The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn...

If you’ve been following me on Facebook (and if you haven’t, the truth remains the same), I’ve had what is to me a major life event in the past week. For the first time in my life, I am in a Relationship with a capital R. I am someone’s boyfriend, and I have a girlfriend.

Questions abound, I’m sure. To start, her name is Amy. We met online. Occasionally, it seems, online dating does pan out. In my case, it panned out very well. Amy is a very attractive young woman, very pretty with gorgeous long hair and dazzling eyes. She’s a nerd, and a writer with a snarky sense of humor. She’s also a sophomore at a Christian college, studying English and Theater, and while she goes to school out of state, her hometown is in Colorado. But this only scratches the surface of who Amy is.

Amy is, in my honest opinion, a very amazing person. She is brave, able to face her fears and take risks for what she wants, even to initiate with a guy—which is not terribly common to find in a girl, even online. She is also passionate, caring deeply about the people she’s with and capable of feeling very deeply, as she has with crushes in her past. She is loyal and committed. As a friend she stuck by and supported even those who were actively and knowingly wounding her, and when faced with insurmountable difficulties at a job which—at times—was probably not even treating her legally as an employee, she still felt immense guilt and quit only reluctantly. She is not the sort of person who gives up or gives in easily. I am persuaded that she has in her that sort of heroic kindness that would give you the shirt off her back and think it no big deal, certainly nothing worth mentioning. She is amazing, and more amazing still, she really, seriously likes me.

Even before we were boyfriend and girlfriend (which we haven’t been for long), that part was taking some getting used to. It’s not that I’ve never had anyone like me before. There were a couple girls in high school, one who was, awkwardly enough, my then-crush’s sister, and another who came off as being clingy toward everyone in my family. So while I have had the experience of being liked, it was brief, shallow, awkward, and certainly not from anyone I felt anything like what I feel for Amy. Our relationship began as a mutual crush, and that in itself was strange to me. I’m no stranger to crushes, my earliest dates back to grade school! But I’ve never had anyone I like like me back. I’m so used to being the only one in a friendship who has these feelings, so used to having to suppress them and respect the other person’s cooler, platonic affections. It is still something I’m getting used to, to realize that when I really miss hearing her voice, she really misses hearing mine. That as magical as the act of holding her hand is to me, it gives her butterflies as well. It’s a strange idea to get used to, that someone feels that strongly for me, especially someone as awesome as Amy.

But it puts me in mind of stranger, greater things. As amazing as Amy is (and she is), there is One who is far more excellent than words, whose monikers include “the King of Kings” and “the Everlasting God.” While Amy has without complaint made sacrifices for disloyal friends, He silently endured a sham trial, public mocking, mutilating beating, and literally excruciating death for His enemies. Where Amy is creative, He created the world, the heavens, and everything therein, including Amy. While she is loyal, He has such faithfulness that it is quite thoroughly impossible that He should ever break His word or fail in performing it. Where Amy’s beauty dazzles, His has (on the record) struck men dumb and sent them to their knees gibbering their unworthiness to behold Him in his glory. Most amazing of all, everything Amy and I feel for each other—everything we do for each other, now and even if our relationship should be able to progress to the uttermost extent of human romance—is at best a pale shadow of the unfathomably deep love He has for us.

I am no stranger any longer to the idea that God loves me. It took some getting used to. Still, it is certainly not a truth to be taken for granted. It should change everything. I should live my life in awe of this one truth. Knowing, being liked by, and becoming the boyfriend of Amy has helped me remember this wonder, and has made me consider that the line from the old song may indeed be right: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return.”

Reliance in our Religion

I'm tempted sometimes to envy the church-goer who seems to have it all together.  Such a person's life seems to have clear direction and meaning derived from their church and approved of by the Christians around them.  Maybe they are a missionary or a Sunday school teacher.  Regardless, they've got that all figured out and their life is on track for that goal, that ministry, that work that both God and man will approve of.  When temptations or distractions come their way, they seem immune.  Through sheer force of will, they push through and accomplish their goals, without even messing up their hair in the process.

Such a persona, of course, is a myth.  There are no doubt people who try to live that myth, who pretend to be unshakable and always act like they always know exactly what they're doing.  Underneath the mask, these people are human, too.  Still, it remains an ideal to attain to: to find or borrow some kind of inner direction to unerringly steer us through life, and the strength with which to resist temptation and never deviate from our course.

But is this really an ideal we should be drawn to?  In the end, who does this system rely on?  It may give lip-service to reliance on God, but in the end it is our ability to parse out His will that guides us, and our ability to grit our teeth and try harder in spiritual life that gets us through.  This makes me leery.  I have found that any system that, at bottom, relies on man is doomed to fail, no matter how much lip service it may give to God.

The Bible seems to agree.  On the subject of guidance, Isaiah 50:10-11 praises the faith of those who, when they "walk in darkness" and have "no light" choose to "trust in the name of the LORD and rely on...God."  They place their trust and reliance on Him, His name, His character, who He is, and trust Him to guide them rather than trying to illuminate everything and figure it all out by themselves.  They may remain in the dark, but even there God can guide them.  By contrast, the passage rebukes those who take the matter of guidance into their own hands "who kindle a fire and equip yourselves with flaming torches."  To such as have made their own sense of things and come up with their own plan to guide them, God says, "Walk by the light of your fire, and the torches you have kindled!  This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment."  He gives them up to their own devices and plans, but they do not end well without Him!  I don't know about you, but I would rather lead a "dark," seemingly aimless life with God than try to figure it all out and "lie down in torment" without Him.

It doesn't stop at guidance.  So often in the day-to-day battles against temptation we seem to be relying on our own strength.  At so many Bible studies where the topic of temptation and habitual sin comes up, the answer people give seems couched in terms of human effort.  Try harder.  Pray harder.  Read your Bible more.  Resist temptation.  Avoid the source of it.  Memorize these verses.  Read these books.  Pray for God to bolster your own strength so that you can try harder and do it all again.  I don't believe I have ever seen or heard of such an approach working, though I'm sure many people think it works because they have traded one sin for another (lust for pride, maybe) and I'm sure many others (myself among them, I confess) have pretended that it worked and announced ourselves as cured by our own efforts so that we can escape the constant badgering to perform beyond our capabilities.  I'm sure someone will say that it is not our capabilities that matter but God's, and that His power in us is what will make these effort-based techniques work.  But it is not so.  God is not the one trying to memorize Bible verses in the vain hope that being able to recite scripture chapter and verse will make you immune to temptation.  God is not the one installing monitoring software on your computer or outright smashing it to bits (a la Fireproof) in hopes of breaking your porn addiction.  God is not the one putting pennies in the swears jar every time you cuss.  You are, and if you are doing these things of your own effort, then it comes down to a human feat no matter how much lip service we may give to God.

The Bible addresses this too.  The Apostle Paul, frustrated and concerned by a Galatian church that had turned from faith to human effort challenges them.  "Let me ask you only this," he says, "Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing of faith?  Are you so foolish?  Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:2-3).  I confess that many times, I am that foolish.  I know that salvation is something God accomplished for me, the death and resurrection of Jesus bringing me from death to life, through the work of the Spirit within me.  Having acknowledged this, I put it firmly in the past and determine to grit my teeth and pull of a successful spiritual life (which I myself define) through my own efforts.  If I acknowledge God's present involvement at all, it is with the expectation that He will allow me to try even harder and redouble my efforts.  But this is all wrong.  It is the work of the Spirit that perfects us, and His is a work that starts on the inside and works its way out (rather than vice versa, with our efforts).  He starts by removing our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26), by replacing the lies that made us slaves to sin with the truth that set us free (John 8:32) so that we may have life to the full (John 10:10).  A book I've been reading, Pursued by Jud Wilhite (in a commentary on Hosea 2:16-17), puts it in a different way:

"In fact, the love of God is so powerful it sweeps us off our feet and makes us forget all about those counterfeit loves we pursued.  God says He's going to erase the worship of false gods from the people's midst.  God wants to fulfill the emptiness inside us with a love that will cause all our idols to fall by the wayside.  This is why I believe that conquering our idols and habitual sins is ultimately a matter of being swept up by His love rather than gritting our teeth and trying harder.  If we give Him a chance, God allures us and woos us with loyal love by showing His enormous strength, patience, and gentleness."

This is something I've been sensing about Him for a long time, but never before knew how to put into words.  That God doesn't conquer the sin in my life the way I've been trying to do it, through efforts to avoid temptation, pound myself into obedience, and punish myself for failure, but through captivating me with love.  He doesn't overwhelm me with the consequences of my sin, because He took care of that on the cross (and to wallow further in guilt is to account His sacrifice as nothing).  He doesn't send me to memorize whole books of the Bible, because Satan himself knows the Bible better than we do (and it's not doing him a whole lot of good).  He does not have me smash my computer or move into a cave to live like a hermit, because even hermits can be tempted.  Instead, He transforms my heart and awakens a vibrant desire that loves as He loves.  When temptation comes, it has no power.  It is like a thief with glass beads trying to bribe a jeweler who has seen real diamonds.  When obedience is called for, it flows naturally from a heart that wants to obey.  It isn't a transformation that can even be attempted by my own efforts.  It is totally a work of the Spirit.  And while it does not come with handy human signposts and "torches" to let me know I am on track to some known end goal, it is the only place where I have seen victory, healing, and growth occur.  I would rather have such reliance on God in the darkness than work by my own effort in my own light.

