Not always so nice and pretty....

In the beginning there was a couple named Adam and Eve.  They lived a perfect life in Paradise.   That is until one day they ate the wrong piece of fruit and God kicked them out of Paradise...forever.

There was a man named Noah.  God told him to build a really big boat (but it was smaller than some boats we build today).  He told Noah that his family could come on board as well as two of most animals and more of some others, everyone and everything else would die in a flood.  That's right, every dinosaur, every bird, every animal, every man, every woman, every smiling, cooing, newborn baby...all dead.  And now this story is used as a decoration motif for infant's nurseries.

There was a man named Abraham, God told him he would have a son with his wife Sarai.  Abraham married Hagar also and had a son with her, Ishmael.  God told Abraham that wasn't the son He had in mind so he was to send both of them into the desert...alone...they could not return...

There was a man named Moses.  One day God told Him to speak to a rock in the desert and it would give water for all the children of Israel.  Moses hit the rock with a stick instead.  God said, now you can't go into the promised land, but I will let you look at it from the top of a mountain.

There was a man named Joshua.  God told him to march around the city Jericho for seven days and then the walls would fall down.  He was then to march in and kill every living creature.  Death by sword for every single animal, man, woman, and baby.

There was a man named Job.  God told the devil that he could take all of Job's possessions, kill all of his children and give him painful boils.  When Job asked God why, God responded, who are you to question me?  The end.

There are some things I wish weren't in the bible.

I think we haven't known how to deal with these stories and so our mental preservation instincts have kicked in and we have dealt with them as exactly that, stories.   We've turned them into crib sheets.  We've turned them into cliche answers for the pain in our other's lives, but somehow we have a hard time swallowing those cliches when it comes to our own pains.  The one thing that has become very evident to me is that there are some things that simply must be wrestled with.  Some of these stories have no simple, quick, nice and neat, wrapped in a package with a pretty bow answers.  God is not that simple.  God will not be contained in niceties.

But He is good.  He is love.  He is kind.  He is just.  He is righteous.  He is light and in Him is no darkness.  He always does what is right.  He is the good shepherd.  He is the Father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes down from above.  And we are His children.

So what are we to do with these stories then?

First we must lay aside our preconceived notions.  We must stop looking at these stories in the fully colorized, comic book version of the bible.  We must take down the Noah's ark quilts from our babies nursery cribs.

Second, we must stop looking for answers.  We must lay aside our quick and simple one paragraph solutions for the stories (i.e. God did this because....).  Many of these stories are left with no moral, with no resolution, it is simply an account of what happened.

Third, we must wrestle with the stories.  We must begin to allow them to unsettle us, to make us uncomfortable, to force us to question.  We must allow our discomfort to grow us.  Not once in the bible are we shown an instance where a true seeker of God questions Him and is destroyed for it.

Fourth, we must hold fast to what we know to be true of God in these journeys.  He is good.  He is love.  He is kind.  He is just.  He is righteous.  He is light and in Him is no darkness.  He always does what is right.  He is the good shepherd.  He is the Father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes down from above.  And we are His children.  We must let these truths guide us through the fog where things are not clearly seen or understood, through the murky waters of uncertainty.

Fifth we must always keep in mind the purpose of these stories; they have been given and preserved through the millennia to teach us much of who we are, who He is, what our world is like and our place and purpose in it, and His readily available and eternal kingdom.

So wrestle, accept no easy answers, and discover who God really is.  Discover who you really are.  Discover your place and purpose in this life.  Discover His kingdom.

My next post will be one of my recent wrestling journeys.  May you be blessed with much discovery.

Climbing Out Of The Rut

I hate bumper stickers.

Not only are bumper stickers tacky, in my humble opinion of course, but their only intention is to poke you in the eye with a statement.  There is nothing engaging about a bumper sticker, there is nothing inviting.  I have not ever seen a bumper sticker that reads "Follow me if you need a friend and a free cup of coffee!  I'm a great listener!"

Christians have participated in the eye poking too.  Pastor Brian called it "Bumper Sticker Theology", the quick quip statement that is designed to put an end to a conversation.  We love these especially when it comes to the problem of sin:

• "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven!"
• "Just a sinner saved by grace!"
• "Christians ain't perfect, but Jesus is!"
• "T.G.I.F. Thank God I'm Forgiven!"

I am eternally grateful that my sins are forgiven, that God has chosen to not hold my wrongs against me, that Jesus once and for all ransomed my life from a living and eternal hell to life with Him for eternity; but what I am reading in the bible is causing me to wonder if I am still stuck in a rut of seeing myself for who I once was, and not who I now am.

Isaiah 6 gives us a glimpse of powerful interaction between God and Isaiah.  Isaiah was taken in a vision to the throne of God.  The language is powerful and captivating, "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple.  Above Him stood the seraphim.  Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he flew.  And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!"  And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of Him who called, and the house was filled with smoke."  Isaiah's natural response was, "And I said: 'Woe is me!  For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!'"

I must say this as a profound understatement, I can identify with Isaiah.  Were I to come face to face with the unveiled glory of God, "Woe is me!" would not even begin to communicate the intensity of the situation.  The bible is full of stories of encounters with God where this is the exact response in every instance; when God reveals Himself, I too am revealed.  But listen to what happens next, "Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.  And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for."

Wait........THAT'S IT????  I know there is some deep significance in the burning coal that I am still wanting to understand, but that's it???

"Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for."

One thing that has become extremely evident to me is that God is quick and eager to forgive sin and not hold it against us, it is us who hang on to the memory of who we once were, and by staying in this rut we have a tendency to continue repeating the same mistakes over and over.  Look at these verses:

• The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love...He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities...as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us...For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. - Psalm 103
• And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven." - Mark 2:5
• I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name's sake. - I John 2:12

It is time to climb out of the rut.  It is time to embrace the new life that has been made available to us.  It is time to begin to learn to see ourselves as new.  Paul put it this way in II Corinthians 5, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

So what is waiting for us out of the rut?  Back to Isaiah 6, "And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"  Then I said, "Here am I!  Send me."  And He said, "Go..."

What is waiting for us out of the rut is new life, life from above, the life of the ages, eternal life.

I may not be perfect, just forgiven, but that is not the point, and it certainly is no excuse to not be living the life from above.  I am done with that rut.

I am a new creation in Christ.