Annie Dilliard writes about the experience of going to church and being caught up in the wonder of God’s sense of humor, for what else would account for His tolerance of the off-key voices and humanly-limited actions that we call a worship service? Doesn’t He deserve so much more than we could ever offer, and yet He puts up with our best attempts, and we deign to think these attempts at worship might be called good.
It is a fundamental flaw, really, to think that a human mind could ever really know God, and yet our perception of Him is constrained by just that, our very limited minds. The simple reality of our situation leaves us in a bit of a pickle. We can try to understand God through His word, but even that is limited to our own ability to understand and interpret.
Some of the biggest mistakes we ever make are done in full knowledge about what God has to say about our actions, wrapped inside a bubble of what we have convinced ourselves He really meant. How many times have you heard a cheating spouse OK her actions by claiming that God wants her to be happy? How many people explain their religion to you according to what “feels right?”
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord,” in Isaiah 55:8. God does not think like us nor act like us. So, why are we always trying to reason out what God is up to as if He was the keeps-to-himself neighbor in the creepy house at the corner of the street? Why do we think He would ever want us to do something that goes against what He has said, like loving Him above all else rather than putting fancy jewelry or cars before the work of feeding widows and orphaned children just because we are trying to “feel good,” and wouldn’t God want that?
The Spirit of truth can only speak to us if we are constantly in preparation for hearing what that Spirit has to say, even the words we least want to hear. God does things in His own time and in His own way, and we will not understand it, no matter how many words we write, or inspired movies we create, or lies we tell ourselves are real.
The Greeks envisioned the gods as superheroes who shared the same emotions as us humans, but amped to the ninth power. These gods were jealous, wrathful, petty, capricious. Only when the Jews claimed one, true and only God, did mankind begin to conceive of a God above the emotions of man, a God who was constant, consistent, and true.
We have used our understanding of God to validate wars, affairs of the heart, and our own plain meanness of spirit. Yet, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts. Ultimately, we understand what He wants us to understand, know what He wants us to know. If we do not test our knowledge of God through extensive Bible study, sincere prayers, and the validation of our thought processes through sharing with fellow Christians, then what we know is not only not what God knows, it is less than nothing.
Category: Christian Living
Keeping Your Eye On The Prize
We know God in the quiet places, on sunny, Spring afternoons near creeks that bubble with birds singing and a gentle breeze gliding over us.
We know Him in the dark of our closets, on bended knees, our needs expressed without words, our oneness with the Spirit wrapped in our breath.
We know God in the morning, when we wake to yet another day and thank Him for the grace of that present, the only gift, besides our salvation, for which we can be truly thankful.
We know Him when the world that changes rocks us to our very core, and we are floundered but for the safety of His wings.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
Reality vs. Real
Did you ever consider that a lot of people would face life with fewer difficulties if they didn’t live as if their lives were some kind of reality TV show? In reality TV, life never has a dull moment. If someone isn’t throwing a party, somebody else is planning a trip for all her friends to an exotic location where interesting activities and fancy dinner parties abound. And then, if people are not laughing together, they are picking one person in the group to dislike and pick on, until everyone is talking on top of everyone else. Drama abounds. And all the boring parts, like the daily activities required to actually live, get edited out.
If we watch these reality glimpses of life that are actually produced and scripted almost as much as a television drama without understanding that what they show isn’t actually real, then we are left with an impression of life that is dangerously distorted. In a truly real world, people may often get together, but not on private planes or for thousand dollar dinners. The drama in reality TV does not reflect a life lived solving problems with more than just gut reactions and emotional responses. Drama is so readily available in that quasi-life because people are not grounded in God, but in material possessions, a desire to be noticed, and lots of alcohol.
But Hollywood, with all its special lighting and sound effects, has a way of making anything look desirable. Somehow, we slip into the illusion along with the players on the television screen that what they are portraying is a magical, fun-filled and fulfilling life. But real life, not reality life, doesn’t need the drama fed by alcohol or back-stabbing or putting money before everything else.