Equality of the Heart

A friend of mine once said, "Women's hearts are delicate, like vases: you have to handle them with care. Men's hearts are like Nalgenes: you can punt them off a mountainside and they'll be fine." While I appreciate her faith in Nalgenes and the tough-guy image of the male psyche we work so hard to project, I question her conclusions about the difference between how men and women feel.

She is far from alone in her assessment. In fact, it's a popular view. Men are always portrayed (and we tend to portray ourselves) as tough, self-sufficient, and romantically-disinclined. Women accordingly may be portrayed as sensitive, loving, caring, and romantically absorbed. Post sexual revolution, women are increasingly free to violate the stereotypes about them, to the extent that the tough, romantically-disinterested girl who enjoys violent shooter games has become a stereotype in its own right. Men, however, remain mostly bound by the stereotypes about them. As a man, I avoid admitting that I'm a avid fan of Robin Jones Gunn and the Christian romance genre, which I read in private for fear someone will find out and think me less of a man. I hesitate to disclose that I read gender relations and gender psychology books as a hobby, and only then if I can get away with saying it is because I am fascinated by gender differences and see them as a reflection of the relationship between God and man--which is true, but completely omits the fact that an even bigger factor in this reading interest is the fact that I am a hopeless romantic who dreams of someday putting all the information I've accumulated to work in a real relationship that will (God willing) blow my partner's mind. Again, I fear to reveal that I don't fit the stereotypes because it might bring my masculinity into question. In this post-sexual revolution world, the stereotypes seem to be the only measure of manliness we have left...but that doesn't mean they're true, or that adhering to them is doing us any favors.

According to the stereotypes, women feel more deeply and freely than men, especially in the romantic arena, and therefore their hearts need to be treated with greater care. But if anything, the facts tell the opposite story. Studies of young couples have repeatedly found that men reported falling in love much faster than women, some even reporting the fabled "love at first sight." As a measure of how deeply each gender falls, one could look at who is more likely to call it quits. There the answer is overwhelming women. Statistics say that women initiate 2 out of every 3 divorces. After the breakup, studies have shown that men may be more deeply hurt than their exes, as men  more likely to suffer mental health problems as a result of a breakup. I am not saying that women are cold with Nalgene-like hearts, but perhaps in the light of this evidence, we need to re-evaluate our stereotypes about men and how we treat them as a result.

There is, to be sure, nothing wrong with encouraging men to be gentle with the hearts of the women in their lives. That's what I appreciate about the stereotypes. But too often, I see them used in more negative ways. They are used to prioritize needs by gender. If we see a man and a woman have both emotionally wounded each other, we are likely to comfort the woman and confront the man with a charge that he "man up" and a rebuke for him daring to hurt a woman. This is a double-standard, plain and simple. Worse yet, sometimes we seem to take the stereotype's assertion that men's hearts can be safely punted off mountains as justification for doing just that. After all, he's a man, he can take it, right? At this point, we are using someone's gender as a justification for what amounts to relational and/or emotional abuse, which takes us beyond the immoral and edges us toward the criminal. Seriously, "boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" is a slogan that appears on t-shirts and magnets all over (one actually hangs behind me at my workplace, apparently for sale). We men don't complain, lest we appear to violate our tough image, but if a similar slogan were displayed about women, someone would complain about hate speech.

But there is another troubling thing about these stereotypes. According to Ephesians 5:25-32 the dynamics between a man and a woman reflect the dynamics between believers and Christ. What we say about one reflects what we believe about the other (at least to an extent). If we believe that men are insensitive and less capable of love and feeling than women, do we believe the same about God? Do we see Him as a distant, disinterested, emotionless god-in-the-clouds? If so, we have bought into a heresy. The Bible tells us that God loved us first by an incalculable margin (before we were even born) that He loved us so deeply that He died for us when we hated Him, and that He is so faithful in His love that to leave us would be to deny Himself, which He cannot do. He is sensitive, loving, emotional, romantic, and near. While men are not perfect reflections of Him, they are meant to be the images of His character. Perhaps it is time we re-evaluated our stereotypes about men (and the ways that we, as men, stereotype ourselves) in the light of this fact and the truth about who Christ is.

Breaking the Second-Greatest Commandment

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

--Matthew 22:35-40 (ESV)

Some of us in the Christian community have a tendency for making and trying to keep large bodies of rules.  I confess that I have often done that sort of thing.  When we do, we tend to completely lose sight of what really matters to God.  We wind up with a long list of things that make us "Christian" which, at bottom, have nothing to do with Christianity and are generally just yardsticks for our pride (see list, it's still humbling for me to read it).

I think many churches and Christians are getting better, though, at recognizing that it is not adherence to a set of rules that makes us Christians, but a relationship with God.  The most important rule doesn't even appear on our list: and that is to love God.  I am getting better at understanding that this one rule is more important than anything on my list, and that I often fail to love God because I am too concerned with my list.  It is a process, but I am getting better.

But what about the second-greatest commandment?  Honestly, it's not only not on the list, but many of the list items contradict it.  So often we are focused on getting minutia of doctrine, belief, and respectability right that we forget about others.  Worse, we often decide that nailing these things is so over-ridingly important that people who fail (or are not quite as good as we are) are unworthy of our love or sympathy.  But if we're honest, the things on the list are all pretty stupid.  One person lambastes another because he doesn't have the exact same understanding of predestination--even though the exact points they disagree on aren't even in Scripture, it apparently matters much more to God than what God did put in Scripture.  One churchgoer snubs his neighbor because his haircut is too messy--since God looks on the outward appearance, apparently (or is it the other way around? 1 Samuel 16:7).  Two Christians tear each other up for using the "wrong" translation of the Bible--because apparently reading exactly the right English words is much more important than obeying them yourself.  One member of a church refuses even to acknowledge another, let alone work out a past conflict, but is highly praised because of her involvement in church activities--which are obviously more important than brotherly love, seeing as how the activities aren't even mentioned in the Bible but brotherly love is mandated at practically every page.  Do we really think this is how it's supposed to be?  Honestly, sometimes we would fit in so much better with the Pharisees whom Christ decried than with the penitent sinners with whom he spent his time.

The things on our list are generally extremely petty, and usually they aren't even remotely based on the Bible.  The list the Bible gives is shorter and much more pointed: love God with all you are, and love each other.  Particular emphasis is placed on this last commandment throughout the New Testament.  It is the only command Christ gives his disciples the night he is betrayed--so important to him, in fact, that he repeats it three times in his last address before the Cross (John 13:34; 15:12 & 17).  He goes on to say that it is this commandment and no other that will distinguish the true disciples of Christ to the world (John 13:35).  No other commandment gets such a mention.  Christ does not tell us that people will know we're really his because we dress in a certain style, understand theology in a certain way, use the right translation, attend the right church, or participate in the right outreach activities: what will distinguish us is our love for each other.

So I have to ask, are we really distinguishable at all?

Moving on, Paul says that if you follow this commandment, no other is necessary because you have fullfilled the law (Romans 13:8).  That takes a step further from saying love one another should be the first item that on the list and says that, actually it should be the list!  Elsewhere he says our love for each other is something taught to us by God (1 Thessalonians 4:9).  I remember many times praying that God would teach me to understand this or that doctrine, but it appears what I should have been praying was that He would teach me how to love.  Peter says our love is an outworking of the purifying of our souls (1 Peter 1:22).

So if we do not love one another, how can we hold ourselves to have purified souls regarding the other commandments?  If we have failed in love, we have failed entirely!

John, in his first epistle, spends most of his time rehashing this commandment.  He has a lot to say.  He tells us love is a commandment both new and old, a mystery revealed and a message heard from the very beginning.  He tells us that if we love one another, we know God and are born of Him, that He dwells in us and His love is perfected in us, and that we can therefore have confidence before the Judgement Seat of God...but he does not stop there.  He more ominously tells us that if we do not love each other, we do not know God (1 John 4:8), and that anyone who claims to love God while he does not love his brother is actually a liar and cannot actually know God at all (1 John 4:8).

This really gives me pause.  So many times I've heard non-Christians classify Christians as hateful people, and too often they are right: we put our petty doctrinal points, traditions, and "good" works ahead of actually having the love Christ commanded.  In doing so, we prove that we are not Christians, and that we do not know God.  This is bad enough.  Worse is when we praise other "Christians" for keeping the minutia of our man-made laws while they neglect this all-important commandment, instead of calling them out on it.

May Christ teach us to love, so that we may know Him and actually bear His image, rather than defaming it!

