Summer Plans

Make this your “Lover-summer.”

That’s what God is telling me now.  That’s what I felt when summer first began, as I ran the last gamut of finals and through the last week of school.  Last year, in Snow Mountain Ranch, was my “Cowboy-summer” (I refer to John Eldredge’s Way of the Wild Heart: which breaks the journey of a man’s soul into five stages: Beloved Son, Cowboy, Warrior, Lover, King, and Sage--with God taking center stage throughout them all).  It was an amazing, wild time there.  A time of going on adventures with God and through the challenges I conquered letting Him whisper to me, You are a man after my heart.  You have what it takes.  It was something essential I needed to hear.  Now it is time for more.  Now it's time to discover God as my lover.

I have loved God and known that He loves me for some time now.  Once it was a novel concept, to learn that the words the Bible had to say about the love of God were more than just words.  The love of God is something real and it applies to me.  It has been a struggle to grasp and accept that.  To be loved by the King of all Kings is no small matter.  In the past, legalism and the resulting guilt and shame have made it nigh impossible to accept His advances due to a sense of unworthiness--which is basically me telling Him I’m a better judge of my character (and His workmanship, which I am) than He is.  Pfft!

Well, legalism no longer marks my spiritual walk.  On the way up to the Rock Retreat, that was overthrown, shown for what it was.  My spiritual life has not settled into a legalistic pattern since.  That’s not to say it’s been perfect.  More like erratic: lots of highs and lows.  It was probably like that before, but before I was often focused on finding and keeping the perfect system to gain and keep God’s love and pleasure (again, pfft!).

I’d like to steady the boat--so to speak--, or at least give it a steady course, but that’s not something I can do from my end.  I tried that lots of times before and always wound up on the wrong tack (all these nautical analogies--me and my Dad are into CS Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, can you tell? J).  Giving direction is God’s part, and He’s very good at it.  What remains for me to do is follow.  Somehow, it’s always harder than it sounds--I think every journey is--, but He gives strength--of every sort that the journey requires.

God has made it clear for some time that He loves me.  He has made it abundantly clear that He is in the business of redeeming, rescuing, releasing, restoring, and pursuing my heart.  It’s not something I talk about a whole lot, except on my blog, in the privacy of my own little corner of the internet (which has been read by people from a dozen different countries--but so far no one I know: “privacy” is a funny word that way).  I’m afraid I’ll sound crazy, and sometimes I think I am.  But His love is very real, everything in reality speaks to it to me.  The only way I can get away is to bury myself in some foolish fantasy, and even that’s no guaranty--He’s a relentless in His pursuit of my heart and sometimes uses very unconventional means to capture it (nothing He hasn’t done before, I’m sure: He’s a veteran at this sort of thing and there is, as the Bible says, nothing new under the sun…still, it’s not the sort of things I heard about in Sunday school!).

This summer, I want to learn to surrender to His love, let it capture every piece of my heart and fill it.  I will follow Him, but not passively.  I must take up arms against every sin and snare that distracts and detracts from His love in my heart, and jealously guard and advance every good thing which grows and illuminates it.  There is much to do, too much, I think, for one summer--but one summer will be a good start.  There will be war, to be sure, for Satan will never let God have anything unopposed and the flesh is a traitor born.  It will be a war on many fronts, but by the grace of God, the blood of Jesus, and the power of the Spirit, we will prevail.

Here’s a preview of some of the enemies I see ahead of me:

Lust - it has tyrannized my sexuality and terrorized me for too long.  It must be shown no quarter, and at the same time no pains should be spared in rescuing my sexuality.  Though I have openly questioned its usefulness and goodness, God has expressed special interest in this part of my heart, as well as those parts of my heart associated with it (which I’ve also had doubts about, of late).  His interest shows importance, and He is always right, even when I can’t see it.

Laziness - it’s an enemy to be fought in several areas, but one in particular.  I hate managing money, but it’s a resource God gave me.  I’ve let this area of my life slip of late and I need to claim it back, as a gift from God.  Passivity must be replaced with proactiveness, though the easy trust I usually have in God for financial things should be preserved.  I also need to be proactive about work--finding it and doing it with all my might.  This, I have found, lightens my heart.

Diversion - here at home with my family, I’ve found we’re gluttons for entertainment.  Today, on the way to church and from church we listened to an audio book and spent the rest of the day watching episodes of an old television favorite.  This past week, I stayed up late playing video games on my PC.  There’s nothing wrong with having fun--in fact, it’s a very vital part of winning my heart--, but entertainment is very big on the promise of fun and very small on the delivery.  Furthermore, it tends to set me in an isolated artificial reality.  I must indulge no more in the unreal world of entertainment and revel in the reality of what God has made--which is a processes sometimes aided by media.  For instance, I’ve found God often uses songs to get right at my heart, with great effect.

Restlessness - I’m always busy doing something, even if it’s nothing.  It’s like a denial-of-service attack on my heart.  While retaining a proactiveness about work, I must daily surrender to the quiet stillness and rest in God’s love there.

Fear - it threatens every front, trying to hold me back and keep me out of the fight.  I cannot give in to it, but I must retain a faithful dependence on God.  With my eyes on Him and not on the storms of life around me, I can overcome fear.

Isolation - it’s always a problem for me during these college summers.  I leave my friends at school and come home, to a place where I no longer seem to belong.  Though I’m still in touch with some friends from high school, we’ve all gone our separate ways and are no longer as close as we once were.  My family is gathered around me, but--as I mentioned before--often absorbed in distractions.  Though each of us has a relationship with God, we don’t ever seem to talk about it except on Sundays.  The deep, daily connections I enjoy at college with brothers and sisters in Christ over spiritual matters do not exist at home or have been allowed to lapse.  It’s easy to accept the isolation, stay in my room, and write ream after ream of my novel, but this just suffocates my heart.  Although it is difficult to run against the status quo of the family, it is necessary to make and maintain these connections.

