A Journey to an Egalitarian Complimentarity

Men and women are different in many ways.  This is a pretty well established and accepted fact.  There are some obvious sex differences, and then some less-obvious physiological and psychological differences.  Among these fall the reality that men tend to have greater upper body strength and the saying that "men are like waffles, and women are like spaghetti"—referring to one gender's tendency to compartmentalize topics vs the other's tendency to run them together in a complex flow of ideas.  These latter apply only generally, though, as there are some men who've learned to string together topics like spaghetti and some women who think in highly organized boxes—and also some women with incredible physical strength.  In general, all of these differences (where they exist) compliment each other.  The complimentary virtues of sexual differences are obvious, but psychological differences are also generally complimentary as well with the unique approach of each gender bringing something different to the table (sometimes it's more advantageous to think and speak in topicly-focused waffle squares, sometimes it's better to be able to explore the connections between disparate topics with the flow of spaghetti).  But in Christian circles there is another difference that is often talked about, one that is often the actual topic implied whenever the idea of male and female complimentary differences is raised: leadership vs service.  In this complimentarian view, men are seen as naturally, universally, and divinely suited for leadership whereas women are given the role of serving and helping under that leadership.  Since leaders need followers and followers leaders the relationship is complimentary.  Since Christianity further holds that leaders are not above their flocks in terms of value (at least on paper), it's also a view of equality.  It is, above all, something that the Bible clearly teaches.  This is what I was raised to believe, and this is what pretty much every church I've ever been in has taught.

But that is precisely what I've come to question of late.  To be honest, the idea of a gender heirarchy was never something that set well with me.  It started with the fact that the passages used to support the idea of a male heirarchy are...problematic at best.  Take the prototypical proof-text for the complimentarian position: 1 Timothy 2:12.  While the complimentarian position takes as plain-gospel-truth-seriousness only the part about women being forbidden to exercise authority or hold teaching positions over men, the rest of the passage is something that obviously requires a more in-depth approach.

"Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control."

—1 Timothy 2:11-15

The whole thing about women keeping silence in churches is not something we practice these days, and in fact, it seems barbaric.  As for that last part, the whole idea that a woman will be saved through childbearing seems like proposing some alternate gospel that applies only to women (salvation by grace through faith for men, but through childbearing and good works for women?).  But looking at the passage beyond the level of using it as a proof text was something that was never really done in any church I attended, same for a lot of the other problematic gender passages (such as 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, or 1 Corinthians 11:3-16).  I confess that I never really knew what to do with these passages, so I did my best to ignore them.  This was where the disquiet started, because I knew that ignoring a difficult passage so scripture wasn't really any way to understand the Bible.

The next blow came, honestly, at Summitview, the church I attended during my college years.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the church took the traditional complimentarian view and defended it well from the Bible (though still without really sorting out any of the complexities surrounding the proof texts).  While I would view their public position as one that is very Biblically supportable, private practice was another matter.  In practice, all women were encouraged to marry, have children, and take support roles in the institutional church, while all men were encouraged to marry, be the dominant authority at home, and enter ministry in some sort of leadership role.  Obviously not everyone could do that, but the popular perception was that those who could and did were better off and more faithful to God than those who did not.  This, however, was but the tip of the iceberg.  The rest of it I glimpsed passing shadow-like beneath the surface of the public facades church couples maintained.  I witnessed a small group leader publicly rebuke his wife for being tired and distracted during his lesson (with no honor, love, service, or understanding for her at all—in contrast to verses which tell husbands they must treat their wives with all of these things: 1 Peter 3:7 and Ephesians 5:25-33).  I heard about men who tyrannized women in private, to the point where one wife had to ask her husband's permission before meeting with her friends.  While I recognized that this abuse was yet another example of the church warping a good public teaching and warping it in to a bad private practice, it had the same effect on me as their warping of emotional purity principles: the abuse of the principle set the stage for me to question the assumed legitimacy of the principle itself.

Still, I did not question the principle immediately.  After all, how else was I to understand these verses?  What other legitimate interpretation of them could there be?  I did not know any, so I simply continued to ignore and avoid the question wherever possible.  However, all that began to change.  The first hint came from online dating, of all places.  There I met a Christian young woman who impressed me by presenting a more egalitarian interpretation of Ephesians 5:22-33 (pointing out that the whole passage begins with a command for all Christians to submit to each other, not just wives to husbands) which impressed me.  While nothing came of that relationship, the stage was still set for taking a more serious look at the topic of gender hierarchy and the problematic passages that seemed to support it.

The opportunity to do so came when I found and bought the book Discovering Biblical Equality: Complimentarity Without Hierarchy.  For the first time, I found a book that wasn't afraid to delve into those problem verses, and one that made an honest effort to set them in context and understand what they meant.  I found their explanations made sense, and were surprisingly insightful.  For instance, with 1 Timothy 2:12, the book reminds readers that the verse is set in the context of a church that was obviously having troubles with false teachers, possibly with early Gnosticism, and reminds readers that this was the site of the huge riots where people were chanting in the street for hours "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" (Acts 19:23-41).  It even goes into a little history on who the Ephesian Artemis was and how she differed from the traditional Greek Artemis, then ties these together by showing how the 1 Timothy 2:11-15 passage is specifically tailored as a rebuttal of a particular woman attempting to bring cult of Artemis and Gnostic teachings into the church by dominating men and teaching the primacy of Eve instead of learning her new faith and insisting on singleness and abstinence from childbearing in order for salvation.  A similar exploration of the passage can be found here.  All in all, I was impressed by the egalitarian position, which asserts that—while men and women differ and are complimentary in many ways, gendered hierarchy is not one of them.  I was forced to admit that even if I did not agree with the egalitarians in the end, I at least had to consider their position defensible, much like my view of Armenianism in the free-will vs predestination debate (I would consider myself a Calvinist, but I concede that the Armenian interpretation is a valid alternative).

