Losing God

There is something special about pulling a book off of the shelf- one that you've read before. Maybe you've read it once, three times; maybe the number is closer to a dozen. Today I pulled such a book from the shelf and blew the dust from the title: The Pursuit of God. AW Tozer died in the early 1960's, but what he has to say about religion is amazingly relevant for today. Maybe he was ahead of his time, or maybe we didn't listen.

He shares the danger of losing God in the midst of religion, losing God in the midst of the wonder of His word, losing God in the midst of programming, losing God the Person, the Creator, the Lover of our souls, the One who longs to be sought after and known.

With an emphasis on praying a prayer, getting saved, accepting Christ - we have a distorted perspective which sees God's goal as the salvation of our souls. We have misunderstood the beginning and have called it the end. Salvation is not the end; it is the beginning. The beginning of life eternal, the beginning of knowing God. John says it (Jn 17:3); Paul says it (Phil 3:10); Yahweh says it to the Levites, "I am your part and your inheritance."


I still feel once-removed from the Holy Longing. I have a want to long for God Himself, but a different desire is also betrayed - a want to be spiritual, even to be spiritually successful - which is (at best) missing the point entirely.

Let the Word Read You

Hebrews 4:9-16:
"So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

The writer is talking about Israel and how they missed out on the rest God had for them because of their disobedience... because they failed to hear the voice - the Word of God. He challenges his readers (and us), "Do not harden your hearts."

If we are going to live in light of the atonement and enter into the rest God has provided, we must let the word of God reflect His truth into our lives. Notice that the writer of Hebrews links our efforts to the power of the Word which is alive and powerful enough to keep us honest. Take care, especially if you are a student or if you have been a Christian for a long time, that you don’t misappropriate the charge in these verses. We are not doing the piercing, the dividing, or the judging. We are letting the Word speak into our lives and reflect our souls back at us. Granted, there are times where study is necessary and important to attain the meaning of the words on the pages of Scripture. But we must do more than that. We must let the Bible read us. We must let Jesus, the Word in flesh, see our hearts. We must pause and listen and let God speak. It is a vulnerable thing, to set aside your pencil and your commentary and let the Word take a good long look at "the thoughts and intentions of your heart." Scary. But, remember, we can expose ourselves with confidence, for mercy and grace will meet us "in time of need."

Why We Should Buy T-shirts

I personally am really glad we have Luke’s gospel. I appreciate the way he writes. More than the other gospel writers Luke sets Jesus in his historical context. He’s telling us this story is real. It really happened – in a certain place, at a certain time, Jesus walked around actual dirt roads. And while the world was turning, and people were falling in love, and politics was politics, Jesus was waking up, and eating breakfast, and living his life.

Don’t get me wrong- the story isn’t normal, but it’s real. In actuality the story is very abnormal, because the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius was tetrarch of Abilene (see how it’s a real time and a real place?) – this year was not a typical year. It was the year that the voice of John the Baptizer started yelling from the distance as people walked by, yelling about a kingdom coming. Luke says John was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy,

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Every ravine will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be brought low; the crooked will become straight, and the rough roads smooth; and all flesh will see the salvation of God (Isaiah 40:3ff).

And sometime later Jesus is in His hometown, and He stands up to read at the synagogue (which actually wasn’t that weird). And someone handed Him a scroll of Isaiah and He turned it to the page that said,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set those free who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

And it would have been a typical day at the synagogue if Jesus had not set the book down, paused, and while the young man in the back tried not to breathe, and the older woman leaned forward in her chair, He said something that made a profound statement. It’s entertaining to guess why “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.” Was is simply because He wasn’t finished? He had already put the book away and set down. I think it was because He didn’t finish reading the passage. The rest of the verse says, “And the day of vengeance of our God.” And instead of finishing the verse, He says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And then they formed an angry mob and tried to kill Him. Like I said, it would’ve been a normal day at the synagogue.

So what was He saying? Well, we can take a look at what He does next. He heals people, and casts out demons, and is nice to outcasts and women, and proclaims the kingdom of God. Then He dies, and rises from the dead, and goes to be with the Father. And somewhere in there, as the world was turning, there was a changing of era. The Kingdom was near, and now the Kingdom has come. It is not the day of vengeance, but that year of favor.

A lot of people want to say that Jesus’ claim that He came for the poor and free the oppressed is not really talking about physical people. It only means the poor in spirit. It only means those trapped in sin. But all you have to do is look at Jesus’ life to know how wrong that is. Of course He came to remove spiritual blindness and free us from sin. But he also initiated an overall redemption, a cosmic redemption, a universal shift. This shift should mirror His own counter-cultural ministry that included people that should be shamed and cared for those less fortunate.

What does this mean for us? As disciples of Christ we must continue His earthly ministry. Because He brought good news to the poor and cared about the oppressed, we should too. We must. What does this look like? It means seeing evangelism as more than a target on a wall, seeing evangelism as meeting a felt spiritual need. It also means seeing the other felt needs around us because that’s what Jesus did (Another idea from Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, pg. 114).

It means actually taking at look at the world around me and the injustice that goes on and making it my problem. Now not everyone can go to Africa, and maybe not everyone should. I haven’t (though some days I think I should). But everyone has the choice either to live in a bubble or to let the suffering of the world invade her life.

I like being comfortable. I like my olive walls and my soft duvet cover and my English Breakfast Tea in the morning. And I like not feeling guilty that I have those things. But I cannot pretend to be “spiritual” if I do not at least make my heart available to bleed for the things that make God sad. He has begun a divine initiative to set the world straight. The cosmic redemption has begun.