Jesus at Bethesda

Today’s lesson was on one of Jesus’ miracles, his healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:2-14. It’s about a man—presumably crippled—who’d been lying at the pool hoping for a miracle for 38 years. It was said that the waters of the pool were periodically disturbed by an angel and that the first person into the water after the disturbance would be healed. For years, this man had waited on such a miraculous healing for himself, but since he had no one to help him down into the pool he was always too late.


Jesus approached this man out of the crowd and asked if he wanted to be healed. The man explained the hopelessness of his situation, but Jesus said, “Get up, take up your bed and walk.” And the man did! When he turned around again, though, Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.

Now, some of the Jewish religious elite saw this man wandering around carrying his bed and were none to happy. It was the Sabbath day, you see, and carrying your bed was “work”—a strict taboo on a day that was supposed to be dedicated to the Lord. They demanded that the man stop carrying his bed, but the man replied that the one who’d healed him told him to carry it. “And who’s that?” they demanded. The poor man didn’t know.

Later, though, he happened to meet Jesus at the temple and Jesus gave him a remarkable warning: “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” Then, the man knew who it was who’d healed him.

There are several remarkable points to this story that were touched on in the sermon and that I see. First of all, the story shows how Christ has—and is—hope for the hopeless. The man knows a miracle is his only chance of recovery and has waited 38 years for one. He has lost all hope, as one can tell from his reply in verse 7. Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, and instead of saying, “Yes, I’d love to be healed,” the man can only grumble about the hopelessness of his situation. He has given up and sunk in despair. Yet Jesus hasn’t given up on him. God has not even begun to really move in his life. When He does, it only takes one simple sentence to set the man up on his feet and send him on his way back home. The situation, which is hopeless to man, is a synch to God.

In my own life, there are several hopeless situations. There are sins I can’t seem to beat, goals I can never obtain, and battles I can never win. Some situations are so dauntingly impossible that—more often then not—I shy away from facing them altogether. No doubt you can sympathize. Everyone has their own Goliaths—as a Max Lucado put it—“giant” situations, people, or sins that we can’t seem to face and that delight in lording our hopelessness over us.

But a hopeless situation isn’t hopeless to God. Luke 1:37 and Matthew 19:26 say that to God nothing is impossible. The things that we find impossible are possible to Him. He can enable us to overcome our Goliaths, as He enabled the man—crippled at the end of his line—to pick up his bed and walk away.

Second, the sermon noted the compassion of Jesus on this man. In verse 14 Jesus tells him to “sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” Evidently, his first ailment was caused by sin. In other words, it was the man’s own fault that he was lying there by the pool of Bethesda, needing a miracle. His sin was responsible for his condition. Perhaps the connection was obvious: some affliction particularly associated with the sin he had committed. Perhaps it was circumstantial: a malady that struck him down in the act. Perhaps the connection was only known to him and to God Himself. In any case, both Jesus and the man knew why he was lying by the pool of Bethesda. The man had sinned, he had done wrong: he had screwed up and screwed up his life as a result. Thirty-eight years gone for the sin he’d committed. Perhaps that was just how long it took God to really get his attention. In any case, the man who looks up on Christ at Bethesda that day is a broken man who has no one to blame but himself. He knows it. Christ knows it too…and Christ has compassion on him.

My father asked pointedly if we would do the same. We who are Christians, are we like our Christ? When a drug user has an overdose, when an active homosexual (or adulterer for that matter) contracts AIDS, when a thief is caught, when a murderer is sentenced, a bully is sent home crying, or a habitual liar finds himself friendless and un-trusted…what is our reaction? Do we have compassion, or do we say, “It serves you right”?

This is a hard question because, in one sense our serves-you-right is correct. It does serve a sinner right when his ways catch up with him. God is the one who said, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood must be shed” (Genesis 9:6). God is also the one who made laws against stealing, and punishments for the thief who was caught. He’s the one who handed down laws against every sin of man, and He’s the one who designed our bodies, relationships, and lives in such a way that violating those laws has justly negative consequences. More, we cannot ignore that is the God who created Hell and justly demands it as a punishment of sin. God is not ashamed to see justice done. According to Revelation 14:11 the smoke of the fires of Hell ascends up eternally before God. God does not shy away from doing justice, nor is He ashamed of it when it is done, and neither should we be. So in one sense, when we see justice done on the sinner we should recognize it as a good thing: justice needs to be satisfied. God holiness and greatness are seen when it is so.