But reading this and then getting involved in a feminist debate on Facebook caused me to reflect on my own complimentarian position.  I was forced to look critically at the interpretations of these passages that supported male-only leadership, to reflect on the arguments used to support gender roles from the Bible.  In the end, I found them wanting.  Any argument, sustained long enough, goes back to Genesis and claims of a Biblical male-female hierarchy there, but in an honest reading of the text it simply isn't to be seen.  Men and women are both together given authority over the animals (note the plural in Genesis 1:28).  Adam's sin isn't a failure to properly dominate his wife but rather his decision to listen to her over God (Genesis 3:17), and Eve's isn't breaking out of gender roles (which are established as part of the curse, butted right up against extreme pain in childbirth in Genesis 3:16).  Furthermore Paul's references to this section to justify the complimentarian interpretation are taken out of context in ways that reduce them to nonsense (in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, he was addressing Gnostic and cult of Artemis teachings about Eve as the preeminent being, the embodiment of knowledge, the precursor to Adam, etc—and ignoring these facts make hash of attempts to understand the last verse of the passage, which is why most complimentarian commentators simply ignore it).  In the end I found that I could no longer take the complimentarian position seriously anymore.  While I admit that there's some decent rhetoric out there to support it, I can no longer see that rhetoric holding up to and making good sense of scripture.  When I realized this, I realized that I would need to change my views to reflect what I believed the Bible was actually trying to get across: the idea that women and men are equal, though different, and may be equally fit for leadership roles.

I recognize that this is a minority position, and one maligned as un-Biblical by the majority of Evangelicals, who believe it's a position based solely on pandering to the culture and ignoring scripture.  Such accusations do not change the truth however, and I cannot take them or anyone who makes them seriously.  Such people very often put pandering to their own patriarchal subculture ahead of understanding the Bible, using the latter merely as a collection of convenient proof-texts seeded into difficult passages they ignore.  As for me, my journey was not one of learning to ignore the Bible and pander to culture, but of learning that my (Evangelical, complimentarian) culture did not fit my Bible and choosing a better understanding and alignment with the latter over the former, and I have seen the same is true for the majority of egalitarians Christians.

Reflecting on 2013

2013 was a busy year for me.  A lot happened!

To start with, I've had three jobs and three homes in three cities.  I started the year living at with my parents in Colorado Springs and working at the local Walmart as a cashier.  Quitting there in April without another job to go to, I was offered a position at the YMCA of the Rockies in Snow Mountain Ranch not one week later.  I returned to live on campus there in what is technically Granby, Colorado--but practically the middle of nowhere.  While working there as a janitor, I continued to seek work for an eventual move to Fort Collins, finding employment at JAX as a cashier.  This prompted another move at the end of Septemeber, to my present job and my present home.  I am happy with my job as it is now.  The pay, hours, and work are all good, and the employer is absolutely amazing, an inspiration of servant leadership in action.  My hope going into 2014 is to stay with this company in this city, though I may try to find other housing arrangements when my lease is up this summer.

The three moves necessitated three churches, which has made connecting with other Christians difficult, but I have made a few friends among my brothers and sisters that I'm proud to call my own.  Much attention throughout the year actually focused on one church, Summitview Community Church, which I had attended while in college.  At the beginning of the year, I was reeling from having been kicked out of a small group in that church's college ministry (the Rock) for a conflict which was supposedly all my fault.  The previous summer, I had found out that the conflict was largely due to emotional purity and leadership mishandling of the situation--and that the Great Commission Church movement of which Summitview is a part had confessed to mishandling similar conflicts in the same way over 21 years ago.  At the beginning of the year, I was on the "De-Commissioned Forum" made for and by ex-members of the GCC, including several newcomers from Summitview and the Rock.  While there, I stumbled upon an article by the current leader of the GCC, John Hopler, and took exception to it, contacting him to voice my criticism.  To my surprise, he responded and publicly apologized.  Hopler worked tirelessly to get me in touch with the pastor of Summitview and the people I had been in conflict with the year previous.  As a result of his efforts, I was put in touch with the leader who'd given me the boot and the young woman who'd thought it necessary to protect her emotional purity.  Both apologized and the work of repairing these broken relationships began.  Unfortunately, in late June any hope of restoring some semblance of Christian love and unity with the young woman was lost when she sent me a sudden accusatory email (wherein she alleged that I was harassing her by trying to be friends with her, which she'd said she wanted to be, and by trying to resolve a conflict between us she'd said was bothering her--but of course admitted it would not be harassment if I was a girl) and cut all contact between us.  Though fellowship with her was ruined, I still felt I had reconciled with leadership of Summitview and the Rock and could return to both without problems.  I was wrong.  The young woman was already a member of both and was unwilling to share mutual friends and relationships, and leadership was still quite willing to take her side under the dictates of emotional purity.  By the end of November, I realized that even though my own position had changed and I was willing to allow the young woman to ignore me and have no fellowship with me as she pleased, the leadership's position had not changed and the young woman's position had only crystallized beyond absurdity.  In a final meeting, positions on the understanding of God's will that the leaders had specifically disavowed only a few months ago were reaffirmed (specifically, the position that a Christian should listen to their peers and leaders moreso than the Spirit directly speaking to them).  I walked out of that meeting and left that church.  I posted a defense regarding the emotional-purity based accusations which had been made of me and began to seek a new church.

All of this led to a lot of spiritual and emotional turmoil for me.  As my posts this year reflect, God has been speaking to me consistently about the importance of love and unity and I have tried consistently to pursue these things with the young woman, the Rock, and Summitview.  I have learned the value of such love and unity in their absence.  I have also learned that achieving them is something that must be accomplished with conscious effort by all parties involved, or not at all.  One party was definitely not interested, and so unity was broken.  But that wasn't the only thing I learned.  I learned what sort of a man I am, what I'm capable of, and whom I follow.  I learned I am a good man, committed to love and unity, that I am capable of pursuing these causes far beyond the point where others would have given up, and that I follow God and none other, no matter what.  One of the leaders of the Rock said he was praying this would be a watershed decision for me, to build me up for days ahead.  I do not pretend to know what kind of character he was hoping for, but I am pleased by how my character has developed through my seven year trial.  It bodes well for my ability to face whatever is to come, I think.  Nevertheless, I am glad that the trial is over and that the Rock and the young woman are behind me now.

I move on to other trials.  Beginning in June of this year, I began to read the Book of Mormon, taking seriously its challenge to read and study it, and putting to the test its claim to be comparable to the Bible.  The Comparable to the Bible Series was born.  While the actual business of seeing if the Book of Mormon measures up to the Bible has been a dismal failure (14 posts and most of one book in, and I can already say with certainty that the Book of Mormon isn't remotely in the same league as the Bible), the business of writing them and reading the Book of Mormon has been a success.  I have grown tremendously in my appreciation of the Bible and Christianity by comparing them with their fraudulent counterparts.  Additionally, the business has now put me in touch with a number of Mormon missionaries and given me an opportunity to present the gospel to them.