Real life is most fulfilling when it is centered on God’s principles, seeks to love others instead of finding fault with them and enjoys each day to its fullest potential, which means actually smelling the roses and remembering from Whom they come.
Too much of anything is not usually good. Watch HGTV all day, and you suddenly need to redecorate your house. Watch the Housewives, and you live a dull life with nothing interesting to do. But if you take the time to watch yourself instead, you may just discover there are many gifts from God each day, loving friends, and small actions you can take that might just make a big difference in somebody else’s life.
Reality may sometimes seem enticing, but give me real any day. The ever-changing nature of life itself is all the drama anyone needs. Forget the created drama that is the current television rage and embrace real life for the better. What a change!
Tiny Steps Make Great Feats
I have a friend who shares my proclivity to demand perfection of ourselves and the grand ability to beat ourselves up when we fall far short of the over-reaching goals we have set for ourselves. Lately, our conversations have circled around the concept of “magnificence.” In other words, we are trying to make it OK for ourselves that we are not going to be “magnificent.”
Then, I have to stop us. Whenever we make statements like this, we are shortchanging ourselves in so many ways. First, we are denying the truth behind what we define as magnificent. Of course, our definition is much too tied to the ways of this world. Because we haven’t made millions or written the country’s greatest novel, we are failures in our own eyes. That definition, in itself, though, is a failure in the eyes of God, who even when He came to earth in the form of man, did not seek stardom, even shunning the crowds that thronged toward Him as much as possible at times, asking those He had healed to keep the event to themselves.
This is when we are better served to remind ourselves that God’s version of magnificence is a tiny mustard seed, which, once planted, can be nurtured by the Spirit into a truly wonderful plant. Our actions aren’t the thing that make the end result, however. God is interested in the mustard seed size actions we take that, culminating together, create the final, magnificent result.
Maybe our small actions are simple things like holding open a door, smiling to those we meet, or stopping to help someone change a flat tire. Perhaps they are actions that are a little more involved like making a meal for someone who is ill, or cleaning house for someone who cannot do the job him/herself. Maybe the action is being privileged enough to be the first person to share her gospel experience with a person who has never had the opportunity to know Jesus.
When I look out my back window and watch the robins and cardinals and squirrels scampering in my backyard, a plethora of color and motion that reminds me what it means to be peacefully human, I sometimes think about the ways that God speaks to us in just as tiny a motion as the mustard seed He also requires. Hasn’t He more often been a whisper in the wind than earth-shattering thunder?
It’s hard to re-define success in a world surrounded by capitalistic ideals, but my friend and I keep on trying, holding each other accountable for the moments when we berate our mustard seed actions and long for superhero status. The prideful will be humbled, God warns us. We do our best each day to humble ourselves before we need to be humbled. Paying attention to our mustard seed actions is a good way to stay on the right side of humility. I’m getting older, and my knees can’t take another fall.
A Christian Bucket List
Some of us are list makers. We have to-do lists for every day, week, or month. We make to-do lists to plan vacation packing, school year supplies, or medical testing. We even have the honey-do lists for our spouses.
Do you have the list that is brown with age, that crinkles when you unfold it? The list you made when you were seven or ten or twenty-one? The bucket list of items you hope to do before you die, from seeing the Eiffel Tower to hiking the Grand Canyon?
But what about a Christian’s bucket list? What should it entail? Paul’s letter to the Colossians offers several important things to consider when creating your own bucket list. “Set your mind on things above,” he advises, “not on earthly things” (3:2). This axiom seems like simple enough advice, until you read his further definition of those things above as opposed to the things of this world.
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry,” Paul admonishes (3:5). For those who have died to the earthly nature when they asked for Christ to be their Savior and now walk with the Indwelling Holy Spirit, these may seem like big picture evils that are usually on the radar to avoid. But for God, all sins are equal. Only we humans have graded them as better or worse.
