Hope, Faith, Love, Grace...

"Things have to get better someday though...right?"

In my last couple of blog posts I have been focusing on shifts in our thinking that need to take place now.  I've raised the questions:

• Can God be trusted?
• Can life be good outside of our present circumstances?
• Is Jesus' message really about looking forward to heaven when we die?

In response, I've heard back from a few who have said, yes...but...we do have something better to look forward to! ...right? 

So why have I taken this approach?  Why focus on the right now and not as much on the what is to come?  Do I, myself, look forward to heaven?  Am I concerned with all of our eternal destinies?  The quick answer is yes, the more involved answer is...well, it's more involved.

I was raised my entire life in a particular faith tradition.  Most of us have been raised in a particular faith tradition.  Those traditions may, and quite likely are, different and similar in many aspects, but we all have them from no or little focus on faith, to heavy adherence to a particular practice.

My particular faith tradition talked much about the love of God being manifested in Jesus coming to earth to die on a cross for our, and more specifically my own, sins, and if I believe that to be true and accept His free gift of salvation, I will go to be with Him when I die and I won't have to burn in the eternal torment of hell, even though that is very much what I deserve because of my wrong actions in this life.  I actually think this sums up the majority of the christian traditions, at least in the western world today.  Of course there are different focuses and specifics of how in fact this comes to be, but that is a good, but yes general, summation.

The affect that this thinking about faith and God and religion in general had on me, was to focus my attention on myself.  How do I manage the problem of sin, i.e. bad actions, in my life?  How do I make sure that I am living a life that is pleasing to God so that He won't have reason to reject me from His heaven when I die?  Does it matter if I live a life that is pleasing to God, because ultimately it comes down to His free gift of salvation that is accessed through a "sinner's prayer"?  How do I make it through the drudgery and even pain of this life while waiting for death so that I can be with Him in Heaven?  

Ultimately, my philosophy became "knowledge is power".  Power to keep my sins in check.  Power to know that I am on the correct path to heaven.  Power to convince others of their wrong track mindset so that they can get on the true path to heaven.  Power to push through the drudgery and pain of life as I wait for heaven when I die.  What I failed to recognize is the old adage "power corrupts", and my faith disintegrated into the "science" of what can be studied in the text of scripture, and my life disintegrated into the pride of being able to overcome others thoughts and arguments, both within and without the church, on the particulars of how one gets to heaven when they die. 

Sounds like fun right?  ...ask my wife about it sometime.

One day, I was shown a picture of this approach to faith and life though.  By God's mercy, it did not look appealing to me, in fact I was appalled by it.  I remember going home that day and telling Jess that if this is where I am headed, something is really broken with my thinking.  As I began to take inventory of my life, as I began to look at my relationships, as I began to look at my sin management; something became very clear, it's just not working.  Something is wrong.  Something has been wrong for a very long time.  I've missed something.

That day began my true repentance.  As I've written before, not repentance in the form of falling on my knees and beating my chest or whipping my back while crying out for forgiveness, although I felt like that at times, but repentance as Jesus called for in His very first public message, it's time to rethink everything.

The result today of beginning that journey roughly eight years ago, and might I add is certainly nowhere near finished, is recognizing the message of Jesus as being one of hope and mission for today while looking forward to that same hope and mission continuing forward in ever increasing intensity and goodness for all of eternity.  Another way of saying it is that I have learned to desire to be with God and an active part of what He is doing today, while trusting Him for an ever increasingly better tomorrow...forever.

My faith tradition growing up seemed to want to focus more on the better tomorrow while hanging on to get through today.  It made for a dreary life.  I think most christian faith traditions today are guilty of the same approach.  I prefer to discuss His hope for today right now, and trust that God has our eternal destiny well under hand.

...that being said, there is a glorious hope for tomorrow that fuels our hope for today...

In the next couple of weeks I want to spend some time talking about our hope for tomorrow and how it really should radically shape our hope and actions for today.

So, for the next few weeks I will focus on Hope, Faith, Love, and Grace.  

Join me?

Sometimes Life Just Sucks

Sometimes life just sucks.

In the past two weeks:

• After getting off of work one night my wife and I realized someone had decided to kick in the doors of both of our vehicles, and my best friends brand new car too...
• While leaving the mall parking lot, my wife accidentally backed into a concrete barricade and smashed up the back corner of my Expedition...
• I love to roast my own coffee, and while roasting, I completely ignored the directions and melted down my roaster...it was a big flaming, burning plastic-y mess...
• My mom, who is in advancing stages of liver failure, had a significant bleeding issue and was rushed by life flight to an ICU ward two hours from her home and seven from mine...
• While at work, I painfully rolled my ankle not once, but three times in one day at work...