"The Way I Loved You"

Written on my birthday:



This is the song I'm listening to right now, one of the songs I listened to earlier today.  My collection of Taylor Swift CDs and my walkman (they are not ancient: I just got mine in January) have gotten me through many a shift when I should technically be unconscious due to only having had four hours of sleep (stupid night-owl tendencies).  Last night I had more sleep, but it was the end of an 8-day workweek where I've been covering for my partner, so I decided to take my walkman along.

If you're familiar with some of my previous posts, you know that when I listen to many love songs, I attach more significance to them than the artists generally intend.  Since I see, from the Bible, that the relationship between Christ and the Church--God and me--is to be a Great Romance, I sometimes listen to love songs as applying to the love between God and me.  "State of Grace", for instance, has become my favorite song because I listen to it as telling how God surprises me and meets me in the middle of my hectic "touch and go" life and how, while my relationship with Him is far from perfect (I mean, I'm in it, and I'm not perfect) it is in "a state of grace" and constitutes a "worthwhile fight."  When I listened to "The Way I Loved You" today, I had the same frame of mind, taking the song as being about God and me, though knowing Taylor Swift intended it to be about her and some guy.  It was not the first time I did it with this song, but it had a particular impact today.

The song is from the point of view of a girl who is comparing her current boyfriend to her ex, to whom she sings.  The first two verses describe how perfect her new boyfriend is.  He says and does all the right things and all of her single friends are jealous, he gets along with her family...he's a nice, charming, endearing man--but she doesn't feel anything for him, and he can't even tell.  In the choruses and in the end, the girl describes the rocky-but-heartfelt relationship she had with her ex.  She concludes that even though their relationship was troubled it was "a rollercoaster-kind of rush/ and I never knew I could feel that much" and she wants him back despite the turbulent emotions because "that's the way I loved you!"

Like I said, I've applied this song to my walk with Christ before.  To me, it was about the contrast between a relationship that outwardly looked fine but had no heart and one that might appear chaotic, but was right on track because it was from the heart.  Honestly, this has been a struggle for me.  I associate being a "good Christian" with doing so many outward things: faithful Bible reading, prayer lists a mile long, general respectable behavior, church attendance, etc...you get the idea.  While all of these things can be good, I wind up doing them mechanically.  While I count chapters read recently to rate my performance, my heart grows cold.  If I do well enough in my performance, I look like I have an excellent Christian life--like everything's smooth sailing between me and God, but I don't feel "anything at all."  But if I do live from my heart, if I do let my faith affect my heart, it is no longer a stable, neat-looking thing.  My emotions are, surprisingly, not always positive and my heart can be a troubled place.  If I let my relationship with God in there, it can get rocked.  I can wind up "screaming and fighting" with God over all the situations I get into, over all the "heart-surgeries" he performs.  It isn't safe, but it's worth it.  There are some golden moments, and the relationship is very real.  Outward things may make me look like I've got it all together, but if I'm going to really love God, it has to be at the heart--even if it's turbulent and unpredictable that's the way I love Him.

I listened to the song today at noon and, as it ended, God offered me a choice.  He wanted to know which I wanted to live, a life that outwardly looks good, but where I feel nothing, or a I-never-knew-I-could-feel-that-much life that's outwardly messy, but lived from a full heart.  I knew that Christ did not come and die for me to look presentable on the outside.  He died to give me life on the inside.  He came so that I might have not just life, but abundant life (John 10:10)!  I knew what the right decision was and, despite the drama and my reservations, I knew that "screaming and fighting and kissin' in the rain" was the way I loved God.  So I prayed for a fully-felt life, lived from the heart.

At 2pm, a good friend of mine began texting me to say that, because of the various things that were going wrong in his life, he did not want to live any longer.  I became very anxious and wound up calling the police who took him in to get help at a local hospital.  Later he called me, and guessing I was the one who informed the police, thanked me and assured me he was unharmed.  We talked for a couple of hours during the night until he went to see the psychiatrist and was released.  He's now planning on moving to another state, where his work and housing situations, at least, stand to improve.

So, it did not take long at all for a fully-felt life to come.  Involving myself in my friend's troubles meant exposing myself to the disappointment and confusion, and to admitting my own dismay at not knowing how to "fix" the problems that were devastating him.  Calling the police meant taking the risk of embarrassing him and losing the friendship.  People who've heard about this happening on my birthday have assumed it ruined it.  But it didn't.  It was something I fully felt and in the end I had the great privileged of, in some small way, giving life to my friend...as Christ has given me life.  It made me love Him more and realize more how much I am loved.  It may have been a turbulent day with God's ironic sense of timing...but that's the way I love Him.

My Portion: Psalm 17:14-15

I was trying to find a portion of scripture the speaker quoted this Sunday morning.  I know it's in the Psalms somewhere, but I'm pretty sure I remembered the wrong psalm.  The one I wound up looking at was Psalm 17, which doesn't contain the quote I remember.  It's a psalm of David, praying for God to protect him, in his uprightness, from wicked men who conspire against him.  The part that struck me though, was the last two verses:

Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword, from men by your hand, O Lord, from men of the world whose portion is in this life.  You fill their womb with treasure; they are satisfied with children, and they leave their abundance to their infants.  As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

Psalm 17:13b-15 (ESV)

It presents a picture of two different end goals.  God seems to grant both of them.  For the "wicked,"  their portion, their reward, is in this life.  Wealth, and children to pass it on to, is their legacy.  That is what they strive for.  That is their reward.  But David looks forward to something different.  For him, the reward is to see God's face in righteousness rather than in judgment, to be satisfied waking up and seeing him.

For me, it's an ideal that speaks directly to the heart of the Great Romance.  I want to remind myself of it and make it mine.  Lately, I've found I've been living, day to day, with a desire for seeing God more that day, like a junky living for the next spiritual high.  But life isn't supposed to all be spiritual highs.  I have to have a greater purpose for my days.  I have to have a better portion to satisfy me.  May I live my days as David did, looking to the reward of someday waking up and seeing God's face smiling down on me.

Testing Job: a Question of Love

And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"
Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason?  Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side?  You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.  But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

-Job 1:8-11 

Thus opens the book of Job, a fairly controversial book of the Bible in the eyes of many believers.  Job was an extraordinarily faithful and righteous man who was also extraordinarily blessed and wealthy.  He lived as a virtual poster-boy for the "prosperity gospel" (in a nutshell: have faith in God and He will bless you materially) until one day when we are told the conversation above took place between Satan and God.  Immediately following it, Job loses everything.  Literally.  His family, his possessions, his wealth, his status, are all wiped out at a stroke in a single day.  God never offers an explanation of any kind to Job.  Job has done nothing wrong: he argues for the rest of the book that he has done nothing wrong and God's introduction of him in chapter one shows that he's right in that assertion.  Still, God has allowed him to lose everything he has, and later allows him to be struck by a crippling and humiliating disease.  Satan predicts that Job will curse God.  A lot of people in less dire situations do.  But Job says instead, "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21).

What the testing of Job reveals about him is that his devotion is really to God Himself, and not to the things God has blessed him with.  When those things are lost, he remains faithful.  God can give to him, and take from him, and he will still bless His name!

But what about us?  This Sunday, our chaplain pointed out that many approach the promises of Matthew 7:7-11 as a magic formula to get whatever they want out of God.  "We treat Him like a vending machine," he said.  "We only go to Him when we want something out of Him, and if we can't get what we want when we want it, we think He's broken and worthless."  But God, he pointed out, is a Person who wants a relationship with us.  "How would your spouse feel if you only ever talked to them when you wanted something?  How would it effect your relationship if you got mad at them every time they didn't give you whatever you wanted immediately?"  Indeed, the Bible ties so many of its promises of answered prayers to exhortations that we obey God's commands (and also states warnings that our prayers will not be answered if we disobey).  Christ, and later John, restate these commandments in their most basic and vital form several times for our convenience: love God, love each other.  But when we only talk to God when we want Him to give us stuff, what do we really love: God, or the stuff?  When we get angry with God when He doesn't give us what we want now, or at all, then who do we really love: God, or the things we asked Him to give us?  Is our love of God an end in itself, or a sham designed to wrap Him around our little fingers and trick Him into giving us all the cool material blessings we really crave?  If our love of God is thus, it is not really love of Him at all, but love of ourselves: we only love Him to the extent that it gets us whatever we want at the time.

Already, a lot of us fail the test of Job.  I know there are plenty of times when I do.  There are plenty of times when I, by my peeved attitude toward God when He unsettles my life, reveal that a part of me loves an ordered (by me), controlled (also by me), and peaceful (by my standards) life more than it loves a God who is so wonderfully disruptive, bringing in His own order, putting things in His own control, and inviting me into His peace and life.  Even if we can accept loss or unanswered prayers from God, we so often demand an explanation from Him.  Job did this later as well, but when God answered him out of the whirlwind, he was forcefully reminded of Who it was he was talking to.  God is not a peer we can criticize.  Our understanding is not on a level with His, so that we could dissect His reasoning or even (many times) comprehend it.  When we think we will make Him explain Himself to us, we are like the pot demanding of the potter "Why did you make me like this?" (Romans 9:20)  What does a pot know anyway?  How would one explain the purpose of firing to clay?