Paul makes the extent of our requirements to the good even more specific when he writes, “But now you must rid yourself of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (3:8-10). The bar is raised to what can only seem impossibly high standards to mere mortals, but which is all possible through Christ.
Does your bucket list include to-dos like kind words, good deeds, self-sacrifices, and speaking in truth? Does it include volunteer work and using the gift(s) God gave you for the purpose to which He gave it? If my eyes are truly on things that are above, will it really matter if I see Disneyland as long as I have a neighbor who is hurting and needs my help? Shouldn’t my greatest glory be God’s greatest glory?
That’s easier said than done in a world where those who have material things are looked upon with awe and wonder. But when we realize that material things are meaningless to God, just think of the peace of mind and the endless opportunities that open up for us on this earth, and in the heavenly kingdom to come.
Choose Life to the Full
“I have come,” Christ tells us, “that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Sitting in Sunday service and hearing this verse read to me, a verse surely I have myself read more than a dozen times, I was struck by a sort of ‘ah-ha’ moment. As I have mentioned before, I am a person who struggles with high anxiety and perfectionism, both of which rob me of a life to the full. Let me clarify that. I allow these issues to rob me of life to the full. But hearing this verse from John that Sunday morning, I really heard that Christ does not want me to have a life limited by my mental issues, but a life to the full.
As always, when I come to a conclusion based on a Bible verse, I know that I cannot jump to too many conclusions without first sitting that verse up against the entire context of God’s word. In this case, that approach meant starting a search for how God defines a life to the full, for we know that a definition based on human desire would include things that are not important to God, like a better car or Egyptian cotton sheets.
I started my search in Proverbs, where I know that the writer propounds on what makes a wise life and found instruction such as maintaining prudent behavior and doing what is right and fair. I pretty quickly zoomed over to the Sermon on the Mount, where I found many insights into Christ’s version of life to the full. The Beatitudes tell us what comes from a life to the full: comfort, mercy, filling, and belonging to God and His kingdom. Life to the full glorifies God through good deeds, forgives and does not hold onto anger, understands that God alone is in control of what will happen, gives when asked, and follows the Golden Rule. Life to the full does not include worry, but leans on God and knows to live in this day, which has troubles and challenges enough to fill it.
My life to the full means not allowing worry or anxiety to keep me from helping others, from glorifying God by enjoying a bright day, or from doing what is right according to God’s rules. I am finding that when I give myself credit for times when I have shown courage in dealing with situations that make me anxious, I can become better at handling future situations. My new mantra is I have courage. It sounds silly, but if I really say this to myself enough times during a tough situation, I find that I really do feel better.
God wants me to have a life to the full, but that doesn’t mean I am off the hook. It doesn’t just get handed to me. I need to live a Christ-like life, and I need to do my best to conquer my demons. Knowing God has plans for me to live to the full helps in the daily battle that is living. I pray it helps you, too.
Tales from the woodshed
Okay, I’ve never actually been taken to the woodshed. I may even be part of the last generation that even knows what the phrase means exactly. But being taken to the woodshed isn’t exactly what this entry is about.
The one thing I am an expert at is taking myself to the woodshed. I visit it several times a day, and on really bad days, I take a pillow and blanket and hanker down for the duration.
The problem with this situation is two-fold: I waste valuable energy beating myself up for things that really aren’t that important, and I fail to see myself through God’s eyes, failing to see my really important flaws and missing out on all the love that God has to offer.
When I am in the woodshed, I don’t give myself credit for being human. Any mistake in my job or in my interactions with others only proves my unworthiness or stupidity.
At the same time, the woodshed gives me a sort of martyr perspective, where I spend so much energy on lashing myself about things that don’t matter, that I don’t realize I have fallen victim to pride, judgmentalism, or any number of loveless acts that ultimately fail God. The woodshed can be a very self-centered place, where you become so wrapped up in yourself, even if that focus is negative, you don’t even realize you’ve stopped thinking about others in a Golden Rule kind of way.