Sometimes, life just sucks...

In the past couple of months I have heard of:

• A number of couples in which one spouse has just decided that they are done and they want someone else...
• A young girl who ran away from home with an arguably shady and older man, and now is in foster care away from her parents...
• A family who just had the funeral for their 18 year old daughter who was taken from them by a drunk driver...
• A lady who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer...
• A church youth worker who has made significant advances on at least two girls in the youth group he was volunteering in...

Sometimes...life...just...sucks...

In John 10, Jesus says that He came those that follow Him might have life in abundance.

In the book of Job, we are told of a man named Job.  He was good.  He loved God, he did right by others, he followed God's law, he was an upright man.  Disturbingly we read how the adversary, the accuser (directly translated in English as Satan) comes before God, and God, for some untold reason, sends him to Job to test him.  What happens next is horrific; Job loses everything.  Now, when I say everything, I mean everything.  If you can think of anything that Job had before:

• Family
• Children
• Livestock
• Land
• Wealth
• Homes
• Wife
• Health
• Friends
• The shirt on his back...

...he lost it.  He lost it all!  So what is the conclusion of all of this in the book of Job?  Basically it is summed up that God can do whatever He likes, and who are we to question Him.

Seriously?

Is this the abundant life that Jesus was talking about?  I mean it's one thing to say God is God.  He is all powerful and all knowing and all everything and He really can do whatever He likes and we have no right whatsoever to question Him...that I get, but it's another thing altogether to call that abundant life, right?

Unless, of course, there's more to it than me being comfortable and feeling taken care of.

Like I've said before, Jesus' message was about so much more than where I end up when I die, Jesus' message had everything to do with who I am becoming in Him.  Another way to say that might be to say, God is far more concerned with my character than my comfort, and He will go to unimaginable lengths to ensure me every opportunity to have my character shaped into His...no matter how painful it may be...He loves me enough to let it hurt.

Every good parent knows this pain with their own children, if I try and save my daughters from all pain and discomfort and disease and relational drama in life, I will only end up destroying them.  They will become shallow and narcissistic and unempathetic and miserable.

Every good parent also knows that to allow drama and conflict and pain in the life of their child and choose not to shield them from all of it, is not the same as causing that same drama and conflict and pain.  It is simply a matter of choosing not to rescue our children from every negative thing in life...and so it goes with God.  Our Father, whom Jesus spent much time and energy trying to get us to see in the right light, is not the author of any kind of evil; the world manufactures plenty of that on its own.  Our Father simply chooses not to always shield us from the broken world that we ourselves have all to readily partaken in too many times.

Might it be then, that Jesus' abundant life has far less to do with the ordering and fixing of our circumstances, and everything to do with developing within us the character to handle absolutely any kind of circumstance?

What then is that character?  

• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Kindness
• Goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-Control

...otherwise known as the Fruit of the Spirit.  

This then is what it comes down to, would you rather have a genie-god who takes care of all of your problems in life, or would you rather follow Jesus into a life of reformed character where you can learn to have the Fruit of the Spirit in abundance no matter your circumstances?

Maybe then, life wouldn't have to suck after all...

Clearing Something Up

I feel the need to state something bluntly; whether or not you go to heaven when you die is not the point.

It's not what Jesus talked about.  His good news, the gospel, is not about how to get into heaven when you die.  It's not what those who wrote the various books of the bible talked about.  It simply is not the point.

For some reason, it is what many "christians" and "churches" have tried to make the point.  It's the infamous alter call, "If you were to die tonight, where would you go?"  Making getting to heaven and avoiding hell the point, is solely responsible for the salvation=free gift mentality that I wrote about in my last blog.  It is also responsible for the 77% of americans who claim to be christians (according to a December 2012 Gallup poll) while living in a decidedly un-christian nation.

How does that happen anyway?  How do so many claim to of the way of Jesus, and have the result be a nation that is marked by greed, and excess, and hate, and bigotry, and abuses of all varieties, and the list goes on?

In the 1960's, the number of americans claiming christianity was at 90%.  That's a fairly steep drop.  What is interesting is that of that nearly 40 million people, most of those have not abandoned religion in general, but instead have embraced the idea that all roads lead to heaven and it is shallow and small minded to claim that Jesus is the only way.

So let me state again, Jesus' point was never about how to get to heaven when you die.

But didn't Jesus say, "I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father accept through me."  

Yes, but notice what He did not say, "...No one gets into heaven accept through me."