But we should not forget compassion. Here Christ has compassion on the man who’s wallowing in the just result of his own sins. Three chapters later, he has compassion on a woman caught in the act of adultery and delivers her from the legal punishment for that crime (although a case can be made in that instance that some of gross injustice was going on—after all the woman was being punished alone even though she was “caught in the very act of adultery” and legally the adulterer and the adulteress were supposed to suffer the same fate, which raises the question: how do a bunch of Pharisees catch a woman alone in the very act of adultery?...very suspicious. No wonder they all left when Jesus asked for an innocent man to throw the first stone). In Matthew chapter 5, verses 44 and 45 commands us to love our enemies, “so that you may be the sons of your Father who is in Heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Earlier in the Bible, God declares: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). God loves even sinners. It is a yearning—sometimes tragic—kind of love. It is that love that sent Christ to Earth…coming for the sinner at the pool of Bethesda, the woman caught in adultery, and the thief on the cross (Luke 23:40-43). But we must also remember that He came for the Pharisees—not to argue with them, but to save them from their sins through His death (and some were saved such as Joseph of Arimathea, Luke 23:50-52)—, and for the Romans who crucified Him. He also came, in the very same way, for His disciples who followed Him through thick and thin three years only to flee on the last night. It is also important for us to remember that He came for us in the exact same way. Whether we think we are better or worse than the people on whom God’s justice falls, we’re wrong. We are all sinners and God died for all of us, to satisfy His justice against us all so that none of us need take the punishment for our sin (Christ has already paid it). We are all wicked. By Christ’s sacrifice, we can all be made righteous. The only difference, then, between the sinners who are punished and the saints who are forgiven is that the latter have by the grace of God accepted and believed what Christ did for them and the former have not. Let us remember that when we see a sinner suffering justly: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Perhaps that will help us have compassion, or at the very least, sympathy.

But here’s another thing to note for ourselves. I know I find it helpful, and I hope you do too: Christ extends the same compassion to the cripple of Bethesda as He does to us today. Many a time, I know I’ve found myself in a bad spot…and known it was all my fault. I’ve found myself rushing to class—already late as I head out the door. And why am I late? Oh, that’s right, because I was playing a game and decided to go one more round when I knew I didn’t have the time (and I probably shouldn’t be playing that game at all)…or I decided to linger over Dilbert (my page-a-day calendar) when I knew I needed to be double-timing it out the door…or stopped to chat with a friend when I knew I should say: “Hey, I’ll see you later!” So, I’m on my way to class, sweating about being late, missing material, and getting docked points…and now is when I turn to God. I’m nervous as I do so. This is the God of the universe here, after all, the One who numbered all my days, the One who has the most cause to be upset with me right now. I don’t lightly turn to Him. It’s not like I screw up my life on purpose and just flippantly throw it at Him and say, “Here! Fix it for me, sugar daddy!” In fact, I’m a little hesitant to turn to Him. I don’t know what to say. When I go to Him, is His just anger at my procrastination all I’ll find? I’m afraid, to tell the truth, but I need help and I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m hopeless once again, and I need Him.

Time and again, I find myself at this crossroads. Mind you, it’s not always—or even mostly—procrastination. Usually, it’s something worse. At times like these, I know what I need to do: I need to turn to my Savior and my God. I know that doing anything else is pointless. I have just one chance, and that’s God. He’s the only one who can pull a victory out of these situations. He’s the only one who can make me the man He wants me to be, the man I need to be if I am to survive.

Sometimes, I wonder if God is up to the challenge, but only briefly. Of course, He can overcome anything: He made everything! At other times I wonder if He cares enough to pull off the necessary rescue. He never lets that doubt endure long: His love is unfailing, unceasing, and often arrives when it is least expected and most needed. The question that haunts me is me. What will I do in response to God? When God calls to me, “Rise, take up your bed, and walk,” will I have the faith to just get up and do it, or will I continue to lay at the side of the pool in despondency? That’s the doubt that keeps me up at night…but this too must be laid aside. It is God who gives us faith and strength, whose Spirit works within us to purify and perfect us. It is Christ who healed the man at Bethesda, despite his hopelessness. Our despair does not dilute His power. May it be seen in me tonight!

Is God a Gorgon?

"But," He said, "You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live."
-Exodus 33:20

The title of this entry is a little tongue-in-cheek.  It plays off of my first perception when I read this verse as a kid.  Here, God is telling Moses how He will show the man His glory, and yet not show him His face.  No one can see the face of God and live, I thought.  So, would someone die if they saw the face of God?  Admittedly, the first image that crossed my mind when I pictured a God with a man-killing face was this:

Okay, so obviously, God is not Medusa!  I do not believe that His face is so ugly it would kill a man to look at it.  But what, then, does it mean when He says that no man can look at His face and live?  I've had that thought nagging in the back of my brain for a while now.

The first thing that occurred to me was that God is holy, and He is also very jealous of His holiness.  There are various examples of His jealous protection of His sanctity throughout the Old Testament.  For example, Uzzah was killed when he touched the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6.  It wasn't that the Ark had a ten-thousand volt divine anti-theft device running through it, nor was it that the Ark was so horrible that just touching it could kill you: it was the holiness of the Ark being avenged by God.  The Ark was very special to God and was to be transported in a very special way, which God had clearly laid out.  David and his men chose to transport it by oxcart instead, and this violation of its holiness lead to a further violation when Uzzah touched the Ark, which God said not to do.  God was not overreacting to some arbitrary standard, He was protecting His Holiness and the Holiness of His things.  A human parallel might be to think of a woman protecting her decency.  If you pat her rump and you're not her husband, she's liable to slap you across the face...because she's protecting the sanctity of her body.

Certainly the same might hold true for the matter of God's face.  Indeed this seems the most likely situation.  A woman would be disinclined to let a pervert live if she caught him trying to peek in her shower.  How much less would the Holy God of all Creation expose His glorious face to sinful creatures of dust?  It is beneath His dignity to allow such, and anyone trying to "peek" on His glory would surely be killed for the offense.

Yet there is something more to this.  If God's only reason for not letting Moses see His face was all consuming jealousy for His holiness, then why are we encouraged (actually, commanded) to seek God's face (Psalm 27:8)?  I had no answer.  Seeing God's face seemed like a bad thing, and not to mention it being punishable by death.  That's not exactly something I want to seek after!  Also, what of the atonement of Christ?  Had He really made me clean and pure in His eyes if He still couldn't stand to let me look at Him?