But jumping to Romans 9 brings us to other questions and other tests.  Material blessings, both tangible (a car) and intangible (a pleasant drive) are gifts of God that surely should not eclipse our affections for the Giver.  But what about spiritual blessings?  Romans 9 isn't talking about questioning God in material matters. It's about questioning God in matters of predestination.  Speaking of the lost spiritual state of his fellow Jews, Paul writes, "So then it does not depend on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy....So then, He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills." (Romans 9:16 & 18).  It is in this context that finding fault with God is said to be like a lump of clay finding fault with a potter, for making it a chamber pot instead of a vase.  A poster on Facebook recently expressed a similar attitude, stating explicitly, not that he would not love God if God had not chosen to save him (which his unregenerate heart would not be capable of doing), but that God would be unworthy of his love and worship if he hadn't chosen to save him.  When other Christians did not express similar sentiments on the thread, he was incredulous.  When it boiled down to it, it seemed that he loved the spiritual blessings God had given him more than God.

Do we do the same?  Perhaps thinking of ourselves not being saved is a bit extreme, but there are more subtle forms.  If we don't get a spiritual high off of reading, prayer, or church attendance, do we get upset?  Do we do these things because we love God in doing so, or do we love them more than the one they worship?  If Jesus walked into our worship and praise service and disrupted it by healing a crippled kid in the third row, causing the band to stop and stare and the music to fall silent, what would our reaction be?  Would we cheer because it was Jesus--the one we're actually supposedly there for--, or ask Him to leave because He's interrupting the spiritual experience we actually came to achieve?  And what about the extremes of salvation itself?  If we agree that God chooses those on whom He has grace and does not choose everyone (as the Bible seems to indicate), then what if He had not chosen us?  Would we say He'd be at fault, if that were the case?  Would we find Him an unworthy God, objectively?  If we do, then we believe in our own inherent worth, and any worthiness we find in God is directly related to how much He recognizes and rewards our inherent virtue with spiritual and material blessings.  This also is love of self, worship of self, rather than love of God.

But Job, despite his questioning all through the middle of the book, demonstrated a different love, one that proved Satan wrong.  He blessed God even when God took away everything he had--proving that he loved God more than he loved the things God had given him.  Even when God allowed him to be struck with horrible disease, he did not curse Him.  His estimation of God's worth did not rest on how well God recognized his own inherent worth, but instead he recognized God Himself as being inherently worthy of His love, trust, and praise--even if God killed him.

In the end, the test of Job is less about enduring suffering than it is about loving God over the blessings He gives.  We don't have to lose everything to undergo this test.  We go through it every time we pray (do we just want blessings, or the God who blesses?), we undergo it with every disappointment (do we get angry at God for not doing what we want, or do we trust Him to have a plan?), we face it at the end of every worship service (are we miffed that we didn't get the good feelings we came after, or content that we got to express our love for our God?), and we see it every time we think on the fate of ourselves vs unbelievers (do we pat ourselves on the back for our own virtue, or humbly say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?).  What do we really love?

Reliance

Well, as you may have heard, I recently finished a my first draft of a fantasy novel.  I started it in 2008, by my best estimate, worked on it through college and the first year of my post-college life, and now, five years later, I have the complete manuscript.  I'm still going to edit it after letting it sit a while and getting some feedback, but now that it's finished I feel like I've cleared the biggest hurdle.  More than that, I got a call last night from my first satisfied reader, who loved the book and--as I told him--had a significant role in shaping it with his feedback.  I'm very grateful to him and very happy that the book is finished.

But I admit there was another reason I was so happy to finish the book.  Coming back up here to the YMCA at Snow Mountain Ranch brought back a lot of good memories for me.  In 2010 I came up here with the Navigators (a Christian college ministry) for the summer.  I vividly remember tramping and biking around the trails, meeting God in the woods and talking to Him.  This was the place where I wrote my first prayer journals.  This is the place where conversing with God became natural.  This is the place where I fell in love, both deepening my love for God and realizing His love for me.  I admit that returning here was not my first choice, but one thing I was looking forward to was new encounters with God, further deepening our relationship in the place that was so important to us three summers back.  To put it simply, I wanted a God-date: a time I could be alone with Him for a while and get to know Him better.  I prayed about this desire, and He answered, Finish your book, and then we can have our date.

Well, Friday I finished the book.  Over the weekend I had two 3AM shifts and I spent Monday recovering and unwinding.  Today was my last day off.  God left the choice of the date up to me.  I thought about it and realized that all the best God-dates I'd had before were adventures, so I asked for one of those.  Today, the adventure came, though I'm not sure it was exactly what I thought it would be.  I found, at about 3 o'clock that I needed some more money to finish my laundry.  I also needed a new swimsuit (the old one doesn't fit--this is what I get for trying to wear things from high school).  I knew of only one place where I might get both: Winter Park.  I remembered taking a day to ride to Winter Park and back once in 2010, so I knew it was possible.  This is your date, God said, so I took my bike and set out.

The first thing that struck me was that whenever anyone sets out on an adventure, they have to count on God to bring them back from it.  Really, every single day we live at the risk of dying.  You could have a heart attack while you read this.  You could develop cancer as you sit comfortably in your home.  There is, ultimately, nothing you can do about this: only God is keeping these things and a myriad of others from killing you at any given time.  The thing is, when we're surrounded by our familiar homes, friends, and work, the risks and the need to rely on God to sustain us doesn't occur to us.  But out on a mountain trail, barreling down a hill at what felt like thirty miles per hour, swerving to follow the trail, the possibility of death or disaster was something I couldn't ignore.  At any moment, I could hit a hidden rock and go flying into a tree, startle a sunning snake and get bitten, take a turn to fast and go careening of the trail...the only thing between me and disaster was God.  There on the trail, my faith was real, immediate.  "My God will sustain me," I told myself.

It was a pleasant enough ride to Winter Park.  I completed my errands and started back.  Up through Tabernash (about the halfway point).  Then, I began to have trouble with hills that shouldn't be giving me that much of a challenge.  I realized I had bit off more than I could chew by taking on a ride I could only remember being arduous in 2010 (after I'd been riding frequently at this elevation, and almost daily for two years in Fort Collins).  I did not realize it at the time, but what I'd taken on was a roughly thirty mile round trip at 8,000 feet, with about a 300 ft elevation gain on either end, and I hadn't been on my bike in over a year.  To get back after dark, I had to complete the entire ride in less than five hours.  It quickly became apparent that I was not going to make it.  Even normal riding in a low gear caused by legs to ache.  Just one stroke on a hill was agony.  I would have to walk up the hills (and there were lots of them), and when I went downhill I would have the sun in my eyes, blinding me to potentially dangerous turns.  I couldn't do it.

But God urged me to finish the trail.  I remembered the verse from Isaiah 40: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."  I prayed for strength again and again on that trail.  As walking uphill became difficult, I told myself, "The God who makes mountain goats and leads them through the wilderness will get me up this hill."

There were plenty of times when I was exhausted and ready to give up, but I made it back in one piece just as the sun was going down.  I exhausted my own strength, pushed myself beyond my endurance, but God endured and I got through by relying on Him.

Now, in my room, I think back to my sister's graduation.  One of the valedictorians gave a speech there congratulating the graduates on all the hard work they'd done to get this far and emphasizing that it was because of their work that they were seated there that day to receive their degrees.  Reliance on self was the big theme I remember from that speech.  It's also a huge theme in our culture.  Books are filled with it.  Even beyond the realm of self-help books that teach you to "look inside" for strength to rely on, there are fiction and fantasy books where the hero manages to save the day by tapping some hidden reserve of his own powers.  But I had no power of my own to finish that ride.  Lately I've been reading a book called Dangerous Faith which is a collection of non-fiction stories of Christians in harrowing circumstances: a man battling cancer and hunting one of the most dangerous animals in Africa (cape buffalo actually, large herbivores are surprisingly testy and the cape buffalo gores over 200 people a year), a man losing his eye and nearly his life on a Himalayan peak, a group of missionaries surviving an airplane crash in the frigid Bering Sea (where no crash victims had every been rescued alive before), a missionary to an isolated tribe in the jungle being captured and tortured by Colombian rebels, a woman surviving the 9/11 attack on the Pentegon and the man who rescued her...the list goes on.  What all of these situations have in common is that these people realized, at a desperate moment, that they did not have the power to make it out of the situation themselves.  They had to rely on God.

In the end, who is it safer to rely on: ourselves with our flaws and frailties, or a tireless God who made and knows everything?  For me, it is God, and my God will sustain me through whatever adventures lie ahead.