In other writing news, I finished my draft of my first-to-be-published fantasy novel this year and put it up for Open Beta, gathering reader feedback in preparation for a round of editing this coming summer, followed by publication!  I am very excited about this.  In the wake of this project's completion, I've turned my attention to other ventures.  I've completed two Star Trek Online fan fiction stories, with a third underway, as well as a novel-length fan fiction for The Secret World (all of which can be found here).  I've also spent a lot of time working on worldbuilding and backstory for an original dystopian military science fiction.  I even have a partial draft for a short story set in that universe, which I plan to continue and finish.  Speaking of things I have plans to continue, there's my old webcomic, "Dragon Hunt".  Long neglected on the back-burner, I worked out a script for the rest of chapter 4 earlier this summer and found it again today.  On New Year's Eve I also managed to recover the critical files for restarting the comic.  I also know how to overcome the technical hurdles which caused it to stop being produced last time around (I could not get my computer to render crowd scenes, but now I can just make a bunch of separate renders of different people and combine them to get a large crowd).  The only thing left is actually sitting down and doing the renders and postwork--which means the adventures of Bill and Lia should be returning soon.

So looking back, 2013 was a busy year and a hard year in many ways, but overall, a good one.  I look forward to discovering what 2014 will bring!

Setting the Record Straight

The following post regards an interpersonal conflict between me and a certain young woman.  I wouldn’t write about it here, but it seems that a number of people have been led to believe or say things about my conduct and intentions in this conflict that simply are not true.  While these allegations were made privately, the fact that they were made to multiple people at multiple times by multiple people makes them public for all practical purposes.  I therefore thought it appropriate that I publically set the record straight.

Nevertheless, the internet is a very public place, so I won’t be getting into details or naming names.  If you’ve heard about this conflict, you already know who the players are.  If you don’t, you don’t need to, and probably don’t need to be reading this post anyway.

Forgiven So That I Can Forgive

The more I learn of Christ, the more I read in the Bible, the more I am convinced of the central importance of brotherly love between believers. Yesterday, I was reminded by one of my roommates, a man from Brazil. When he found out that I was a Christian, a Protestant, and even a member of the same denomination as him, he clasped my hand and said excitedly, "You are my Brother!" We are probably more than a decade apart in age, from separate countries on separate continents, severed by a formidable language barrier, but my roommate is right: in Christ, we are brothers.

Today, I was reminded of it when Paul, in this morning's passage, made a point of telling the Colossians that the things he was suffering, he was suffering so that they could mature in Christ and "reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ."  As a part of that process, he thought it necessary that they be "knit together in love" (Colossians 2:2).

...And then right after the message, I walked out and passed by a sister in Christ and the cluster of my old friends who surround her, trying as gracefully as possible to pretend they didn't exist because this sister has a problem with me that she doesn't want to even try to work out, preferring that we simply not be on speaking terms ever again, period.

In retrospect, I have to wonder: were either of us paying attention during the message? My roommate from Brazil, bless his heart, he can barely speak English, but he gets it: if you are a Christian, even if I have never met you before and our homes are a thousand miles apart, you are my Brother and I love you! But me and this young lady, we've known each other for years, live in the same city, attend the same church, and worship the same God in the same way...but we let some imagined offence cut off all love and kinship between us. We let this root of bitterness spread to encroach on other relationships. We call it holy, good and peaceful.

What are we thinking?

Christ was very clear about what we as Christians were to do if we ever had a serious disagreement with each other: forgive.  It's been laid out in the song we've sung two weeks in a row: as Christians, we are forgiven so that we can forgive each other.

Christ laid it out even more plainly in Matthew 18:21-35. When Peter, thinking himself very patient and forgiving asked if 7 was the upper limit for how many times he should forgive his brother for the same offence, Christ didn't give him a number to use. Instead,He put things is perspective by telling the story of a man who, having just been forgiven a debt of roughly $6 billion in today's currency, goes out and strangles a guy who owes him the approximate cost of a used car ($12,000). All of us as Christians stand forgiven before Christ of an incalculable weight of sin. How hypocritical of us to then turn around and beat each other up over a pale pittance of petty grudges! When we were dedicated life-long enemies of Christ, He died for us...but we can't even acknowledge each other's existence because of our petty grudge-match? When we heaped up mountains of sin to separate ourselves from God, Christ came down from heaven and gave his blood to remove the offenses and restore the fellowship between us...but we think it's okay cut all ties between each other over a handful of perceived slights?

Was this what Christ saved us for? I cannot imagine it is.

WWJD with an Enemy?

That a question I've found myself asking recently, as my move to Fort Collins approaches.  I am not the kind of guy who has a lot of enemies.  I keep short accounts.  I avoid conflict wherever I can.  I am a nice guy.  It is, in fact, my weakness.  Often I am too nice.  Often I bend over backwards to keep everything clear and calm for others to the point of putting too much strain on myself.  It's a common curse--the plight of the perfectionist/pleaser first-born personality--, one I'm slowly learning to deal with, learning point by point how to be good rather than nice.

So I never thought I would have an enemy, never thought I would need to consider the question before me now.  I didn't think Christians were supposed to have enemies, not considering Christ to have enemies either, not really.  What Bible was I reading, anyway?  The one I'm looking at now says that the world is going to hate me if I belong to Christ, that it persecuted Him and that I can expect similar treatment (John 15:19-21).

I never expected the enemy I have.  I never expected my enemy would be another Christian, a person of good report that I knew well.  I never expected the conflict that divided us would be completely illusory: the imaginatively-feared acting out of desires I do not, in fact, possess.  I never expected that all my attempts to make peace by any means on any terms would not only go unanswered but actually be called part of the problem--did you know trying to have any form of communication with someone who has said she is your friend (much less proposing ways to resolve a conflict she has announced is bothering her) qualifies as harassment?  I didn't.  I still don't know what dictionary that definition comes from, since legally that's nowhere near the definition.  But to my enemy that doesn't seem to matter: though I have given every opportunity for peace (in more than one sense: not only have I exhausted my every option to resolve this conflict civilly now, but in the past every time there has been conflict in the relationship, I have always been the one to make the first move toward peace--which makes me wonder why I put up with this person for so long or why she has so pristine a reputation), she desires war.  I still desire peace, but with all other options exhausted, I think the old Latin maxim applies: Si vis pacem, para bellum--If you desire peace, prepare for war.