These questions rattled around in the back of my brain for a long while, until an unexpected connection caused them to settle.  I mentioned in previous post how I'd been playing this online strategy game called Astro Empires.  It was a persistent multi-player strategy game, meaning that when you log off, your virtual empire is still visible to all the other players online, who can hurt it or help it as they please.  At one point (two or three months ago--I've been procrastinating on writing this post), I became quite involved in the game.  I joined a guild with other players online and made some friends there.  My little empire burgeoned and prospered.  It was an idyllic era--though of course, it was all just a game!  Then, unexpected developments occurred in my real life, not only demanding my attention but also promising good things to come.  Seeing this, I decided to quit Astro Empires.  I wrote farewell messages to my friends, and revealed the secret locations of my best bases and worlds to one of them--willing them to him, in a way--before deleting my account and vanishing from the Astro Empire's universe forever.  This is a little like death, isn't it? I thought.  [It was late at night when I did all this, so you will pardon the odd tack my thoughts took, I hope.]  I decided that, in fact, it was.  I was dying to Astro Empires.  I was leaving it's universe forever, along with the people in it and the "possessions" which I'd had.  But I was not the least bit sad to be "dying" so, for I was going to something greater, more worthy, and with a far greater reward.  If this is what dying is really like, dying and going to Heaven, I thought, then it's not so bad.  When my time comes, I imagine I will willingly let go and die to this world, so that I might live with my God in the next.

This brought me to a new way of looking at that verse.  I can point to no scripture which backs it up.  It is not so much an interpretation as a thought, so take it for what it's worth!  But what if God really wanted us to seek His face, but just wasn't willing to show it to us yet--not simply out of holy jealousy, but also because He knows what effect it would have on us?  What if God in His fully glory was such an overwhelmingly beautiful sight that, were a man to catch sight of Him, he would immediately die?  That is, he would instantly recognize God as the greatest, most worthy, and most rewarding thing in the universe--more rewarding, more worthwhile, and greater than life and the universe themselves--, and would thereby immediately resign all the trappings of this life in hope of gaining life with Him?  And would that not be Heaven if that hope was answered?  Would it not be Hell to have it denied?  Perhaps this is what it means to have a God whose face we can--as yet--not see.

Control

This post continues where Perfection and Safety leave off, with the fourth stage of John Eldridge's 6 phases of masculine development, as laid out in his book, The Way of the Wild Heart.


Each of the phases builds on the previous ones.  The Beloved Son must know he is loved or he will not find the heart for adventure as he enters the Cowboy phase.  The Cowboy must know he has what it takes, or he will not find the courage to stand and fight for the good cause of the Warrior phase.


All this brings us to the fourth phase, the Lover.  Eldridge says that the great danger of the Warrior phase, aside from passivity, is that the war become all-consuming.  If the Devil--who orchestrates the opposition at every phase--cannot keep the Warrior out of the fight, he seeks to overwhelm the warrior.  "Dogpile," says Eldridge.  "Make it all about the battle.  One after another.  Constant."  This is why the Lover phase is so important and why it is entered into so soon after the Warrior phase.  The Warrior needs rest and refreshment.  He needs romance.  The source of this is not primarily from a woman, but first and foremost from God.  God romances the lover.  God captivates him with beauty and melts his heart with tokens of affection.  This is what refreshed David and gave him strength in the midst of his battles (Psalm 27:3-4).  A woman does play a role.  Quite often, God uses a woman to awaken the heart of a man.  With his heart awakened by her beauty and romanced by God, the man can fight to awaken her heart and romance her.


The catch is that the man must have his heart awakened.  He must open it to beauty and romance--and to open the heart is to take a risk with the most delicate part of a man's being.  If a man is convinced to shut up his heart, to close it off from the romantic advances of God and the beauty of a woman, the Lover phase is sabotaged.


At one point in his discussion of the finding healing for the Lover, Eldridge pauses and asks the reader several questions, questions he must face before going on.  It is these questions that stopped me and brought me to write these entries.  I needed to understand why these questions where so difficult.

"We cannot control what the Romancer [God] is up to, but there is a posture we can take.  There is an openness to this stage that will enable us to recognize and receive the wooing.  So let me ask--are you willing to let go of your insistence to control, meaning, to allow for a life that exists beyond the realm of your analysis, to let some portions of your life to be impractical, to cease evaluating all things based on their utility and function?  Coming closer to the heart, are you willing to let passion rise in you, though undoubtedly it may unnerve you?  To permit the healing of some of your deepest wounds?  To let yourself be run through with a rapier by Beauty itself?  Are you willing, at some level, to be undone?"

These questions give me pause.  I found I could not but answer them in the negative when I first read them, several hours ago.  I have undoubtedly entered the Lover phase.  I began to be a Warrior many years ago in high school, and it was during my first year at college that I discovered, to my great surprise, that God really loved me.  It was then that I entered the Lover phase.  It was then that I began to be romanced.  I crushed on girls on and off since high school (well, since fifth grade if you want to go all the way back), nothing serious.  It was not until last May that God really started using a woman in my life, to awaken my heart.  Yet my heart remains not fully awakened.  My initiation is not complete.  There are some areas of my heart I have locked down and buried, keeping them from romance and awakening.  I am afraid to let them go.  I am afraid to lose control.