Regrets and Relationships

Lately, I've been receiving quite a few apologies from a couple of different people I haven't heard from in a while.  Those of you who know my life know who I'm talking about.  Those of you who don't...well, you don't really need to know who I'm talking about.  All you need to know is that these are two people I care about, whom I've known for a while, and whom I haven't heard from in a long time mostly due to a relationship meltdown that occurred a year ago between the three of us, particularly between myself and one of my friends.

There's plenty of blame to go around for what happened a year ago, and some of it isn't even localized to the three of us (and that, of course, doesn't even consider that there might be a spiritual dimension to what caused the conflict to fall apart).  Nobody walked away from that disaster with his, her, or their halo intact.  However, at the time, I was led to believe that all of that blame was mine to bear and that the other parties were innocent victims of my heinous acts.  That turned out to be totally false and one particular party that would have gotten away scot-free is probably the majority at fault, it turns out, since it has produced a pattern of disasters just like the one I and my two friends experienced--a documented pattern stretching back for decades (though, at this time, said party seems to be trying to escape responsibility in this case by shifting inordinate amounts of blame to my two friends--in my opinion).  However, these two people did do wrong and, in all fairness, they did owe me an apology.  It's been over a year and in one case I've had no contact at all from my friend, so I'd given up hope on getting that apology.  This weekend, I received it and I have to say that overall that's a relief.

However, that wasn't my initial reaction to seeing my friend's name pop up in my inbox for the first time in over a year with the subject line "Apology" next to it.  My first reaction was just sorrow and fear.  My first words were, "I don't need your apology."  It's true.  I don't, not for my own sake.  I forgave this person a long time ago: I had to in order to move on with my own life.  You don't need someone to apologize in order to forgive them: Jesus proved that when He prayed from the cross, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34).  Neither the Romans nor the Jews who crucified Him ever apologized, and certainly no one apologized to Him at the time of His crucifixion--yet He forgave.

Like I said, I did not need an apology from this person, but I wanted it.  I did not need to hear them say they'd done something wrong (I figured that part out all by myself, thank you kindly), but I did want them to say that.  Why then was I so upset to see an apology email from them?  Wasn't this what I'd been fighting for through hierarchies of red tape literally for months?  At first I thought my reaction was pure irrationality and tried to shove it aside.  Next I thought it was just fear--this person had hurt me deeply in the past and it's only natural I would fear they would hurt me again.  But something about these rang hallow and I could not shove past my reluctance to open that email, my distaste for even having it.

I prayed about it and asked for prayer, and that was when it occurred to me.  I wasn't upset because this person was apologizing to me or upset by the fact that they finally regretted some of their actions--I was upset because that's all I thought the email represented, and that wasn't what I wanted from them at all.  At bottom, I didn't really care about the apology, or their regret--having them admit to themselves and God that what they'd done was wrong was a secondary objective at best.  I hadn't fought through all this because I wanted them to feel guilty.  I'd wanted to be reunited with them.  I'd wanted a chance to pick up the pieces of a broken relationship with them.  I'd wanted to be reconciled with them once more.  My interest didn't lie in their apologies or regrets, it lay in a relationship with them, in fellowship, peace, love, and unity.  Why the email upset me so was because I at first thought it would offer only an apology, only regrets, and then withhold what I was really after: a way to move on and pick back up a lost bit of sweet Christian fellowship.

As good as it was to discover that my own intentions in pursuing this issue were pure and loving rather than simply an attempt to goad a couple good people into a guilt-trip, I found something far, far better.  As I prayed about that email, God reminded me of all the times I would apologize to Him over and over about a particular sin, thought, or action--about how I would brood for hours or sometimes days over regretting what I'd done.  I'm not interested in your regrets either, He said.  I'm interested in a relationship.  The Bible says it's true.  He pleads with His people in Isaiah 1:18, yearning for them to come to Him and have fellowship with Him, offering to cleanse them so that their scarlet sins are white as wool.  He separates our sin from us as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103:12).  He remembers them no more (Jeremiah 31:34).  In my own life, He has repeatedly rebuked me for dwelling on past sin.  He does not do this for some mysterious capricious reason: He does it because He loves us.  Our sin has separated us from Him, and all He wants is for us to put it away and return to Him so that we may know Him.  He does not want to leave this process half-done, but on the other hand He does not let it take one second longer than necessary--for He longs to be with us!  How great is our Savior!  How great is His love!

The Codependent God

Two men showed up at my door the other day.  They greeted me cheerfully and read a passage from one of the Psalms to me "as encouragement."  It was encouraging, despite being read from an English translation that obviously butchered the poetry of the original Hebrew text.  Then, they handed me a colorfully-printed pamphlet with the title: Does God Really Care About Us?  I excused myself, and they left.

The men were "Jehovah's Witnesses" of course.  It's not the first time they've come to my door.  They belong to a cult group which uses its own "translation" of scripture (hence, the butchered poetry) and wholesale distortion and manipulation of text in order to establish their own weird doctrines: among them the idea that all government is of Satan, that Jesus was an angel, that the Holy Spirit is a force (not a person), that God's only proper name is Jehovah, and that only through hard work and devotion to their cult can one escape annihilation in the coming apocalypse...after which, you may work even harder and more devotedly for the cult with the hope of rebuilding the devastated Earth into a parklike paradise which (if you are a good little JW) you may some day get to enjoy.  Here is a more complete listing of their beliefs, if you'd like to check up more on them.  There's also an index page that has links to lots of useful articles.

The so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" are nothing new to me.  I was approached by a couple of them up at college.  I felt led to try to witness to them, yet I was at first afraid of what might happen if I tried.  Would I be sucked in by their false teaching?  Did their colorful pamphlets, grotesquely mistranslated scriptures, and fifth-grade level reading material really conceal an airtight case against everything I believed?  I needn't have worried.  All the colorful pamphlets and fifth-grade level text conceal is faulty logic and painfully-obvious cherry-picking of verses and parts of verses that say only what the writer's want them to say.  For example, they will frequently quote John 5:28-29 to prove their belief in physical resurrection for everyone, saying, "all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out".  They will deliberately leave off the last part of the sentence: "those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment."  Jehovah's Witnesses never quote that part, because they don't believe in any punishment from God except complete, instant, painless non-existence--thus a "resurrection of judgment" is an oxymoron to them, especially when paired up with eternal life.  Small wonder that the Watchtower Society (the name of the JW organization) teaches its members that they will fall into apostasy if they study the Bible without Watchtower "guidance" as to its meaning.  On a personal level, their logic is so twisted that two of them were able to look at Matthew 10:28 ("do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.") and, with it staring them in the face in black-and-white, claim that the soul was a breath or life-force which could under no circumstances survive the killing of the body by anyone or anything...and that this was what the Bible really taught.

Needless to say, I got nowhere with them.  But in excusing myself from these fellows, I had agreed to read their pamphlet.  Since I had nothing else to do that day during my breaks, I did so.  I was rewarded with the knowledge that their god had two very serious flaws.  First of all, their god has no grasp of logic.  His plan for the world for the past six thousand years boils down to a non sequitor fallacy.  According to the pamphlet, when Adam and Eve rebelled against god in the Garden of Eden, they raised a question: "Could humans do better if not ruled by God?"  In answer, god "has allowed man a free rein clear down to our day to show beyond any doubt whether human rule independent of him can succeed."  The goal was to show that only direct rule by god could be successful and to that end he wanted "every conceivable type of government" tried out.  He wanted to prove that A (human independence) leads to B (ruin).  He then allowed Satan to come in and take total control over all human governments and enslave mankind.  Ruin resulted: as the pamphlet says, "life today reflects the ugly rulership of 'the god of this world,' Satan."  Then god patted himself on the back for proving his point, even though what he'd actually shown was that C (spiritual dictatorship under Satan) leads to B (ruin) instead.  Since god is apparently incapable of recognizing the basic error of stating, "C leads to B, therefore A leads to B too," he will regard the matter as closed now and proceed with the apocalypse...at least, so the Watchtower Society wants us to think.  The true God of the universe would never be duped into such a basic logical error, nor baited into proving His own right to sovereign rule: he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone.

The second thing I noticed about the Watchtower god was that he was totally obsessed with the happiness of humans.  I mean totally.  It was like there was no other purpose to his existence, let alone any other reason for his creation of the universe and everything in it.  According to the pamphlet, god's "purpose was to establish an earthly paradise free from suffering".  Everything was created for human enjoyment: flowers, food, forests, mountains, lakes, sunsets, and animals.  Human design was also optimized for human happiness.  As the pamphlet says, god gave us free will because: "he knew the way our minds and emotions would work, he knew that we would be happiest with free will."  Of course, there are god's laws, but you see those aren't really limiting because the only reason god made those laws regulate free will "for the common good" like "traffic laws."  Also, god made sure "that we were designed to be happiest when in subjection to God's laws."  Yes, god has allowed horrific suffering and sorrow to befall mankind during his (completely illogical) six-millennia test, but he has a long-term plan which will "benefit all creatures" and in the paradise-like new world god "will compensate us for the suffering we may have endured in this world" by "showering down blessings that will far more than make up for any hurts that we receive in our past."