I have an enemy and I have a war, whether I desire one or not.  It is not, blessedly, a shooting war, not yet, but a cold war is no less dangerous and savage a conflict in reality.  In history, the Cold War between the USA and the USSR gave birth to several shooting wars and brought our species (by many accounts) to the very brink of nuclear self-annihilation.  For lack of gunfire, it was no less fierce.

I could fight this war with no rules or, as my enemy has apparently chosen to do, make up rules as I go along so I may declare my actions "good" in every respect.  Given the enormous disparity in power between the two of us (something my enemy seems totally unaware of), my options for waging this war successfully are very broad indeed.

But I do not want to just win this war.  I have more important concerns.  My chiefest concern is my relationship with God, my love and obedience to Him.  So it is not enough to fight to win, I must fight good and right--win, lose, or draw.

Thus the question: what would Jesus do with an enemy?

To start with, Jesus had enemies, mainly the Pharisees and other religious elite.  I am not in sin just because someone has picked a fight with me.  Second, Jesus loved His enemies and admonishes us to love ours.  He was always ready to make peace with them and show love for them.  He was willing to meet with Nicodemus in the middle of the night and answer the questions of an honest seeker.  I also am and must continue to be always open for peace.  If I cease to be, then my enemy has succeeded in what appears to be her primary objective--to generate hatred in the place of the love that ought to be between all Christians--and has therefore won, whatever becomes of her thereafter.

Third, Jesus was not afraid to fire the first shot in a cold war.  He spoke out against his enemies.  He saw that what they were doing in the name of good was, in fact, evil, and He did not hesitate to say so.  He did not pull any punches either.  He used biting sarcastic wit, He called names, He publicly derided His enemies, and did not hesitate to show the world what they really looked like under their finely decorated robes.  The only thing I can think of that He didn't do was He didn't specifically name names and acts, though--being God's Son--He very well could have.

I must also speak out.  What my enemy has done is wrong.  It is un-Christian.  In point of fact, it is one of the only things repeatedly named in the Bible as un-Christian, as an explicit mark of someone who does not know God, someone who is a liar if they say they do know God (1 John 4:20).  It is this: an absolute failure to love a fellow Christian, and an insistence on hating him.  But this person walks about with the finely decorated robes of a respected Christian and attempts to pull them over this as well, repeatedly declaring their failures to even be civil acts of righteousness.  How can I stand idly by and let this become the accepted standard?  Is it not well said that all that is necessary for evil to win in our world is for good men to do nothing?  I will not do nothing: I will speak out--and while I see no need to name this person publicly, I will not pull my punches either.

Finally, Jesus was not afraid of taking direct action, where necessary.  On at least one occasion when it came time to clear the temple, Christ even committed acts of deliberate, premeditated violence: carefully braiding a whip from cords and then using it to drive crooked businessmen from the temple courts, where they were robbing worshipers.  Yet even in this He showed restraint.  He could have called twelve legions of angels to destroy the world at that very moment, or at the very least kill all the moneychangers out of hand--He fightened them away instead with a mere leather whip.  I don't expect to be braiding any whips, but I should be prepared to take action as if necessary.  There exists the possibility that my enemy will decide that Fort Collins or Summitview is not big enough for both of us.  If that gauntlet is thrown down, I must and will be prepared to force her to back down, but do so with restraint.  There was a time when she, in conjunction with others, misused church discipline on a small scale against me.  Remembering that power imbalance I mentioned earlier, I now have the connections, the evidence, and the strength of will to correctly use it on a large scale against her, and even an unsuccessful attempt to do so could cause untold damage to the network on which she is heavily dependent (a network which, thanks in part to her previous attacks, I have grown to be independent of).  But remembering restraint, I must only apply the amount of force necessary to convince her to back down--a delicate balance to be sure, one that, if it becomes necessary, will require a lot of prayer on my part.  I'll cross that bridge when or if I reach it.  For now, I will speak out.

"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.

Busyness and Heartbreak

The following post is quite a bit more personal than most I write.  It's written mostly for my own benefit, in reflection, though the busyness it talks about could happen to anyone.  It talks about my perspective on an open conflict in my life and friendships, though it does so anonymously.  Nevertheless, if you're not interested in such content or think you may be offended by it, please skip this post.  The page break here is to keep it condensed and out of sight while you browse other posts.  If you do decide to read it, click below.

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!

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.

God and Politics

They say there are two things you must never, ever discuss with strangers at a party: religion and politics.  To broach these subjects is not necessarily rude in itself, but views held in these areas are held very strongly and you're apt to have the unpleasant surprise of finding yourself discussing them with someone who holds a polar opposite view from yourself.  If that happens, its assumed that because of how political and religious views are so tightly held, the two of you are doomed to either awkward silence or a scathing verbal exchange as you attempt to beat your view into your opponent.  Thus, never discuss religion or politics.

What's worse is a combination of the two.  This is what I've experienced several times recently.  I consider myself both a Christian and a Republican and hold them to be relatively unrelated things (that is, I allow that a Christian could be just as good a Christian as I and yet be a Democrat as well).  However, recently, I've heard from a couple different sources that this is not so.  In fact, in order to be a good Christian, one must necessarily be a Democrat.

It's said in different ways.  One friend put it mildly, "I'll be voting Democratic because I think they're more Christlike."  One posted a quote that put it bluntly, "If you don't want tax dollars helping the sick and poor, then it's time to stop saying you want a government based on Christian values."  A third went much farther, saying that if any Christian considered him or herself a member of the "religious right" "you should not call yourself that ...because they are antichrist[,] doing the opposite of what Jesus would do. They push law and judgment instead grace and love...".  So my friends have a broad range of views and ways to put them, but a common theme emerges among them.  Being liberal (or at the very least, not being conservative) is being a good Christian because (1) you don't force moral law on people, and (2) you support government initiatives in social justice.  Presumably, these two are both things that Christ did that are central to His character and mission.  If you don't support them or, worse, oppose them, then you are, therefore, not a good Christian.

To say I'm a bit put-off by this stance would be putting it mildly.  I think it's just fine to be fully convinced of your political position.  It's good, in fact.  I think it's also perfectly fine to draw certain points of your political position from your faith--in fact, another good thing!  The problem comes when we take our political view and project it back on Christ and tell the world or the people around us, "Christ was a member of such-and-such a party.  Christ would have voted this way.  To be a member of this political party and support them is more Christian than to vote otherwise."