Each phase builds on the previous ones.  So does each mistake.  In my Beloved Son phase, I learned the lie that perfectionism was necessary for acceptance and love.  In my Cowboy phase, I learned the lie that I did not have what it takes: I could not be perfect, I could not be loved.  In my Warrior phase, I learned the lie that I should not even try for fear of hurting myself and others.


In my Lover phase, I took all this and learned the lie that Love is a thing I can never have.  I should not try to get it, as I will hurt others and myself, because I cannot be perfect.  To this I replied with an oath:  Fine.  I will not try to be a lover.  I will protect myself and others the only way I know how: I will lock down my heart.  I will remain in control.




But this is a lie.  I cannot be in control of my heart.  My attempts to rule its desires with an iron rod are the very things that led to their most disastrous outbreaks, namely my struggles with pornography.  I need to relinquish control now, in this phase, and allow my heart to be won, awakened, and melted.  The truth I need to make that decision is the truth I've found through the other phases:

I am deeply loved and cherished by God, just the way I am.
I do not have to be perfect, just do my best.
I have what it takes.
I must try, I must fight, for it is Godly, and I will win.
I must relinquish control and allow the God of the universe to awaken my heart...even and especially using the beauty of the woman He's chosen to help.


More on this to follow...

Safety

Continuing where my previous post, Perfection, left off, I delve into the Cowboy stage of John Eldridge's 6 phases of masculine development.


The Cowboy phase takes place in early adolescence.  It's a time of testing...a time of wild, soloing adventures.  The boy seeks out usually physical challenges, adventures, and dangers to overcome.  He is preparing for his life as a Warrior.  He is trying to find out that he has what it takes to be a man.  In this stage, according to Eldridge, it's important that the boy be released into his adventures.  Obviously, this should not be done recklessly.  One of the things the Cowboy must learn is that, although still the Beloved Son, he is not the center of the universe.  There are certain rules of the road, ways in which the universe operates, and these must be respected...for the consequences of violating the order of things can be serious indeed.


This stage is intimately tied to the Warrior stage.  The Warrior phase runs from late teens through the early twenties, according to Eldridge.  It's a time of missions...of battles to be fought and won.  Often these are not physical, but spiritual.  At this time, the man needs to have a King to captain him.  He needs a cause worth fighting for, and he needs to take heart and fight for it aggressively.


Yet both of these stages can be easily sabotaged.  The Cowboy can be emasculated when he is sheltered, kept safe and sound within the four walls of his boyhood for too long.  When denied adventure and testing, the Cowboy is left with no answer to his essential question: Do I have what it takes?  And thereafter he lacks crucial confidence.  Similarly, the Warrior can be crippled by the assumption that aggression is wrong and the elevation of passivity as a virtue.  With the urge to fight labeled as sinful, the Warrior will fold under pressure, avoid conflict, and leave the messes (his and those of others) for someone else to clean up.


I grew up with two sisters, and my Mom was a strong figure in our lives as children.  Like any Mom, I suppose, she wanted to keep her children safe--which meant that the only adventures I went on when I entered my Cowboy years where in books.  I read every single Gary Paulson book I could get my hands on. I longed to be caught in some struggle for survival alone in the wilderness like Brian from The Hatchet--but as the years went by my family's busyness meant less hiking and tamer camping trips.  We went from tent camping a fifteen minute hike down the trail, where the nearest camper's fires were scarcely visible through the trees, to camping in crowded sites, and then to actually sleeping in a bed in a cabin just off the main road--a progression of luxury and convenience, sure, but not of adventure.  My adolescent years were kept very safe.  Only recently, as I come back from college during the summers, have I had the thrill of solo outdoor adventures: getting lost in the woods (and finding my way again, mind you), braving storms and mosquitoes (I HATE mosquitoes!), exploring underused trails (and having to climb up the backside of dam when I discover just why the trail is underused--it's one way and leads only down!), hiking all five peaks of Snow Mountain, biking from the YMCA to Winter Park and back again....crazy adventures, some just a little stupid.  Yet all very necessary.  Before, I had no confidence in myself.  The safety I'd been sheltered in had answered my question (do I have what it takes?) with an emphatic "no."


Similarly, growing up, I remember that aggression was not encouraged.  Two little sisters are not good playmates for learning positive aggression as a boy.  Little girls just don't want to play war like a little boy does--though God knows I tried!  Usually, I would end up playing Barbie with my little sisters instead.  Of course, I would always try to sneak war in there: my Barbie doll was a secret agent, she was working with the aliens who were going to invade the planet!  That sort of thing got me sidelined during the Barbie-play.  No girl wants an alien invasion to interrupt her playing house.  Such were the realities of growing up as the only boy in the family.  I suppose my Dad could have done something to help, but I'm not sure what.  Instead, my parents helped to cement the idea that aggression was unacceptable in my mind.  I remember in elementary school when Pokémon was a huge fad.  I had never seen an episode of Pokémon, didn't have the cards, and hadn't played the game, but I'd heard about them.  I knew two things: Pokémon were cool animals with magical powers and--most appealingly--they fought.  I decided to grab a stuffed animal and go play Pokémon with my sisters.  My Mom later said she could not recall this episode, but I distinctly remember that at this point she cut in.  She stopped our play when she heard mention of Pokémon because she was concerned they were "too violent."  I was crushed.  Later, I amassed a secret collection of Pokémon cards and became enamored with the game.  Aggression had become the forbidden fruit, at least until I was found out.  This trained me to be passive as a man, a problem I've dealt with here before in a previous post.