There is not one mention of god having a bit of self-interest.  Apparently, he has none.  Nor is there mention of a sense of justice: no, in fact "good" seems to have been redefined as "what makes man happy" and "evil" is merely "what makes man unhappy."  The only driving force in this god's character is to make humankind happy: it is the chief end of all his plans, all his creations, all his commands, and everything he does.  Since codependency is defined as being obsessively concerned with fulfilling the needs and desires of others, to the point of ignoring one's own needs and desires completely (or worse, not realizing you have any), this god is by definition codependent.

The appeal of the codependent god is easy to recognize.  A god whose only concern is your own personal happiness is not so much a god as a cosmic vending machine: a genie with an infinite number of wishes.  He would never really hurt you, even if you had it coming, because his sole reason for existence is to please you.  He is not really, at bottom, a god that you worship, but a god who worships you.  But in the end, the codependent god breaks down.  The codependent god has no definition of evil and good except your own fickle desires, so he cannot guide you.  Worse, the codependent god needs you to need him.  If your own good turned out to be something other than him, he would do everything in his power to keep you from realizing this and keep you dependent upon him.  But the worst of it is that the codependent god has no reason for existence apart from you.  As humans, we instinctively look to God for deeper meaning in ourselves and the universe around us.  We look to Him to answer the questions of why we exist, why we are the way we are, and why things happen to us as they do.  The codependent god has no answers for these questions.  His own existence and nature are factors contingent on us and whatever our happiness should require.  He bounces the questions back to us, unanswered.  Because the codependent god exists only for our benefit, it is up to us to decide why both we and he exist, why we (and he) are as we are, and why things happen as they do (for all things are ultimately a product of our own actions or of god's acting on behalf of our own desires).

The true God of the Bible is not codependent, though.  He loves us, certainly.  He is capable of great acts of self-sacrifice in that love, but He never loses sight of His own desires, purposes, and plans.  Truly, "God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8), but Jesus endured the cross "for the joy set before Him."  Even there, He had not lost sight of His own interests.  He occasionally reminds us that He is ultimately acting in His own interests.  "For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it," He says in Isaiah 48:11, speaking of His mercy on Israel.   He further did not create the world for solely our enjoyment, but rather all things were created "for Him" (Colossians 1:16).

Since God loves us, His interests are bound up with ours, but they are not lost and absorbed.  God still creates solely for His own pleasure.  God still upholds moral absolutes of right or wrong (derived from His own character) and guides us in them, even when we think discarding morality would be more convenient.  God does not look to us as a source of meaning, He is His own reason for existence: "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14).  Since all other things came into being by His creative power and He in His sovereignty does whatever He pleases, He gives implicit meaning to all Creation and all of history--whether we understand it or not, it pleased the Lord that it should be so.  It pleased the Lord that we should be so.  This, I think, is one of the most important points.  God doesn't need us, not at all.  If He had never created us or the world or anything His life would yet be complete.

At first, this may seem cruel and cold, to say that God has no need at all for us.  But if you think about it, it's much better than the codependent god.  The codependent god needs us to give himself a reason to exist, to fulfill himself.  When the codependent god creates humanity and associates himself with it, there is no deeper meaning to it, nor does it give us any deeper meaning.  It is not a choice, it is the working out of the codependent god's own nature.  He can no more refuse to create humanity than the sun can refuse to shine.  He has no more power to stop seeking humanity's happiness than water has the power to cease being wet.  But the God of the Bible is not so compelled.  He has no compulsion to create humanity, to love them, or to save them.  These things are not necessary parts of His character and nature: they are choices.  God didn't need to create us, but He chose to.  God was not compelled to love us, but He decided to.  God was not forced to save us, but He wanted to.  This gives meaning.  This allows God's love for us to be real.  After all, a love that is given under compulsion is not really love at all.  But God's love is given freely, as He is Himself free either to give or to withhold it.  The codependent god can never give true love, for he is never truly free.

I feel sorry for the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Like in a previous post, their god is a god they must carry.  Their god is a god who is never personally involved or intimate (how can he be?  There's nothing to him but a bottomless hunger to please humans).  Their god is a god for whom they must do everything, bearing the burden not only for their own lives and happiness, but also for his.  They must work to determine not only their own identity and worth, but also must realize that their work determines his own identity and worth (not that they miscommunicate who he is, but because he is so codependent that his worth and identity are dependent upon them--in other words, they make god by their own needs and desires, worth and identity...and better be sure not to make him wrong).  But the God of the Bible does all things for Himself, and in His grace provides for us as well.  He chooses to love us and to give us every good thing, including an identity and worth that are derived from His own immutable, perfect nature and identity.  The Jehovah's Witnesses will no doubt claim that they know a lot about God.  Their distortion of John 17:3 reads, "This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ", while in truth the scriptures say that everlasting life is to know God, not know about Him.  I wish they knew the true God, Who could lift the burden of the codependent god from their shoulders.

Something's Different...

I've noticed in the last month or so that there's something different in my relationship with God.  If you've read a few of my "Great Romance" labeled posts, especially the early ones, you know what I'm talking about.  The change, in any case, was difficult for me to pin down at first.  Something was different, better, but we still had the same struggles and challenges...still do, in fact.  I would get busy and start trying to overcome obstacles in my life solo, and He would have to break through my walls and get my attention.  He would ask me to do something, and I would object because of some arbitrary standard or fear.  We'd have our tiffs.  We also had our moments of nearness and affection.  All of this was familiar from months and even years ago, though there were always new surprises, new twists and discoveries.  Nothing was in a rut, really, but the pattern of our relationship remained unchanged.  But something else had changed.

It took me a while to figure out that what had changed was my attitude.  It really struck me when I revisited a song I'd used in one of my earlier posts, "Arms"  by Christina Perri.  The song is about a woman who questions her lover's affections and their relationship, thinking that she isn't good enough for him.  She throws up walls against him and tries to break away from him, to spare him, but he always comes for her, holding her and refusing to let her go.  She always seems surprised by this, by the fact that he loves her even though she thinks life would be easier for him if he didn't.  When I wrote that post, I could sing that song with prefect empathy for the woman: that was how I felt about my relationship with God.  I felt like I didn't deserve Him, like it would be so much easier on Him if He were to just give up on me...and I was always surprised when He didn't.  But the other day when I sang the same song, I no longer felt as the woman did.  I might still think that it would be easier on God if He didn't love me so--sometimes--, but I was no longer surprised that He did, no longer ready to insist that He stop for His own good.  I knew it was pointless.  I knew that He loved me in spite of all the pain I caused Him, and that He had no intention of letting me go.

That in and of itself is a change.  I have believed from my childhood in eternal security: the Once-Saved-Always-Saved position.  From the age of six, at the latest, I'd stopped any serious questioning of whether or not I'd actually been saved the night I accepted Christ.  I believed I was going to heaven.  I believed Jesus loved me.  From halfway through my college career, I knew that God wanted a real relationship with me that included talking with me, sharing my frustrations and joys, and sharing affection and intimacy.  This last had been totally unexpected to me (I'd always thought before that the whole "relationship with God" thing was mostly just a catch-phrase to jazz up rote prayers and regular church attendance--having a relationship with God that looked and behaved more like a romantic pursuit than anything else seemed absurd; when I first realized that description fit my interaction with God more accurately, I feared for my sanity).  But knowing all these things and believing them is different from understanding them in your heart.  Head-knowledge doesn't give confidence, but heart-knowledge does.

That described a lot of the change in my relationship.  I wasn't afraid any more.  I didn't think that God might decide to up and leave at any moment or leave the relationship to stagnate in a quagmire.  I knew He cared too much for that, that He never would, and I drew comfort from that.  There was confidence and boldness, too.  Not only did I know that He'd decided to stick it out through thick and thin with me, I accepted His decision.  I couldn't and can't always see the logic behind it, but I accept that it must be there and that it's His decision to make.  As a result, I am not, like the woman, constantly going about trying to sever the relationship for good.  I know I can't.  I still build walls, but I now build them half expecting them to come down any minute as He comes crashing through.  I object when it happens, but I quickly accept it and move on.

This means more change in my attitude every day.  I'm no longer scandalized by His words of love, I accept them and even flirt back.  I no longer argue that He shouldn't get me gifts, I accept them with gratitude even if I can't quite see why He's giving them to me.  The change has affected the relationship as a whole.  I'd describe it as more settled, more mature.  There are still surprises and drama, but I'm no longer expecting the whole thing to fly apart any minute, or any time soon.  Now, deeper issues can be worked on and deeper intimacy enjoyed.

The oddest part about this change is its timing, but I don't think it's coincidental.  This change, this deepening and stabilizing of our relationship comes at a time when I haven't been in church in literally months, am not attending Christian activities of any kind (both of these due to my schedule), and have been off a daily Bible reading plan for over a year.  All the kinds of things I would have expected to be necessary to deepen my relationship with Christ are totally absent from my life.  The only thing there is Christ, and I think He's bringing a message by allowing my heart to settle in with Him under these precise circumstances: the only thing I need is Christ, everything else may be good, but He alone is sufficient.