In reality, Christ was not and is not affiliated with any political party.  There were no political parties comparable to our own in 1st Century Israel, and the parties that did exist (primarily the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Zealots) could not claim Jesus as a member.  He offended all of them equally.  It's well known that Christ told the Pharisees they were hypocrites.  He gave the same to the Sadducees, and to add insult to injury His rising from the dead disproved one of their core beliefs--that there was no resurrection (see Acts 23:6, where Paul effectively uses this split between Pharisees and Sadducees as a diversion).  Herodians hated him because Jesus joined John the Baptist in condemning their leader (King Herod) for his gross sexual immorality.  Zealots hated Him because He paid taxes to the Roman oppressors and taught His followers to do the same, thereby supporting the regime the Zealots saw as the embodiment of all evil.  Also, when they tried to make Him king, He ran (John 6:15).  Jesus was completely outside their system and above their petty politics.

Thus, when we say that Christ was a member of party X or would have voted for Y, or supported political agenda Z, we are simply liars going about trying to inflate our own egos into hammers with which we can beat other people down.  It is ironic to me that I have received this treatment from three people who say the reason they think being Democratic is being Christian is that Christ was loving.  Are political ego-hammers loving too?  Apparently so.

But someone will object: "Christ really did love social justice and hate restrictive moral law!"  Since social justice and restrictive moral law are still issues on the political table today, logically, we should be able to say that Christ's stand on them would remain unchanged.  That is, assuming the context and nature of these questions has not changed.

As I said, I am a Republican and as such I oppose Democratic government program for social justice as a general rule.  I do not do this because I hate poor people and want to see them starve.  I do not do this because I am opposed to social justice in general.  In fact, I support social justice--but I don't think it's the government's job.  I think it's the individual's job.  The government is ill-equipped to dispense social justice in my opinion.  It has its own massive bills (and ginormous debt) to pay.  Paying for social justice and welfare programs keeps it from its central responsibilities to public defense, security, safety, education, and enterprise (notice that as our government is splurging on welfare and social justice programs it's cutting defense and education budgets, laying off policemen, letting infrastructure fall apart, closing fire stations, and pushing the highest corporate tax rate in the world which tops out at over 50 cents of every dollar earned).  It's also mired in layers of bureaucracy which make it difficult for the government to respond to social justice issues quickly and effectively--as well as making it extremely easy to take advantage of and con.  Individual donors are less susceptible--if not immune--to many of these pitfalls.  As an additional benefit, individual philanthropists--like the poor--are always and will always be with us.  The government, if it keeps spending this way, will be tottering on the edge of complete financial collapse, just like Greece, before I turn 40.  I therefore oppose government social justice because I see myself supporting a truer and more lasting version it attempts unsuccessfully to replace.

Would Christ agree with me?  I have no idea.  Certainly, Christ advocated charity to the poor.  However, Christ never once said this had to come in the form of government hand-outs.  He always advocated charity from individuals who had wealth to give, as did all the authors of the New Testament.  Yet this does not mean that Christ would necessarily hold the same position in America today.  Remember, He and the other New Testament Christians lived in Rome 2,000 years ago.  A lot has changed.  For one, we now have a government that actually sees social justice and welfare programs as serious issues that must be dealt with all the time.  Roman Emperors gave them passing notice, but many were too busy conquering the world, each other, and appointing their favorite horse to the Senate.  No stance of Christ on the issue of government welfare or social justice programs can be found recorded in scripture.  While my view may be traceable to my faith and I am fully convinced of it, other views may be equally valid and equally Christian.

The issue of law is a little clearer in my mind.  To me, it has nothing to do with party lines and everything to do with an understanding of what a law is.  My Democratic friends are forever reminding me: "You can't legislate morality."  But a law is just that: a moral conviction legislated.  We have laws against murder because we (the majority--who make the laws) believe murder is morally wrong.  We have laws against polygamy because we believe it is morally wrong to have more than one wife.  We have laws against reckless driving because we believe it is morally wrong to endanger the lives of others by one's mishandling of a motor vehicle.  Behind every single law is a moral conviction.  That being said, there is nothing at all wrong with legislating moral convictions in general.  The question really arises around certain moral convictions that are in dispute and it's not (properly) a question of can morality be legislated or not (it certainly can), but to what extent it should be governed by law.  For example, I believe failure to worship the one true God constitutes a moral offense to Him by denying His nature--that is, I believe it is morally wrong. Yet even so, I do not think we ought to pass a law requiring worship of God!  It should be given freely and if it is to be given freely people must be left free of law so that people can make their own decision.  To bring it closer to home, I believe abortion is morally equivalent to manslaughter since I believe a human being becomes a human being when they have the unique genetic code that sets them apart as their own individual human person (this happens at conception).  Many Christians feel the same, but are also torn by the difficult situations a woman choosing abortion might be faced with (poverty, rape, incest, threat to her own life).  Should a law therefore be passed outlawing abortion or no?  Should choice or law reign in this moral quandary?  I believe law is the correct answer here.

But again, would Christ agree with me?  The Bible does not say.  Nowhere in the Bible is abortion clearly addressed.  While it's true that Christ opposed man-made religious laws (such as the Pharisee's tradition that God would be okay with you dishonoring your parents if you did it as a part of dedication to temple service: Mark 7:10-13, a belief which--on a sidenote--finds its companion in the teachings of many modern cults which encourage adherence to the group and obedience to its leaders over honor to even believing parents), Christ did not speak on civil law at any point that I can recall.  Paul, in Romans 13, taught obedience to civil law, but I can think of no Christian in scripture who ever talked about what civil law was or was not to be.  The reason was really quite simple: Christians of the day were in no position to make civil law.  The lawmakers of the day were Romans and Jews, and they were much too busy trying to kill the Christians to bother about what laws the Christians thought were and were not good ideas.  The only time the Bible speaks directly to civil law is in the Old Testament, where God lays down the civil law of a theocratic Israel.  We do not live in a theocracy now, so there's no telling whether Christ would uphold those laws in our altered circumstances or not.  While I believe my position is informed by my faith and I am convinced of it, other positions may equally be drawn from equal Christian faith and may be equally valid.