So, the lies were thus: You don't have what it takes.  You must stay safe and you must be safe.  If you try to do something aggressively, you will fail and only hurt yourself and others.  I accepted the lies and swore: Fine.  Since I don't have what it takes, I'll just try to keep my head down and just get by.  If I don't have what it takes, I can't be perfect, and I can't be loved.  I won't go for that.  I won't try for anything much.  I'll just hope to get through life without causing anyone any trouble.


My past summer at the Navigators Summer Training Program was really instrumental in reversing this oath and this lie.  It was a Cowboy summer for me, in many ways.  Most of those episodes I mentioned above happened during that summer, out on my own in the wilderness.  There were tough trials, some dangerous moments, but I got through them, and now I know I have what it takes.  It sounds childish to say, but if I can hike all five peaks of Snow Mountain, twice, I can face the battles God has set before me.


There was more than adventure to that summer, though.  That summer I was also the Warrior.  It was not the first time.  My struggle with pornography addiction in high school was what first brought out the Warrior in me.  Yet there, for the first time, the mission minded heart of the Warrior coupled with the confidence of the Cowboy, and the victories I won there, the stands I made--specifically against my oath of passivity--I shall never forget.

Perfection

Looks like you're getting a double feature, tonight, folks!  I'm working through a decision right now, but it will take a couple posts for me to lay out it's complexity before me--which is something I know I need to do before I get to sleep tonight.  It's a question of undoing one of my oaths--an oath I swore at some point without realizing it, based on a lie I swallowed hook-line-and-sinker.  In order to move forward, I must face this, but in order to face this, I must face another oath I made before it.


How's that for an intro?


Okay, so I previously read John Eldridge's Wild at Heart, which I highly recommend.  It is an excellent insightful look into the masculine soul--as it is and as it was meant to be.  These past few weeks, I've been reading his sequel, The Way of the Wild Heart: A Map for the Masculine Journey.  It's all about the phases of development that Eldridge sees in a man's life, and--as before--I've found his insights piercing and accurate.  Basically, he divides a man's life up into 6 more-or-less distinct phases (they overlap and, to some degree, may be present at any time in a man's life, he says).  In each of these phases, there is a particular thing the developing man needs and a lesson he must learn in order to properly progress.  Each phase builds upon the one before it, and a problem in one phase may be magnified or lead to other problems in later phases.  The phases themselves are fairly self-explanatory.  They are: the Beloved Son, the Cowboy, the Warrior, the Lover, the King, and the Sage.  Right now, I'm halfway through reading about the Lover phase--a little over halfway through the book (yes, I'm a slow reader), but I find I must address what I've found in reading over the previous phases before I get to the dilemma my current reading has uncovered in my life.  For this entry, I'll focus on the Beloved Son phase.


The Beloved Son phase, as Eldridge calls it, is the early childhood years of a boy.  As I said, it's fairly self-explanatory: during this phase what the "Beloved Son" most needs to know is that he is deeply loved by his father.  Other people--his mother, his friends, his siblings--no doubt also play a role, but for Eldridge the love of the father is critical.  This fatherly love gives the boy a deep affirmation and sense of self-worth (not pride, there's a difference--as I have had to learn the hard way), which he will need as he progresses through the other phases.    But nothing on this earth is perfect.  No father can perfectly assure his son of his love, and many do just the opposite.  Rather than treasuring the boy's heart, they abuse and shut it down, effectively sabotaging the rest of his journey.  Thankfully, we serve a God who adopts us as His sons, and teaches us to address Him as our Father.  This isn't some divine whim of a title, but an indication of who He means to be to us: a Father.  Where our earthly fathers loved us imperfectly, or not at all, He loves us perfectly and cherishes us as His sons.  He is a God of second chances, and He is in the business of fathering us again.


That being said, I was fortunate in my own childhood.  My Dad really loved me, and does love me, I'm sure.  He was a good Christian man and tried to father me and my sisters the best he could--better than his father, who was often absent from his life.  I love him and respect him as a man.  Yet no one is perfect, and he is no exception.


I tell everyone that I learned to read on the King James Version of the Bible, complete with all the "thees" and "thous"--and all the verbs ending in "eth."  It's true!  By the time I went to Kindergarten at public school and was introduced to Spot ("See Spot run" etc), I was already used to reading Shakespearian-era English with my family every night ("Behold, Spot runneth upon the fields and leapeth upon the mountains of the wilderness").  Every night, we would all gather together in the living room and read the Bible together in the old KJV.  Each of us would take turns, with my parents taking the longer and more complex parts of the passage and splitting the rest between the three of us kids, according to age and experience.  If we came to a word of phrase we didn't know, we'd ask about it, and my Mom and Dad would gently walk us through it or pronounce it for us.  But when we later came across the same word and stumbled again, we were in trouble.  Despite being less than five years old and new to reading, we were expected to recall the words that had been explained to us before.  This was simply not realistic, though.  I can recall on one occasion staring dumbfounded at the word "the"--having made it through all these larger and less familiar words only to draw a blank here!  To my parents, this was not acceptable, or perhaps not believable.  They said we were being stubborn, that we just didn't want to read.  They would demand that we read the problem word correctly and continue our part of the passage.  Yet, speaking for myself, I was almost always genuinely stumped.  I was already embarrassed and confused by this mysterious word, and their anger wasn't helping!  It went over the top, for me.  When I, or either of the girls, continued to "refuse" to pronounce the problem word (again, usually due to inability), we would be punished by being made to stand in a corner while the rest of the family read on.  We would only be let out of the corner if we agreed to (and were actually able to) pronounce the word.  I remember spending many a session staring at the wall with silent tears streaming down my face, struggling to remember the mysterious word and figure out how to pronounce it, knowing that that was my only ticket out of the corner--no amount of pleading would change my parents' minds.