One thing a woodshed view can do for you is make you quick to judge: yourself as well as others. When you spend all day rushing to judgment about your own actions, it isn’t long before you are doing the same thing about other people without even realizing it. Does everybody have to live the same way you do? Are they required to make the same decisions or pursue a task in the same way? In the woodshed, you tend to forget that the answer to these questions is “no.”
When I started thinking about this topic, I asked myself, “what does God say about the woodshed?” Of course, He wants us to remove the beam from our own eyes before worrying about the specks in others’ eyes. But, do His beams include taking two hours instead of one to finish a project, or not having the best figure in the world, or worrying about getting your car or house fixed?
God also makes it clear throughout the Bible that He is the ultimate and only true judge. Paul’s ministry is based on the understanding that only through grace, received from God through the death and resurrection of Christ, do we receive salvation. Our acts do not earn us our salvation. It is a gift. This fact is a lucky thing too, for in his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds us that we “all have fallen short of the glory of God.” No matter how hard we try, none of us will ever be perfect.
That doesn’t keep us from trying to be Christ-like. One true sign of the full acceptance of Christ is our desire to be Christ-like. But the woodshed just isn’t Christ’s style. He was always truthful, always firm, but never cruel. Think about His encounter with the woman at the well or the rich young man.
I made a goal this year to try to keep myself out of the woodshed, which should make me less judgmental of myself and others. This is a goal that requires discipline on my part. I have to replace woodshed moments with encouraging words for myself and others. I have to envision a large STOP sign when I find myself thinking woodshed thoughts. I have to pray to turn my mind to the things that are important to God and not to me.
Writing about it helps me realize how damaging my woodshed moments can really be. I hope that any others who find themselves in the same situation discover their own, positive ways out. With God’s help, it’s something we all can do.
De-coding our prayers
In the good old days when I taught English composition to reluctant classes of grumbling college freshmen, I used a core concept to try to explain the importance of detail in writing which I called the “code word.”
Code words are those general ideas or phrases that we say all the time that carry much more meaning for us than just the word alone implies. Think of it like Hemingway’s iceberg theory, where the reader only sees the tip when the bulk of meaning is beneath the surface. Of course, the method of minimalism works just fine for a brilliant writer like Hemingway. In the hands of an untutored writer, a code word is just a general idea with no foundation or substance at all. Think of sentences like, “the book was really cool and made me think” with nothing else there to back these conclusions up.
To help my students understand a bit better what I meant by this concept, I would use the example of our prayers. In our prayers, we use codes, or shortcuts, all the time. God is, after all, omnipotent. He, at least, knows what we mean when we say “take care of Timmy,” or “keep us safe.”
As I reminisced about this practice earlier this week, I began to wonder if our own code words in prayer really serve us well at all. Do you find yourself repeating the same phrases each time you pray? Didn’t Jesus once scold those around Him who relied on meaningless repetition in prayer, which only keeps us further away from a meaningful relationship with God? After a while, do your own coded prayers really mean anything to you at all, or are they just good luck rituals, mantras with a seemingly positive meaning but very little power?
De-coding our own prayers can be just as difficult as writing more specifically always seemed to be for my students. You can’t just hit the highlights and move on, assuming God knows it all anyway. That strategy works in certain moments when we are so anguished all we can manage is a cry of “Abba,” but what about our day-to-day discussions with the Almighty?
If we take the time to spell out our hopes, fears, desires, and needs, will we not discover more about ourselves? In the end, what exactly do we want to be kept safe from? What dangers should we ourselves be looking out for? If we find ourselves only coming up with material wishes when we pray with specifics instead of codes, what does that tell us about our own need for spiritual growth?
At the same time, don’t you think that a God who goes to such great lengths to know and be known by His children would want to hear us take the time and effort to verbalize as specifically as possible what we want to say to Him? Are code words really the best we can do? Since God only deserves our best, I think we should take it to that next level.
So, it’s time to de-code, step up to the challenge and speak to God like we really believe He is there and listening. You may just be surprised what you learn about yourself and your prayer life if you do.
And you’ll write a killer college essay, should the need ever arise.