Religion and politics are closely held and interrelated--and that's not necessarily bad!  What is bad is when we take a dogmatic position on murky issues in either field and put our view forward as the only valid view that can be held.  What's worse is when we combine the two fields and say, "You can only be a good Christian if you agree with my politics."  When the Bible doesn't clearly back our particular political view, we are simply wrong to judge the faithfulness of others and puff up the self-righteousness of ourselves based on politics.

Perhaps if we avoided these things and held our political and religious convictions with a more open hand, we would have no need to ban the discussion of religion and politics at parties.

Tenacity of the Heart

I just finished reading a post by a friend of mine, a girl, who posted on some of the horrors of divorce and commented that one reason why she remains single is fear of the what ifs of divorce.  What if she got married and her husband just up and left her?  How would she go on with the man in her life missing?  Her fears, sadly, are legitimized by a great many statistics and personal stories.  However, in my opinion (and I say this more to any men in my audience than women, I suppose), if any woman finds her husband has given up and walked away, she need not really wonder what she must do now that she no longer has a man in her life: in my opinion she didn't have a man in her life to begin with.  A man would not walk away--at least not any man worth the name.

I suppose it's rather impetuous of me to say something like that.  After all, I'm single.  I always have been.  I don't know the pressures of a relationship or of a marriage--not firsthand--and so who am I to judge those who have and find them too much for them?  The answer is this: I am a man with a tenacious heart.  I am a man whose ideal of nobility is something like a picture of the Alamo, where 180 volunteers held out for three days against an army more than 10 times their size--volunteers who fought even knowing that the battle was lost before the first shot was fired.  My ideal of nobility, of masculinity, is a heart that does not let go, that refuses to walk away, the costs be damned.  When I hear a man recite his vows and say, "Till death do us part," I expect he means it literally.  Death may overtake him or her suddenly and part them, but if any other force threatens to part them, he would rather die than yield.

You may say I'm young and naive.  Overly optimistic, overly idealistic, and completely unrealistic.  Maybe I am, but that is who I am.  It is not just an ideal I have put up on a shelf in my mind to be forgotten.  It's something I live even in small ways.  It's this sense of the nobility of tenacity that has me writing this tonight.  It's one o'clock...well, one-thirty.  I worked a full day today, standing every minute of it because I'm a cashier.  Halfway through I felt ready for a nap, but I wouldn't rest then and won't rest now either.  I have something I have to do.  I've set my heart on finishing this blog entry (and another one, actually, mercifully brief) and I'm tenacious about it.  My legs may be cramping just a bit and I will definitely feel like cursing my name tomorrow morning when I have to wake up--possibly to have my entire life here turned upside down by evacuation orders--but my comfort and my sleep are expendable.  Something ought to be said about having tenacity of heart and I'm willing to suffer a bit to make it so--even knowing that this post will probably be viewed a grand total of 2 times, and those by random visitors from South Korea who get redirected here by some ad on a dating site (don't ask me! I'm just reading what it says on my blog's stats!).

Like I said, I haven't ever been in a relationship, but I have demonstrated it in similar ways.  In the rift that developed some months ago between myself and some of my friends I expended a lot of energy and shed a lot of tears trying to mend or hold on to the relationship which was, in retrospect, a lost cause.  I held on so long and so hard that I let the strain of it damage me at the deepest level: my relationship with God.  I remember literally pitching a screaming fit at Him during the heat of things, and (as in a previous post) it would take months for me to discover and heal the scars.  Even now, I would seize the chance to mend the rift, if it were to present itself.  Though it was in vain, I held on beyond the point of merely hurting myself and only let go when I literally had no other option--and this was a friendship where no vows were involved.

I knew during this ordeal that God wanted to use me to portray Himself, how He would love and pursue.  I think I understand now what He meant by that.  He wanted to show me that He is Himself tenacious.  Many times I have thought, I've done it now!  Surely after that, God will throw up His hands and walk away from me!  But He never does and He never will.  He has a noble tenacious heart.  To hold on to me, He literally sacrificed His life, enduring the most brutal death of human history, to save me.  Even if I were to somehow sever myself from Him (were it possible), He would willingly welcome me back.  He never gives up!  He never walks away, and when I find my dream girl and make my vows, I want to be as tenacious as Him.  I know I am not perfect, and that my blunders will probably endanger the relationship as much as anything else, but with God as my help and my model, may I never give up!

Trust and Obey

I haven't posted in a while.  A lot has been going on in my life, with graduation and all...looking for a job, etc.  At the same time, not much has been going on in my life, it seems.  I haven't felt I had anything to write for ages.    I've been feeling kind of listless, directionless, especially in my spiritual life.  At first I thought it was just a dry spell, something that just happens and then goes away again without rhyme or reason.  But the longer it went on, the more I wondered.

There was an incident a few months back, a big blow-up between myself and some of my near and dear friends--where the rifts made and the relationships destroyed have never been repaired.  I don't like to think about it.  I have forgiven everyone involved, sincerely, even though none of them have apologized (as I've learned, though, that doesn't matter, because God forgives us even our unconfessed sins).  I just want to put it all behind me.  But there are still consequences of what happened then.  I knew that one of them is that those friends I lost or was distanced from cannot be restored by any effort of my own.  But what about spiritual consequences?  One of my friends had warned me that in letting my "theology get tangled" in the situation, he believed I had "made a shipwreck" of my faith.  Was that really what had happened?  I had believed that God was at work in the situation between me and my friends, and that I could trust His guidance there.  Had I been wrong?  Several of my friends very strongly felt it was so.  Was this the reason for the slowdown in my spiritual life, that I'd trusted God too far and in too much detail?

Like I said, I tried to avoid the question.  A big dramatic blow-up like that isn't exactly anyone's favorite moment to dwell on, and I didn't want to give any opportunity for bitterness to develop in my heart.  But last night, God brought the situation back to the fore.  It turned out that it was that situation that had damaged my faith.  I had trusted that I could hear from God, personally, any time on any thing.  I had obeyed His direction at every step, only to have the whole situation blow up in my face.  As I usually do, I blamed myself.  I wondered if I'd been mistaken: maybe I never heard from God at all.  Maybe I couldn't.  Though I continued to listen in prayer and obey, to an extent, I was hesitant now.  Was I really hearing from God?  After all, the last time I thought I'd heard from Him, I'd royally screwed up, right?

