coach, which means that I directly coach the JV team and assist with the Varsity. The head coach and I took over two years ago and were tasked with turning around the entire basketball program, which had wallowed in recent years. (I regularly point out to the team the basketball banner on the wall which lists my team as the last team to be "league champs"...there are no dates listed after 1996.) 

Turning around a program is tough, particularly if it's been down for a while. "Losing" becomes a cultural attitude. At the beginning of this season, even, one of the kids said they had a good game because they only lost by six. As a competitor, that kind of attitude drives me nuts. Yes, they played well. Yes, that was an improvement. But we're not, and shouldn't be, playing to keep it close. We're playing to win. And a loss is still a loss.

Attitude shifts are one thing, but patience is another. Short of recruiting the next All-American basketball star, this is a building effort, and not an overnight effort. That means that over the last two years, we've lost a lot. Varsity has fared a bit better than JV, but they haven't been setting the world on fire.

This year, things improved substantially for the team. The Varsity players are a year older; another year under their belts getting acclimated to coaches offensive and defensive schemes. A year of playing basketball just so they can learn how to play the actual game of basketball, and not a PE/playground game that looks like basketball.

Unfortunately, as our team aged up a year, it left a gap on the JV. We don't have a huge roster of guys who can play basketball. In fact, there were a handful of guys who came out to play this year who had never played the game before. We made the choice to keep them, because they work hard and they have a good attitude, and without them, our numbers might not be able to support a JV team at all.

Long story short, we made some changes as the season progressed and have used more "swing players" in our lineup on JV. This is guy who is on the Varsity Roster, but may not see much playing time. He is allowed to play a few quarters in the JV game, but no more than 5 quarters total for the day. This has substantially improved our chances, and has allowed us to compete in games that would have been blowouts early in the season.

Still, there was a lot of basketball to be learned. Basic things like how to break a press, how to make a good pass, how not to let everyone on the court know that you are about to pass the ball across the court and they should get themselves in place and steal it, how to make a layup under pressure, how to keep your wits about you. All of those things were things we were working on, preaching, teaching, in practice and on game days.

Last night it all clicked. The guys played their style of basketball. Three things I say every week, from the beginning, even when we were playing with those guys who hadn't played before: Play hard, have fun, slow down. I've asked over and over: how do you break a press? "Middle, opposite". (You pass to the middle of the floor and hit the opposite guard...works every time as long as you make good passes.) What are the three things we need to do today? "Defense, box out, protect the ball." 

You could tell it clicked. Maybe for one night only, but it clicked. They were down by ten, down by four, down by eight, but never let the game get away from them. Suddenly, middle of the fourth quarter, they are winning by one, then three.

Two and a half minutes left. "Two things you don't need right now. You don't need to score. You don't need to turn the ball over." Protect the ball, we win the game. Simple as that.

Run a delay offense. Burn a minute and a half before turning the ball over! Defensive stand, we get the rebound, we're fouled.

At this point, there are 28 seconds to go in the game. At some point in the play, one of their players got hit in the face and began screaming in pain, blood coming out of his nose onto the floor. I still have no idea how it happened, but the kid is writhing around like he has a broken nose, or worse. Takes about five minutes to clean the blood off the floor and calm everyone down.

Free throw time. Make the two free throws. Up by five.

The other team comes down and scores. Leading by three. Ball out of bounds. Press is on! Call timeout.

"Here is our press break. Get the ball inbounds. They will foul. Do not turn the ball over. If you get scared, we have one timeout left. Use it."

Press break, ball in bounds. Fouled. Misses both free throws. Timeout called by the other team.

"We're up by three. Do exactly what you've done all game. Don't worry about stopping only the three. Just play defense."

Other team scores. Other team calls timeout.

"Get the ball inbounds. They will foul. Do not turn the ball over. If you get scared, we have one timeout left. Use it."

Ball inbounds. Fouled. 13 seconds left.

Two free throws made. Up by three. Ball inbounds. Timeout called by the other team. Ball at mid-court. One play left. 6 seconds to go.

"Pick up your man as soon as you get on the court. (We had played zone all night but I told them to be ready for this.) Face guard. Do not miss your assignment. This is the most important play of the night."

(Side note, one game last year we were up by three with seconds to go, and someone missed their read. Their player made an unbelievable fallaway jumper three at the buzzer to go into overtime, and we lost. The memory haunts me.)

Shot goes up, ball tipped, headed out of bounds, buzzer sounds. 

Game over, we win.

That's about as close to the details of the game as I remember. Here's the thing: they did what I told them to do, and we won. Just the basics. Play defense. Box out. Don't turn the ball over. And at the end of the day, it resulted in a win over a pretty good team. 

Winning feels good after so many losses. 

Overbooked & Self-Editing

One of the problems with posting in an open forum is that I have to balance and self-edit some of what I want to say. The issue isn't that what I might say would offend anyone or be somehow crude or inappropriate, but is typically because it might relate to a semi-private situation or that it might relate to something I'm currently involved in, and as a result, could cause confusion or offense.

Case in point: My schedule is severely overbooked. I could explain which things on my schedule probably need to go, but then those organizations or groups that I'm involved with could read that a certain way and take offense, or be hurt, or whatever. I don't want that. Obviously, I think that everything I'm involved in is valuable and important. But sometimes, the perfect storm hits, and this is one of those weeks. When that happens it almost always causes me to take a closer look at what I'm involved with, and begin to decide which things have to go.