That is what we are called to – to usher in the Kingdom, to “make straight the paths of the Lord.” We have to care, we have to blog, we have to vote, we have to buy the t-shirt that says “Dar-fur Needs You.” We have to fight racism and materialism; we have to give up a Friday afternoon to listen to our co-worker who is depressed, and we have to give food to the guy on the street. I Don’t write this off as a guilt trip. I’ll be honest, if I am not actively asking God to give me His heart, I don’t give a rip about Darfur or my depressed co-worker, or certainly not politics. But I want to be a part of the Kingdom that is now. I don’t want my redemption to stop with me. I know these issues are complicated, and I know it can feel too big of a task or like your empathy doesn’t matter. But if you read the Gospel, you can’t deny we should feel something for the hurting. We have to do something. Decide what you can do. If all else fails, you can at least buy the t-shirt.

Have you ever heard a Christian say, “I’m just a sinner”? I can’t find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identify ourselves first and foremost as sinners… Paul writes to the Colossians, “You have been raised with Christ.” I have this new identity that has been given to me. I have taken on the identity of Christ… It’s not that we are perfect now or that we will never have to struggle. Or that the old person won’t come back from time to time. It’s that this new way of life involves a constant, conscious decision to keep dying to the old so that we can live in the new…

The issue then isn’t my beating myself up over all of the things I am not doing or the things I am doing poorly; the issue is my learning who this person is who God keeps insisting I already am. Notice these words from the letter to the Philippians: “Let us live up to what we have already attained.” There is a person who we already are in God’s eyes. And we are learning to live like it’s true.

This is an issue of identity. It is letting what God says about us shape what we believe about ourselves. This is why shame has no place whatsoever in the Christian experience (Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis, pp. 139-142).

In Romans 6, Paul uses the phrase, “body of sin.” Later in chapter 7 he uses a similar phrase, “body of death.” In ancient Rome, the body of death was one of the forms of punishment for a convicted murderer where the corpse of the victim was chained to the back of the culprit. It was a death penalty of sorts, for the culprit would eventually die because of the weight and decomposition of the body. It must have been a torturous existence, however long it lasted, trying to live with a dead corpse on your back.

This picture shows how absurd and even grotesque it is for Christians to live as if they are carrying around the body of death, the sinful man that was crucified with Christ. When Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, the first thing He said was “Unbind him.” Can you imagine if Jesus would have raised Lazarus and left him all wrapped up in the stinky grave-clothes. Do you see how absurd it would be for Lazarus to have shown up for dinner the next week still wrapped up? This is the point that Paul is trying to make. God has raised us with Christ, so let us shed the body of death, shed the grave-clothes, and step into who we really are.

Never Eat Soggy Waffles

I was born in the West, an American citizen. I was born into a thoroughly conservative Evangelical atmosphere. Because this is who I am, I have a certain framework with which I see the world around me - especially religion, even more so morality, and most poignantly the Bible. I have read or heard this Scripture hundreds of times, maybe more. Not until recent months would I say there was any mystery to its meaning and significance.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

As a Western, American, conservative Evangelical certain things initially jump out to me in the context of this passage. It's about my sin - from a judicial standpoint. I mean, I've seen the presentation with the chalk-board or marker board. There is a cliff on the right side with a stick-figure on top (that's us). There is a cliff on the left side with G-O-D written on top (yeah, that's God). There is a big chasm with S-I-N written vertically (and maybe with black squiggles or words like lie, cheat, steal - or secular music). At the climax of the presentation, the cross is drawn to the exact specifications so that the gap between the stick figure and GOD is covered. The cross is a bridge. It's all very logical and almost mathematical. There is a gap, there is a bridge, walk across it = reconciliation. This, of course, is true in a sense, but is it missing something?

Norman Kraus was a missionary who served many years in Japan. While serving there, he was struck by the differences between Eastern and Western religious culture. There he saw a shame/honor culture very similar to the culture of the New Testament. A man convicted of a crime was not simply given a sentence by the judge in correspondence to his crime. The convict did not stand in fear of how much jail time or how big the fine. Rather, the convict knew and dreaded the social exclusion that would result from his crime. He would stand separate, not because a balance needed to be paid, but because there was a lack of honor and a presence of shame. There was a deeply personal quality to the punishment. One only remedied by a deeply personal transformation - from shame to honor. By observing the Japanese judicial system and talking with many Japanese people about the concept of justice, Krause realized that the honor/shame mindset brought out a significant implication of the atonement. In their book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, Joel Green and Mark Baker consider this.

Although we tend to emphasize the physical pain of death on the cross, in the Roman era, crucifixion was dreaded first and foremost because of its shameful character. It was designed to be an instrument of contempt and public ridicule. The victim died naked, in bloody sweat, helpless to control bodily secretions. The cross epitomizes human concepts of defilement and exclusion…
Shame does not respond to punishment; rather it is love that banishes shame… The cross was the epitome of Jesus’ identification with us in shame, but His whole life displayed this identification.
Jesus’ identification with (our shame) enables (us) in turn to repent and realize a new self-identity as children of God… and Jesus’ death on the cross means that He has already experienced the ultimate shameful exclusion for us (pp. 163-166).

The consequence of shame is primarily a relational one – alienation from the community. So when Jesus identified with us and took our shame upon Himself, He experienced this alienation for us. That is how He reconciled us to God. By taking away our shame, He has removed the relational hindrance. Our sins do not stand in the way because they are not counted against us. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He experienced the ultimate shame so that our shame could be lifted and our relationship with God could return to its intended purpose.

This is an implication of the Atonement that my Western mindset overlooks. I tend to think of my sin as an objective reality, not a relational hindrance. If I want to understand the atonement more fully, I need to recognize my shame and the shame Christ suffered on my behalf. I need to realize the relational dynamic of sin and how it separates me from God. Then I can more fully comprehend what this life reconciled to God can be like - not simply objective and mathematical, but relational and free from shame.