Now, I can only guess what my Dad was thinking.  Probably he just meant for me to have a healthy respect for God's word and not be lazy with my abilities--all based on the assumption that I actually could read those words in the first place.  Yet to me, the message was very different.  The message I received while staring at the corner and crying silent, angry, hurt tears to myself was this: When it comes to God and intellectual things (especially), you must be perfect to be accepted.  No one will help you.  You are alone.  If you are not perfect, you will not be loved.  You are not worthy of love.  This was the lie.  My Dad really had no idea he was driving at perfection in me.  He just wanted me to do my best, and if he thought I'd needed help, he would have offered it.  Though I find it difficult to accept even today, I think he loved me even when he put me in the corner, still saw me as his prised son.  But I did not see this from him.  I accepted the lie and responded by making an unconscious oath that went something like this:  Fine.  I'll be perfect.  I'll do everything in my spiritual and intellectual life on my own (no one will help me) and I'll do it all perfect, all the time (for if I slip up, I won't be loved: I'll be unworthy of love).


For years thereafter, this oath has dominated my life.  I became academically driven, and always worked on my projects alone, always striving for perfection.  Thankfully, the ties between my academic life and my oath were not very strong, mostly because my Dad impressed upon me the importance of doing my best academically, and explicitly said that my best, and not perfection, was all he expected of me academically.  His love and affirmation through my school struggles helped me let go of the intellectual side of my oath, by and large.  But the spiritual side remained.  I would say I was, and am, driven to perfectionism in my spiritual life.  My spiritual life, I'd say, has historically been my number one source of stress and anxiety.  It's not because I have a super-close relationship with God: for years I couldn't even imagine that my spiritual life was supposed to be a relationship.  For me, it was always a prerequisite for love and acceptance.  I will be perfect.  I will do my reading in the Bible today.  I will say my prayers, just the way I'm supposed to.  I will not question, I will not doubt.  I will not have sinful thoughts or desires or temptations, just holiness.  I will be perfect, and then God will see me as worthy and accept me and love me.




Needless to say, this didn't work out, and if you're familiar with this blog, you've read some of my wrestlings with this before from entries like "Why Does God Love His Saints?"  It was especially painful for me when I entered into my teenage years and I began to struggle with so-called "soft" pornography.  I had labeled sexual sins as the dirtiest sins a man could commit, the very worst ruins his spiritual life could come to, and here I was committing them!  I am sooo imperfect! I remember thinking.  God could never love me!  It was thoughts like that which cast a dark cloud of depression over my teenage years, a cloud which only began to clear when I entered college.  Even there, it wasn't all over.  I was still a spiritual perfectionist.  I was never satisfied with my relationship with Christ.  I wanted to do something more, read more, pray more, do more.  I knew my performance wasn't ever perfect, I wanted to make it so, and when I failed, I felt sure that God couldn't love me any more.


So, the weekend before last, I was riding up into the beautiful Rocky Mountains with my Bible study group.  We were going to spend the weekend at a cabin on Lake Granby.  I was reading The Way of the Wild Heart on the trip up and I'd just gotten through the chapters on the Beloved Son.  At the end of the chapters, Eldridge asks the reader to invite God to show him how his time as the Beloved Son was interrupted, cut short, violated, or neglected--and to invite Him to be his Father and heal him in that area.  I remembered my times in the corner, and I knew that was my wound from that phase.  God opened my eyes to how I was a spiritual perfectionist, and where that came from, how I saw it as a prerequisite for love and how it made my spiritual life about doing "Christian" or "religious" things rather than having a relationship with Him.  "From now on, you have no spiritual life," He said to me (not audibly), "Just a relationship with me, in your real life...in all its imperfection."  I felt relief.  A huge burden to perform for love had been lifted from my shoulders.


It was then that a song came on the radio (I was riding with a man addicted to music, he refused to give up on the signal even when we drove through the dead zones of Grand County).  It was "More" by Matthew West, and it was the first time I'd ever really listened to the song.  I'd heard it before several times, but it always made me cringe inside.  I really only caught the first line of the chorus, you see, and I thought it was: "I love you, Lord!"  I thought the whole song was some perfectly spiritual guy belting out his extreme love and performance to a delighted and accepting God--who would naturally never delight in imperfect me.  I could not have been more wrong!  A Youtube video of the song accurately introduces it as "A love song, from God to you."  It's written and sung from the perspective of God, delighting in us, in me!  To hear it melted my heart and made me misty-eyed.  Just thinking of it has the same effect!  The lyrics are chalk full of special expressions of God's love to me.  It was all so very personal.  For example, the song starts out with "Take a look at the mountain/ Stretching a mile high...and think of me"...as I'm looking at mountains, which never fail to enchant me with their mystery and beauty.  God, of course, knew that and took full advantage of it.  There's another, harder to explain and more personal in the chorus, where it says, "I love you more than the sun and the stars that I taught how to shine.  You are mine and you shine for me too."  So, several years ago, as a budding young romantic (with, for that moment, no particular woman to be romantic with), I saw the movie "Stardust"--on the whole an okay movie: excellent cinematography and fantasy, but loose sexual morals, nudity, and crass humor.  In any case, what captured my interest in the movie was the young couple, Tristin and Yvaine.  Yvaine is a star in the form of a young woman and when she's happy and in love, she shines, literally glows!  In a sappy romantic way, I saw that and thought, Awww, wouldn't it be sweet if I could make a girl's heart shine like that someday?  Later, I began seeing the parallel between God's relationship with me and a romantic relationship (more on this in To Walk with Him in White and Of God and the Gender Gap), and I wondered: does God want to make my heart "shine"?  Is that even possible, or am I just a dull clod?  This song was His way of answering those questions.