This coming weekend, I'm leading a youth retreat for a group of churches that asked me to speak. I've been looking forward to it for a while. I haven't done any youth-type stuff in a while, and the retreat is at one of my favorite locations in upstate New York. My entire family gets to with me, to boot, so we'll have a good weekend away (in February, in upstate New York...that will either sound delightful to you, or absolutely terrible.)

Unfortunately, I also have three basketball games this week (each with a JV and Varsity game), two church meetings, and a board meeting for the non-profit that I'm a part of. I'm overbooked.

The problem, of course, is that the things that really are a priority–my family, my own health physically, spiritually, and mentally, and my job-all take a backseat to just getting things done. Everyone has a limit to the things that they can achieve or reasonably accomplish. I'm certainly doing more than my limit.

Then there are other implications to being overbooked. One is that you have no flex time for other people. I forget where I heard the term flex-time in relation to this concept, (or maybe I made it up!), but essentially it's the idea that you would schedule in unscheduled time in your calendar. So each week, you'd schedule in time where you knew that you had nothing scheduled. This is different than "free time". It's different than "scheduled time". It's "flex-time". It's time that you scheduled in to use, if necessary, that doesn't make you overly-booked or overly-free. In essence, it's a schedule buffer. If things get tight, you aren't stealing from your family or your free time, you are borrowing "flex-time". 

If there is no flex-time, then inevitably something is going to give in one of the important areas that you typically don't schedule. In my case, a temporary addition of coaching basketball means I give up a lot of family time; if church gets busy, that eats up any additional time I might have had; if there are pastoral concerns that arise, it eats up free time; next thing you know, my own health and my family health have been squeezed out, and things are in bad shape.

In pre-marital counseling, we ask couples to consider what they want to do in the future before making choices today. You can't always predict what those things will be, but when you can, you can make wiser choices now to make sure that the important things aren't squeezed out in the future. For example, if you want to have one parent stay home with the children, then don't buy a house before having kids that requires two salaries to support. The choice you make today squeezes out the choice you want to make tomorrow, before you have even made it.

Such is the case with scheduling. If you want to have time for people, and your own health, and your family, and to do the things you really love, don't overbook yourself. You don't have to feel bad about saying no to something; you do have to count the cost of it before you say yes.

Perhaps I should have taken my own advice.

Sunday

It's Sunday afternoon and I just got the call that the service I was supposed to preach at tonight was cancelled. "Serendipitous", my wife said. It's been a long week, I'm tired, and my throat hurts.

I'm sitting in my big chair, by the fire, listening to the rain or sleet or whatever precipitation is coming down hit the roof of the house now, and I'm grateful for some down time.

Sunday afternoons in our house are tough. I often try to compare them to the "normal persons" weekend, but I really don't know what the normal person's weekend is like. We've never really had a normal weekend. Since we've had kids, we've been in church ministry and so our Sundays have always been busy. They are less busy now than they were when we were at churches that had multiple Sunday services, but they are still busy.

The real challenge is making sure that the kids get a chance to relax and don't feel like the house is in disarray. They go to school five days a week, Saturdays we try to keep pretty basic, but then Sunday rolls around and we're right back at it. Before you know it it's Sunday night, which is a school night...

In any case, it's nice to have a day where the obligations are finished and we can all just lock ourselves in the house and relax.

Also, tonight is The Walking Dead, so there's that.

The Church is Simple

Going through the book of Acts in a sermon series has been a refreshing reminder of the life of the church. Inasmuch as everyone talks about wanting to "do church like the first century church", we usually don't hit the mark. I can't help but think that we are seriously overcomplicating it.

It seems like there are at least three things we can say, keeping things pretty simple.

First, the church is founded on Jesus Christ. For any Christian, that ought to be the obvious one. You don't have the church without Jesus.

Second, the church is powered by the Holy Spirit. This message is consistent throughout the life of Jesus and of course carries through in the book of Acts. Jesus talks about the coming Holy Spirit to the disciples and then prays for them in John 17 that they would be sent out into the world. The order is important. In Acts, Jesus tells them to wait until they have the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit finally comes on the day of the first fruits of the harvest, the disciples receive the promised power and they go out and spread the message of the Gospel to massive response.

Third, the church is recognized by it's community. It seems to me that everything else that happens in the book of acts, and certainly the first description of the church in Acts 2, has this as it's center. The church restores bonds between people that were previously broken.

If I were to add a fourth, it would be that the church is sustained by it's prayers. I don't like the word "sustained", necessarily, because I think we are sustained by Jesus/the Holy Spirit but it's because of that sustenance that we ultimately pray. If the church recognized that we were totally dependent on Jesus work and the Spirit's power, we'd do a lot more praying. Prayer is one of the ways we activate the Spirit's work (activate here being used loosely; I don't intend to treat it like an on/off switch or something we can ultimately control.)

When we see what the church is doing, then, what we notice is that they are taking great care to remain on their foundation–that is, they are studying the Scripture that tells them about Jesus–they are continually seeking the Spirit–prayer–and they are doing all of this in community with one another. That community, in some cases, simply means that they have decided that doing life together is better than doing it apart. They hang out, they love one another, they want to be with one another, they weep with one another when necessary and laugh with one another when they can. They share amongst themselves. There isn't need in this community, because there would never be need in a family. And we are the family of God.

This is the fundamental essence of the church of Jesus Christ, who is bound together by Him and through him, and grows together into a family by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's easy to miss the simplicity of what the church is called to be.