When getting into heaven becomes the point, then I begin to look for the least exhaustive means of entry, the minimum requirement.  Jesus came to offer something different.  Jesus came to offer life; a certain kind of life that only the Father has to offer.  Jesus' good news is that God is eager to rescue all of humankind into this new kind of life.  Right now.  As we are.  Today.

So for Jesus to claim that He alone knows the Father but His desire is to make the introduction to all of humanity, then it is not exclusive, just a statement of what He alone has to offer.  He is offering God's kind of life.  If you want to know more about it, you've got to come to Him, on His terms, with the intent to learn.  He's the teacher.  He's the master.

His good news, His gospel, His message belongs to Him.  It's His.  He is the only one offering it.  You can look for life on your own, He won't stop you.  You can look to another teacher, another rabbi, another god, another master, He won't interfere, it just won't be His gospel.  

So the real question that should begin to form is not which of these roads, if not all of them, get us to heaven when we die; but instead, what kind of life today is Jesus offering that He is claiming no one else can?

Now this is where things begin to get exciting...

Why Salvation Is Not A Free Gift

Before we were married, my wife spent three months in Calcutta, India.  Located on the eastern side of the country at the northern point of the Bay of Bengal, it is a harsh and dirty and incredibly impoverished place.  Life expectancy is much lower than many places in the world and people live in a constant state of despair.  There is not much hope to be found in Calcutta.

This morning I was reading a news article on the large number of tourists who had traveled to Calangute, Goa, India to celebrate the Ganesh Chathurthi holidays.  Calangute, Goa is on the far western side of India on the Arabian Sea and is home to one of the most spectacular beaches in the world.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  The article was talking about how around a month ago, a large number of tourists, around 400, were swimming in a specified and well marked "no swim" zone.  The zone had been designated as such do to some very strong and dangerous rip tides.  The life guards on duty that day had been fighting the crowds, begging them to please come out of the zone.

400 people...well marked danger zone...what could possibly go wrong?

Sure enough, throughout the course of the day four different individuals began to shout for help as they were dragged out by the forceful rip tides.  The lifeguards immediately sprung into action and were able to rescue the four different individuals at great danger to themselves.

It was a day of extreme and ongoing stupidity, offset by strong and vigilant heroism.

The point the article failed to make, is that there was absolutely no mention of that due to stupidity of the large group, it would have served them right if the lifeguards had just allowed those four to drown.

It made no mention that the four did not deserve to be rescued from the rip tide, there was absolutely nothing they could do to earn the rescuing of the lifeguards, and it made no mention of the free gift of rescue that the lifeguards had given to those pathetically rebellious individuals.

It simply lauded them as heros, and I'm sure they were glad to have done it.  After all, it was why they were there on the beach that day, to rescue those who have no possible way of rescuing themselves.

Why then, when it comes to talking about God, do we go to places of extreme pain and poverty and abuse and even rampant death, like Calcutta, and share with them the "good news" that God is offering them the "free gift" of rescue, the "free gift" of salvation?

Why have we come to communicate to a lost and broken world that they are in dire need of rescuing, but they don't deserve it because they are horrible and terrible sinners and they have offended God.

No one ever asks the lifeguard if she was offended by the drowning person.

When you really think about it, it's kind of like asking the question, what does black taste like?

Or what does the moon think about the recent government shut down?

Or how deep is fire?

They don't have anything to do with one another.  One can analyze and philosophize and pontificate all they would like, and the two simply have nothing to do with one another.

When it comes to rescue, when it comes to salvation, the one who has the ability to rescue simply does not think about whether or not she should; she simply does.  

...unless, of course, that one who has the ability is not good.  Unless, of course, they cannot be trusted.

I offer to you that God is in fact good, that He can be trusted above all, that He is love.  I offer to you the picture that Jesus offered Jerusalem as He stood lamenting in sorrow over her:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

If ever there were a picture of an underserving city, this is it; and still Jesus' desire is to gather them to Himself like a hen gathers her chicks in protection, in safety, in rescue.

If we are to begin to trust, to have confidence in God with our very lives, this is the first thing that must begin to change in our thinking.  God's desire is to rescue you, even from the mess of a life you very well may have created for yourself, and certainly from the mess of a life that may have been thrust upon you.  

To think about God's desire to rescue you as a "free gift that you don't deserve" is like asking if paint is happy.

Do you deserve to be rescued?  Who cares!  That isn't the point!

His ability and desire to rescue are the point.

...we can worry about what went wrong later in order to avoid the rip tide again in the future.