There is one final, but very pertinent part of the song I must touch on:

Just a face in the city
Just a tear on a crowded street
But you are one in a million
And you belong to me!
And I want you to know,
That I'm not letting go
Even when you come undone!

This speaks directly to my wound.  I know I'm not perfect.  I'm not a super-Christian.  I picture myself--optimistically, as riding somewhere in the middle of the pack (when I picture the Christian life as a race of religious perfectionism--which is admittedly a wrong image).  Sure, God loves me, I think, but He loves a lot of other, better, people too.  I figure I get lost in the shuffle and kind of slip into Heaven's nose-bleed section.  But that's not how God sees it.  Though I'm imperfect, I'm "one in a million" to Him: precious, treasured, accepted, beloved!  And this is not dependent on my performance.  He never let's go, He never gives up or stops loving (or even moderates His love)...even when I come completely undone!


It will be difficult giving up my perfectionism and learning to live with God in a genuine relationship, accepting His love--which I so desperately need--into the imperfect parts of my life I see as unlovable.  But I'll make it. I have an excellent, determined, and strong Father who loves me very much, just as I am!

From the Inside Out

In my reading yesterday, I came across these two verses:

“For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.”                 --Romans 2:28-29 (ESV)

These words of Paul wrap up his chapter long discourse in Romans 2 on how the Jews are not superior to the Gentiles, but that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In first century Christianity, this was a huge deal. Christianity, at that time, was still largely a Jewish sect. It had begun to accept Gentile (non-Jewish) converts, through the work of Peter and the missionary journey’s of Paul, but some Jewish Christians weren’t entirely comfortable with this. They clung to Jewish superiority and insisted that any Gentile who converted would also have to become a Jew--most notably by undergoing circumcision.

Today, Christianity is--on the surface--very different. It is certainly no longer thought of as a Jewish sect, and I doubt that there’s anyone out there preaching that circumcision is necessary for salvation--or even for being a good Christian--any more. In light of all that, it would be easy to dismiss Paul’s remarks as irrelevant to us today.
But I think God can still teach us a thing or two from these old words. Looking again at this passage, I can see an underlying similarity between these verses and some of the situations we face today. Just replace Jews with Christians and circumcision with whatever ritual, attitude, or work you think of as the measure of a Christian. Since baptism is a common one, I’ll use that. The resulting paraphrase begins:

“For no one is a Christian who is merely one outwardly…”

There’s a whole lesson right there. A lot of “Christians” in the world today are only outwardly or nominally Christian…but let’s go on:

“For no one is a Christian who is merely one outwardly, nor is baptism outward and physical. But a Christian is one inwardly and baptism is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.”

There are a couple of important points here. First of all, an outward, physical ritual--by itself--is meaningless. Just because someone was baptized, it doesn’t mean they’re a Christian, or even a better Christian. All it necessarily means is that they got very wet. The same could be said of any “Christian” thing we do. It is possible for communion to merely fill the stomach. Reading the Bible makes one well-read, but not necessarily more spiritual. Prayer can be empty words that bring the speaker no closer to God. The list goes on and on. None of the things that we, as Christians, do--none of the things that I find myself judging myself and others on so frequently--really matter. In and of themselves, they are empty.
What’s important is our hearts. God is not after a bunch of wet, well-fed, well-read people who talk to empty space. He may well start out with that, but He is not content with it. He is after our hearts. That is the only thing that matters to Him, because He loves us.
All of these things are important, if they effect the heart. True baptism isn’t about getting someone wet. It does not matter whether the person is baptized as an infant, a child, or an adult, by sprinkling or full immersion, in a church, at a youth camp, at home, or in a cattle pond. What matters is that they make in their heart an inward commitment, between themselves and the Spirit, to obey Christ and give their lives to Him, dying to themselves and their old ways by His power and living a new life with God. True communion isn’t about eating bread and drinking wine (or grape juice). It’s about remembering in your heart that Christ died for your sins, giving His body to be broken and His blood to be shed to bear the penalty for your sins. Reading the Bible isn’t about absorbing information and achieving page counts. It’s about letting the Spirit of God speak to your heart through the words He inspired in centuries past. Prayer isn’t about what you say or how you say it. It’s an attitude of the heart, pouring out all your heart to God and trusting that He cares for each piece--good and bad. It’s about sharing with Him your troubles, joys, frustrations, and sorrows, from the heart, and asking for His help (or praising Him) for each of them. This brings us to the last part of the passage:

“His praise is not from man but from God.”

Man can only see what’s on the outside. Other people will judge you based on that. If you’re not doing the things they think you should, or doing them enough, or in the right way, they may well judge you negatively. They may think you’re less of a Christian, or they may think you’re not a Christian at all. That doesn’t matter. You don’t need their approval. Your praise doesn’t come from human lips, or thoughts. It comes from God. God sees the heart. If your heart is right in His eyes, if your love for Him is genuine and strong, He’ll know. He’ll praise you (isn’t that a thought!). It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the outward trappings other people think you should have. You’re not here to please them. You’re here to please God. Certainly, there will be outward trappings to your faith, but these should flow from the inside out, as God changes your heart. Otherwise they are forced and faked. If, on the other hand, your life is full of outward trappings that others clamor to praise, and yet your heart toward God remains--or has become--cold and weak, God also knows. His praise is your only purpose, the only lasting reward, and it cannot be gained by outward performance. Go to Him for a change of heart!