I don't think so.  What I saw last night was that everything had been going exactly and perfectly according to what God had shown me would come to pass between me and my friend, and continued to go that way, as long as everyone involved trusted and obeyed Him.  But a year or so before everything fell to pieces, my friend stopped trusting.  She had heard something that didn't set well with her and, on advice from some people from her church, she decided that her friends, her heart, and her church were more accurate barometers for the will of God than what He had miraculously revealed to her.  She stopped trusting.  She stopped obeying.  Immediately, the conflicts that formed the basis of the big blow-up reared their heads.  From that point on, nothing I did in trusting or obeying made a difference for the relationship.  As long as one side or the other wasn't trusting God, the blow-up was only a matter of time.

So what was I doing here, four months later, questioning whether what God was miraculously revealing to me was really His will or not?  I was repeating my friend's moves, the very ones that made that painful blow-up inevitable.  It seems that, for me, unconsciously repeating her mistake was a consequence of the situation.

Once I realized what was going on, my doubts and questions all unsnarled.  I had dared believe in a God Who was as real in my life today as He was in the lives of saints in the Bible--and I wasn't wrong.  There is no evidence to support that conclusion at all.  Yes, God had told me that things were in His will that didn't come to pass, but lots of things happen that aren't in line with God's will (as in His desires and feelings--sin, for instance, would be a violation of His will that happens quite regularly--; His ultimate plan and purpose, of course, cannot be thwarted) and I already know that both from experience and the Bible.  That doesn't mean I can't trust Him.  That doesn't mean I should hesitate in obeying Him.  I felt like a two-ton weight had evaporated from my heart!  I will dare believe what I once believed, that there is a God in Heaven Who reveals Himself to me, Who cares about me, about even the details of my life and the desires of my heart, Who is involved and powerful, Who can be trusted and obeyed.

Dream Girl

There's an internet meme that runs something like this:

A woman's heart should be so lost in God that a man has to seek Him in order to find her.

There is no male equivalent for this saying.  There ought to be, in my opinion.

I am determined to live a life of pursuing God, of listening and yielding to His voice at every turn.  In my life, there will be no check against His influence, no other force to rival it.  My own feelings, my own thoughts, and the words of even the dearest friend and most trusted adviser will not hold a higher or even an equal place.

I have found this to be a necessity.  If I want to live a life all out for God, holding nothing back, then I must trust Him completely and without reservations.  If I hold back and put my trust in any other thing, it will fail.  If I trust my feelings, my heart is full of lies and old wounds, upon which I will be irrecoverably ruined if I heed them above the Spirit.   If I trust my thoughts, I find I am often mistaken in my opinions, and a mistaken belief can be fatal on the roads I will tread.  Only God can protect me from such things.  If I trust others above God or equal to His voice, they are human at best and twisted at worst.  At best, they may make an honest mistake and cost me much pain.  At worst, they pervert the truth and those who listen to them are tossed about by their winds of doctrine, with no anchor to hold them true.  No, I will trust God to the point of placing no confidence in any other source (by comparison).

I would like a wife.  A marriage is a beautiful thing, a picture of the divine romance between a human being and eternal God.  For that reason, it is also some of the most perilous territory out there.  I believe that God still wants me to travel that territory, for His glory, and I find this desirable.  However, I recognize that it will take a special kind of woman to walk that country with me.  It will not be safe, or ordinary.  Nothing is for those who truly follow God.  He has quite the wild side.  No ordinary woman will be capable of walking the path I will walk.  No woman who values safety above all else will dare.

So, I have some base requirements, some standards I will not negotiate on.  The woman I will pursue must be able to hear from the Spirit, and listen to Him.  She must love Him, be taken with Him.  He must be the most valuable thing in her life, for the journey we take will likely cost us everything else.  She must also place His voice and His influence first, above all others, including my own.  Her heart will not be any more perfect than mine, and if she listens to it above God she will be ruined beyond my help on the roads we will travel.  Her friends will not be any more enlightened either, nor will the world's influences be kinder, and if these are her council she will be destroyed.  I do not want to lose her to either of these influences, for it is with this one other person that I intend to share my body and soul.  Yet God must be more important and influential to each of us (as the Creator of our souls and bodies) than either of us, for we will not be perfect (I know I am not) and if we are the rulers in each others kingdoms, civil war will kill us both.  If Christ rules our hearts, then we will prosper and grow together.

I am not going to hold these out as prerequisites, per se.  I am willing, if the Lord wills it, to come alongside a woman who does not yet have these qualities and, with His grace, help her grow in them.  She does not have to demonstrate these qualities constantly, for I know I slip, but God provides grace.  They must be her character, though, or she must have that character grown in her.  These are my requirements, and I will give no lesser woman a second look, regardless of her figure.  If this is not her identity in Christ, then she is not my dream girl.

Earned Love and True Love

So, I've got an idol that I keep close to my heart.  I guess you could say that this idol is really the closest one to my heart.  I never go after any others unless this idol has (as it inevitably does, being an idol) let me down.  This idol is called Work.  Work, for me, is never an end in itself (at least not when I'm serving this idol).  It's always a means to an end: a way of earning something.  There are so many things to earn: money, fame, respect, praise.  None of these things, by themselves, really appeals to me.  The thing I'm trying to earn most often is love.

The question is, is this even possible?  Is it possible to earn love?  My idol says it is.  People judge me based on what I do, and if I do the right things, then I will be acceptable to them and loved by them.  My idol says that it works the same with god.  What I want, more than anything, is His love, and this, says Work, I must earn.  god sees what I do, and his approval or rejection of me rises or falls with my actions: he does not see my heart or my intent--and if he does he does not care.  Intentions are cheep: actions are what counts.

The problem with this approach to god is that it never works out.  If I were to read the Bible and simply jot down every action God commends, I would have a list a mile long of things I need to do to earn god's love.  I would never get them all done.  I could try--I have tried--but in the end I am left only with exhaustion and the realization that I have failed.  I have not lived up to every single commanded work, and in so doing, I have failed to earn god's love.  I have instead invited his hatred.  Condemnation comes from my idol of Work now, and this is the point where I usually run off in search of comfort in some other idol--believing that I cannot now hope to have it in God.