Scattered Thoughts

I've been wanting to write another post here for a while.  Now I suppose I'm going to write several all together here and just hope it makes sense.  Even if it doesn't, it will feel good to get it out there.

I've been meaning to finish up my previous post on Psalm 139.  I don't know if I'll finish it, but I did want to add on to it.  The psalmist begins by talking about how God knows him so completely and utterly. God knows when he rises, when he sits, where he goes and when, and even knows what he is going to say before  he says it.

In truth, God goes beyond simply knowing us.  He is not some distant figure in the heavens peering down on us.  He possesses us.  We are His.  From the moment of our birth, and even before, He sees us and makes up plans for our lives.  He surrounds us with His presence day in and day out, even as we sleep.  We cannot escape from Him.  The psalmist goes to great lengths to illustrate this last point.  Beginning at verse seven, the psalmist writes of how he cannot escape God's knowledge and presence even if he tries.  If he goes up into Heaven, God is there; if he descends into Hell, God is there; if he flees at the speed of light itself to the remotest corner of the universe, even there God will be with him.  Even if he cloaks himself in darkness (whether spiritual or physical), God's gaze pierces the darkness: it does not inhibit Him in the least.

Such an omnipresent personal force could be truly terrifying.  It reminds me a bit of the "Creepy Doll" song.

Everywhere the character turns, the creepy doll is there, watching, waiting, and obviously hostile.  But God's presence isn't threatening like that.  It can be threatening, I'll admit: He encroaches on our sense of privacy, our independence, and most of all on our belief that we are the self-sufficient sovereigns over our own lives and worlds.  But He does not encroach on all this because He intends to ruin us.  He encroaches because He intends to rescue us.  All through the Psalm it speaks of God's actions in terms of protection and guidance.  You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me (verse 5).  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me (verses 9-10).  We are drowning in our privacy (read loneliness), our independence (read isolation), in the pressure of trying to be enough for all of our needs all by ourselves.  Christ comes and rescues us from all of that, protects us from ongoing damage and leads us out.

That reminds me of another thing I wanted to mention.  There's this song that's been going through my head a lot the past few weeks--and no, it's not about a creepy doll!  It's one of the new Taylor Swift songs, "State of Grace."  I confess I had to listen to it a few times before I actually had a clue what the song was about.  Once I did, though, I immediately saw how it applied to myself and God, especially right now.

The lyrics for this song are very hard to find online.  So far I haven't found one listing that doesn't foul them up.  Honestly, people, how hard is it to just buy the album at Walmart and open the insert to page 2?  All the lyrics are printed right there, no guesswork.  They're listed here for your convenience.  Copyright Taylor Swift.

I'm walking fast through the traffic lights

Busy streets and busy lives

and all we know

is touch and go

We are alone with our changing minds

We fall in love till it hurts or bleeds or fades in time 

And I never

saw you coming

And I'll never

be the same

You come around and the armor falls

Pierce the room like a cannonball

Now all we know

is don't let go

We are alone, just you and me

Up in your room, and our slates are clean

Just twin fire signs

Four blue eyes 

So you were never a saint

And I loved in shades of wrong

We learn to live with the pain

Mosaic broken hearts

But this love is brave and wild! 

And I never

saw you coming

And I'll never

be the same 

This is a state of grace

This is the worthwhile fight

Love is a ruthless game

unless you play it good and right

These are the hands of fate

You're my Achilles heel

This is the golden age of something good and right and real 

And I never

saw you coming

And I'll never

be the same

And I never

saw you coming

And I'll never

be the same 

This is a state of grace

This is the worthwhile fight

Love is a ruthless game

unless you play it good and right.

Where I work, the environment is very fast paced.  Customers don't stop piling into your line just because you're tired and can barely keep your eyes open, or you had to skip breakfast and your fingers are beginning to tremble from hunger.  Your break is coming, sure, but it's only a few minute respite.  Even if you get off, it's a few hours, maybe a few days, during which you never really seem to recover, and then you're back on the line again.  It can be exhausting, but it's life as the world offers it.  Keep moving, keep producing, keep working, harder, faster, stronger, smarter than the next guy.  You have to get ahead--and stay ahead--of everybody else if you ever want your life to count...and did I mention that the definition of "ahead' is always racing along faster than you could hope to run yourself?

There are respites, of course.  There's a sympathetic chat with a customer, a few words with a friend, a small space of relaxation.  There's something in those moments that touches my parched soul--but then I have to go again, I have to keep busy.  And it seems the end result of being busy is being alone.  I don't have time to really understand and be with people and have them really understand and be with me.  I don't have time to understand myself, to really understand the wounds of my past, my present, to see how I've changed and evaluated it.  I just have to keep moving.  This is the break-neck pace of my private, independent, self-sufficiently sovereign life...and it might literally break my neck!

But like the psalm says, God is inescapable and He comes to guard and to guide.  He always seems to show up when I don't expect Him.  I never see Him coming.  He pierces all my business, all my defenses, all my armor, in the most unexpected ways, and cuts right to my heart.  Though I may be surrounded by bustling customers, I feel as though I am alone with Him, just the two of us.  All the things I think I have to do in order to count aren't there with us.  All the things I'm trying to make up for aren't either.  No, He isn't proper (the prudish way I think of proper) to barge in like this and sweep all of this oh-so-important rubbish aside.  But He's right.  No, I don't deserve it.  I've done worse than loved a few shades of wrong, but my slate is clean.  He went through Calvary to make it so, in order to get me here, alone, with Him.  It's wonderful!

I'm not truly alone, though.  There are still customers bustling.  The pressures of the day are right there, waiting to pounce on me, as is the temptation to battle them all alone in my self-sufficiency.  But God is here to.  I live with the blessing of His presence, the blessings of Heaven itself, while mucking through life on Earth.  It is a fight to keep this in my mind, but it's a worthwhile one and I'm not alone in it.  God has written my life story, and He is my destiny.  When all else fails, He knows my weaknesses and exploits the chinks in my armor of isolation to open me up to Him once more.  Love and life can be a ruthless and pointless game, but it never is with Him.  He plays it good and right, for He is Good and Right!

There are some more scattered thoughts floating around in my brain, but I'll save them.  For now, I've found a good stopping point, and I'll seize it.

God's Best

I read the introduction to an essay on leadership someone linked to this morning, alleging that in it the writer claimed to be a modern-day apostle.  Whether such a claim is made or not or whether or not (if made) it is true ("apostle" does just mean one who is sent, so it might equate to our missionaries--though obviously no one today could claim to be one of the Twelve) I don't yet know.  I haven't read that far, to be honest.  Maybe when I do I'll talk about it and post a link here to the original article.

What I did read in the introduction already had me bothered.  The below quote is just over 200 words, so my time at a publishing house tells me that it falls under fair use:

Israel could be spiritually lazy with a king. Without a king they all had to look up, even in recognizing the prophets or judges (leaders) for their time. With a kingship there is automatic lineage. Automatically the elders [sic] son is next in line to rule, control, and direct. Without the kingship plan each individual could be chosen for leadership. Anyone could be a Gideon found grinding out his grain when the Lord called him for action. Each man had to voluntarily follow into the battles. Under a king you were conscripted. Under the kingship program man was king when God was to be looked on as King alone. God wanted the fuller part. Not only is that more glorifying to Him, but it is more advantageous for all the people. But the people wanted to be more like the heathen around them. How sad, but of course God in His love still did great things in that situation.

We do not need to belabor the point. God still worked with kings in the Old Testament (O.T.), but it was not His best plan.

Israel had many years before they evolved into certain patterns that were not God's best. Like Israel, God's people in the Church Age have moved in similar ways.

--Leadership: Elders and Apostles by Jim McCotter and Dennis Clark 

To start with, there's some historical inaccuracy in this.  First of all, Israel doesn't seem to have lived well with "spiritual laziness" at any point in their history--whether in the book of Judges or the books of Kings, forsaking the Lord tended to end rather badly for them (not that that ever stopped them from doing it).  Second, the eldest son did not "automatically" ascend to the throne after his father.  The Old Testament records numerous disputed successions and even several outright coups.  The son to ascend to the throne was not always the eldest either, as with Solomon's succession (he was actually a fairly late-comer to David's enormous family, though he was the oldest living son of Bathsheba and David).

But laying that aside, there's the bigger issue of God's best.  That one applies to us today.  Here, the writer asserts plainly that the monarchy was "not God's best" for Israel.  It was "not His best plan," though "God in His love still did great things in that situation."  Israel started out in the center of God's A-Plan, it seems, but they decided to scrap it, get themselves a king, and wound up stuck with God's second-best fallback plan for the rest their nation's independent existence.  Poor Israel.