Pleading the Fifth?
One of my mother’s most cringing stories from her childhood involves the time when she got caught trying a smoke for the first time and was dragged to the front of the entire congregation that Sunday by her mother (who smoked, by the way) to confess her sin.
But she never took up the habit.
My Bible reading this week included James 5, where we are reminded that we are forgivable and are therefore instructed to “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. . . .”
I could be wrong, but I think it may be hard to find a church body where sins are regularly confessed amongst each other. I’m not saying the modern church doesn’t support each other. I am saying that even in a small modern church, not to mention the huge, popular churches that are the sizes of some small towns, it would be difficult to find an environment in which we could be so vulnerable. What would we do if we spent a chunk of each time together exposing the core of what makes us human? What would it do for us to hear our own sin confessed before fellow travelers, witnessing in their eyes the compassion and horror that we should feel about ourselves as we fall short of God?
What would happen, for instance, if one part of service involved everyone speaking aloud their sins of the past week, a cacophony of confession that only a God as powerful as the One we claim could understand? The idea brings to mind the gathering of the Israelites in the book of Nehemiah. The people have been scattered from their homeland under the Babylonians for generations. Finally, under the Persians, they are allowed to return to their homeland and begin to rebuild their temple and their defensive walls around the city of Jerusalem, not without tremendous obstacles. As the work is being completed, the entire community gathers to read the Law and confess their sins, standing for hours as Nehemiah leads them in this group effort at redemption.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you were made to utter something aloud that you hesitated to speak about? Why did you hesitate? When you finally said the words, how did you feel? Did the world end? Did whatever you feared actually happen, and was it as bad as you thought?
God wants us to confess our sins to Him. Through Christ, we are promised forgiveness when we truly repent, no matter what we have done. Have you truly repented of something that you haven’t said aloud to yourself, much less somebody else?
And just what is the end result of all this confession? James tells us that, too, at the end of verse six: “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
“No man is an island” as the poet says. We all function more effectively in community, even when it comes to doing one of the hardest things a human ever does, admitting when we are wrong.
Wherever two or three believers gather, He is there. Can you find just one more person of belief this week to share your confessions with, as James admonishes? Think about what kind of difference it could make for you and for the person with whom you share.
Time to Grow
How many times do you make a big decision in your life and only remember to pray about it afterwards? Even when you pray about big decisions you are trying to make, how much of the “answers” you receive are really just a reflection of what you wanted all along? How do we know that we’ve gotten any kind of true answer at all?
I think about these issues when I am faced with life’s big questions–new house, new job, relationships, big expenditures–but what about the everyday decisions I make so quickly, I wonder if I thought at all? Do daily prayers that include generalized statements like, “Your will be done,” really cover the bases?
Sometimes, I envy those who lived in the time of the ancients when signs from God were an actual occurrence for the truly faithful, like dew on fleece or the discernible whisper in the wind. I do not envy those living in the four hundred years of silence between Malachi and the arrival of Christ. How desolate life must have been when God kept Himself from even the prophets, especially in a world not yet saved by the blood of Christ.
But in a world where we have daily access to the great Intercessor, how human of us to take that great gift for granted. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” How many times do we hear an answer from God that our heart has actually given us instead? If we do not temper our decisions with a strong foundation in the actual word of God, peacefully studied throughout life so that when moments of upheaval which call for decisions to be made actually come we are duly prepared, we will be more than vulnerable to the trap of thinking with our heart and not the Spirit that should truly guide us. Those who think with the heart believe they are validated in hurting others when they too are miserable, jumping out of marriages, for example, because God would want them to be happy. As Philip Yancey has pointed out, among other great Christian writers I am sure, God is not interested in our happiness so much as our salvation. The narrow road is often much less happy than the wide path, but much more peaceful in the end, and full of wonder.
Growth in life cannot come without pain, for how would we really understand joy if we had not also experienced loss? But growth also cannot come without being wholly committed to God, everyday, with every decision, in thankfulness for the Holy One.
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