But this is a false gospel assaulting my heart.  It is a lie because, at bottom, True Love cannot be earned by any means.  After all, it is easy to say, "I love you" to someone who has done incredible works for you.  Anyone can do that.  Even the most reprobate people who drift from relationship to relationship only ever caring about themselves can still give "earned love."  When the works falter or stop, these people just as quickly go cold--for they never loved in the first place, not really.  They were only attracted to the works that were done for them.  True Love is something permanent and stable.  It cannot be earned.  Works done by the beloved or misdeeds committed cannot either increase or decrease it.  It is this Love that will prompt a wife to remain faithful to a husband who's in a coma.  It is this Love which every woman seeks when she asks "will you love me when I'm old and ugly?"  Earned love is cheap, but this Love is described in the Bible as being so valuable that all the riches of a billionaire would be considered a contemptuously low offer for its purchase (Song of Solomon 8:7).  This kind of Love is not for sale at any price.

This is the kind of Love God offers me.  He does not offer earned love.  God gave the law to Israel as an experiment hundreds of years long to prove that His requirements for earned love could not possibly be met (Romans 3:20).  Then, while we were yet sinning despicably against Him and provoking His righteous anger, He demonstrated once and His True Love for us, by the greatest act of Love ever: giving His life for us on the cross (Romans 5:8).  This is the same Love He extends to me even now.  When I try to earn His love, He is not impressed.  When I fail and despair of His love, He still extends True Love to me, which nothing can buy.  His forgiveness and grace prove false my idol of Work.  I cannot earn His love, for it is eternally mine!

Some Tips for Perfectionists and Pleasers

I read psychology books recreationally.  Okay, well, that's not entirely true.  I read them on my own, but not for the sheer pleasure of it.  Often, I find things in psychology books, particularly in Christian psychology books, that help me better understand myself, the world around me, and my relationship with God.  That's why I read psychology books.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of books by Christian birth-order psychologist Kevin Leman--and probably driving my friends a little crazy by constantly analyzing their birth-order (it works though!).  That's a topic for another post, though.  Today, I wanted to talk about another concept I found in his books, the concept of the pleaser.

Dr. Leman describes pleasers as people who are oriented toward pleasing others.  It's what they do.  Pleasers (or people-pleasers) care a lot about what other people think and feel.  They're very nice people who like to keep the oceans of life calm and placid for everyone around them, even if that peace for others comes at the expense of peace for the pleaser.  Sometimes being a pleaser's not such a bad thing.  A mild well-adjusted pleaser is easy to get along with, kind and compassionate, easy-going, and yet able to stand up for him or herself at need.  However, being a pleaser can also be a bad thing.  It can mean allowing yourself to get stepped on by others for no good reason, perhaps even enabling their destructive behaviors.  When the pleaser mixes with perfectionism, its a recipe for disaster.  Such a person:

1. Walks on eggshells to keep everyone happy
2. Wonders why he/she can't seem to do anything right
3. Feels insecure, lacking confidence
4. Avoids confronting others at all costs
5. Is driven by a list of things he/she "should" or "aught to" do, rather than by love or passion
6. Feels overpowered by others, especially those close to him/her
7. Gets little love from others
8. Feels like running/hiding from life's hassles
9. Is easily manipulated by guilt
10. Feigns approval and consent, even when feeling the opposite
11. Is easily talked into things by whoever last spoke with him/her
12. Is afraid to try new things and take risks
13. Is embarrassed to stand up for him/herself or take initiative
14. Is frequently disrespected

Obviously, every pleaser may not exhibit each of these signs, but even having some of these can be a hindrance to effectiveness and joy in the kingdom of God.  Therefore, some pieces of advice for pleasers, drawn in part from Dr. Leman and in part from my own experiences as a pleaser:

1. Get rid of perfectionism.  You are not perfect: only God is.  He loves you as you are.  Set more realistic goals for yourself and be content with your best, not perfection.  Refuse to bite off more than you can chew.
2. Have compassion on yourself and forgive yourself when you mess up.  God forgives you and loves you: do you think you know better than Him?  Your guilt is gone.  Stop trying to pay for past sins.
3. Don't compare yourself to others.  You aren't them.  You're not supposed to be.  You are supposed to be no one but yourself, because that is who God made you to be.
4. Refuse to subject your self-worth to other people's opinions.  Your valuation comes from God, who first of all conceived the idea of you in His mind before creation and considered you a worthwhile enough endeavor to include you in His finite Creation.  Further, He considered you worth dying for on the Cross.  He is the only one who truly knows you, and so His determination of your value is not open to debate or public opinion.  People may offer their evaluations on how you did at this or that or how you are in this area of your life, but they have no authority to evaluate your worth as a person.  If they do, they are simply wrong.  They value you too lowly.
5. Related to the above: realize that implicit in the command that you love your neighbor as yourself is the command that you love yourself.  Believe no criticism except what comes from God, for the sake of building you up: Satan and the world criticize to tear you apart and leave you in ruins.
6. Before you apologize for anything, make sure it's your fault.  When it is, apologize only once.  If you are forgiven, move on.  If you are not, forgive them for holding a grudge and move on. (I know that this piece will come especially hard for me: it used to be that "I'm sorry" slipped off my tongue as easily as "good morning").
7. Be willing to take credit for what you do right.  You don't have to go fishing for praise, nor should you, but when it comes your way the appropriate response is thank you, not "Oh, really, it was nothing" or "I really should have done thus-and-so instead," or, worst of all "I'm sorry..."  You can, of course, give praise to God for allowing you to do whatever it was, and even tell the other person that (which can be good), but He used you to get it done and (if you believe the Bible) He fully intends to reward you for it--and He is right in doing so.
8. Learn how to say no, especially when people want your help with something.  Understand that your gut instinct will always be to say yes, no matter how much you've already taken onto your plate, but that sometimes the most loving thing to do is to refuse to volunteer for a task you cannot hope to complete, so that someone else can do a better job of it.
9. Remember that you know right and wrong as good as anyone else.  When you feel wronged, let the offender know immediately, if possible.  There's a difference between turning the other cheek and letting someone unintentionally sin against you for years.
10. Do not shirk from conflict when it is necessary.  Realize that sometimes a storm in someone else's ocean of life is the best thing for them.  This is especially true in areas of discipline, correction, and rebuke.  Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do for someone is to slap them in the face when they're acting like a total...well, you know.
11. Don't be ashamed of being a pleaser.  It has its pitfalls, but also its advantages.  Realize that, when you aren't trying to live your life under a stormcloud of other people's/your own unfulfilled expectations, you have a greater ability to perceive the needs of others and act on them with compassion than many of the people around you.  The ability is only available to you when you're not overwhelmed with guilt, self-deprecation, responsibility, and peer pressure, though--so get out from under these by all means so that you can start actually serving and loving the people around you.