Poor us.  The writer's transition makes it clear he thinks Israel isn't the only one capable of doing this, nor non-Christians.  The elect, "God's people," can, "like Israel," move away from God's best.  We, collectively and as individuals, can miss out on God's plan for our lives and wind up stuck in some muddle of whatever He "in His love" can work in that situation (which, while it might be "great" will not be "God's best").

Think about this for a minute, because if it's true, it's frightening.  God has a plan for your life.  That's clear and Biblical.  "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be" (Psalm 139:16).  But if you screw up, you could wind up not living even one of them.  You could wind up stuck in some sub-prime life, like a homeowner paying an "underwater" mortgage on a home that's no longer worth what they got it for.  God will still love you.  God will still do good--maybe even great--things through you and for you.  But God's A-Plan for your life?  That's gone.  You threw off His plan and now all that is lost and you're stuck with second-best blessings, like Esau coming back to find Jacob stole his firstborn birthright.  Hopefully, there's something tossed in to the end of Plan-B that let's you get back to Plan A again, or you're screwed for life, sucker--and so am I.

I mean, what would it take to throw off God's A-Plan?  Apparently not much.  Israel managed to do it just by organizing a monarchy, like those of their neighbors.  God directed the appointment of the king and all, but God's A-Plan was blown from the moment they decided they needed a king.  Who knows what "God's people" in the "Church Age" have done to screw ourselves over.  What about Adam and Eve?  All they did was take a bite from the wrong tree and--BLAM--there goes God's best for all Creation (you seriously didn't think the Fall was God's Plan-A, did you?).  And since you and I sin in ways greater and lesser than Israel and Eve every single day...yep, we're probably down to the triple Z plan by now.  I know I certainly must be.

If, that is, we can move away from God's best for our lives.

Consider it from God's eternal perspective.  Look back at some of the language in the above paragraphs.  If this is true, if God's best--God's plans--can be derailed by simple decisions from our end, God is in a heap of trouble.  We all sin.  We all make mistakes.  We commit these things by the bucketload, and there are over 7 billion of us on Earth right now, doing nothing but throwing God's plans into utter chaos.  God must have a list of back-up plans long enough to circle the universe--twice--just in order to keep up with our shenanigans.  He must just barely be in control: struggling to steer us all for good while we constantly tug the wheel and nudge the car on to ever bumpier back roads (and into occasional trees).

The problem is that this doesn't seem to be the God of the Bible.  If there's one thing that seems to define God in the Bible, it is that He is in charge.  He is God!  How many times does He say that, in the book of Isaiah alone?  I don't know that I could count them.  What does the Bible say is capable of deferring or derailing God's plans?  Nothing.  The Bible says such an occurrence is strictly impossible.  "Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases" (Psalm 115:3).  "Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps" (Psalm 135:6).  Indeed, to prevent Him from doing so, one would have to be greater than Him.  But no one is.  No one can stand against Him.  "The Lord of hosts has sworn:  'As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand,...'  For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?" (Isaiah 14:24-27).  Perhaps if we think our name is on a list that answers those last two questions, then we can worry about ruining God's plans for our lives.

Some may say at this point, "Well, yes, that is God.  He is all-sovereign and all that.  But you see, God gives us free-will.  Of our own free-will, we can sin and leave what He's planned for us.  We aren't greater than Him, of course, but He gives us free-will enough to upset His plans."  It makes for a nice theological argument, perhaps, but it still isn't Biblical.  The Bible does treat man as a creature with free-will (as he is held responsible for what he does), but at the same time it pointedly includes all mankind in being under the absolute, unbreakable sovereignty of God.  "The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps" (Proverbs 16:9).  "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:33--for all us gamers).  "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but the council of the Lord will be established" (Proverbs 19:21).  "Man's steps are ordained by the Lord; how then can man understand his way?" (Proverbs 20:24).  "The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes" (Proverbs 21:1).  Even evil deeds and people are not excepted.  The Lord intends Joseph's brother's evil actions for good (Genesis 50:20).  The Assyrian kings murder, slaughter, and conquer, boosting themselves in their prowess and the power of their gods--but the God of Israel says their boasting is absurd: they are like an ax in His hand and it is He who has ordained their bloody conquest (Isaiah 10:15).  Even Satan, in all his evil and rebellion, must ask God's permission to cause havoc (Job 1:12 and 2:6).

Certainly, the God of the Bible is in control.  He does not have a list of contingencies He has to keep striking off as we shoot down His favorite plans with our sinful antics.  He has one plan.  That is the plan, and unless we think we can arm-wrestle Him and win, that is the plan that is going to come about and is coming about even now.  The only question then, is does this divine plan represent "God's best?"  In answer, I pose another question: is there any conceivable reason why it would not be God's best?  Given what we know about the sovereignty of God and His love for us, He has absolutely no need to pick a second-best plan, no need to settle for anything.  He can do (will do, and has done) exactly as He pleases, whatever He pleases, and He loves us literally more than life itself (more than His life--which is saying something: as God, His life is awesome).  Does that really look like the bio of somebody who's going to settle for a so-so plan for your life?  He's God.  He doesn't want to settle, and He doesn't have to either.  Why should He?  So, if He has a plan for our lives, you can bet it is His best: His A-Plan.  And if He is the sovereign God the Bible declares Him to be, then you can bet that, no matter how many mistake's you've made, that plan is still in effect, still unfolding in your life, and hasn't even skipped a beat.

That's not to say, of course, that God has to relish every moment of His A-Plan.  Jesus clearly did not look forward to dying on the cross, but God planned this from the very beginning, even foretelling it right after the Fall (Genesis 3:15).  God is "not wishing that any should perish," but in the end He will cast into Hell "everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life" (2 Peter 3:9 and Revelation 13:8).  Let's be clear about one thing: not every moment of God's best is going to feel best--not for you, not for God.  Not every moment of the best parenting, the best marriage, or even the best food is pure bliss either--and I think it's intentionally that way.  God could have made a plan where every moment would have been sunshine and roses for everybody, but He didn't.  He made a plan where everybody got hurt at one point or another.  Yet He still made the best plan, and none of the hurts change that or shake His control.

I think, if we realize this--if I realize this--it will change the way we look at life and at ourselves.  If God truly is in control and truly is good and truly loves us (choose: "D, all of the above"), then His plan has already accounted for all of our mistakes, all of our sins, all of the just plain weird and stupid things about us we think couldn't possibly factor in to God's plan in any constructive manner: God has planned for them all, and they are all included in His best (He could have designed your life without any of these things, He could have prevented you from making any given mistake or committing any given sin: He chose not to).  Yes, our sins are still black, our suffering is still real.  So is the suffering of Christ.  But the stars shine best in the deepest darkness, and so also I think the brilliance of God's best is that He sets the glories of our lives and indeed of all Creation in the midst of inky blackness.  It is all a part of God's best for us.  Even our sins, God turns about in His plan to bring good into our lives.  Remember how the Israelites rejected God's direct rule over them and wanted a monarchy just like everybody else (1 Samuel 8:7)?  God used that to bring David to the throne, and Solomon, his son, by which the Israelites knew a prosperity they'd never imagined.  And God loved it.  He established David's line forever (1 Chronicles 17:2) and used it to bring Christ into the world, the ultimate heir of the throne of David.  If Israel had really drifted from "God's best" when they made that decision, you'd think He'd correct it at some point instead of etching it in stone as a part of the plan He'd made before He began Creation.  The truth is, they didn't.  God didn't like their rejection, but He knew it was coming, He'd allowed it to enter the picture, and He'd planned accordingly so that even Israel's rejection played right into His hand.

Applied to my own life, this is an immense comfort to me.  Satan is the accuser, and while Jesus came so that we could share in His joy, and have it to the full (John 15:11), Satan is the thief who comes in to steal and destroy that joy.  When I sin, he is waiting with a laundry-list of accusations.  At the top of that list is this: "You idiot, you just blew God's plan for your life.  Now you're stuck with second-best.  You'll never have what He promised now."  But God is true, and God is sovereign.  His best stands, and I can withstand the Devil with that.  Even when I haven't sinned, I sometimes feel like my life is on the fast track to nowhere.  I'm a college graduate here, living with my folks and working as a cashier.  Really?  Where's the house and the big-bucks career I was supposed to have by now?  What about the mission to deepest-darkest Africa that I was supposed to lead?  Shouldn't I at least be heading back from a Summer Infusion to a semester spent with my small group at church?  Did I miss a turn somewhere?  Have I stepped away from God's best?  Satan would step up in a heartbeat and answer yes, anything to throw me off, get me down, and discourage me in my relationship with God.  But God is sovereign even here, in my old room at home, on my day off from standing behind a register, and He has a plan for my life--which is unfolding even now--and it is the best.  This is God's best, and I will be able to see it as such in time, when everything has unfolded and the full skein of God's work appears in all its glory.  I can rest in that.  I can set my seal to that.  God is true, faithful, good, and in control, and this is His best.  I can enjoy that!

I hope you can, too.