A Great Many Things

2012: The Year of the Bear

2012-01-05T23:01:00.000-08:00

Don't worry, this isn't a rally cry for the Baylor Bears - although I am one, and darn proud of their 2011 success. This is, rather, a way to focus on what 2012 will look like. Seeing 2012 as the Year of the Bear gives us two Trozzo's four priorities for the upcoming year. Four actions to which we will say YES in 12.

1. Build - reinforce the existing community we've been blessed to find in Waco and maintain from LA. This likely includes more church. It's time.

2. Encourage - this may be more necessary for me than for my naturally up-building husband - but of course he's in! Intentionally set aside our critique notepads - especially when it comes to people - see the good, and encourage.

3. Allay - fears and worries about future or current endeavors. Take risks, go for broke, learn from failures.

4. Read - typical, yes. But we both want to prioritize reading, keeping up on the buzz in our respective fields as well as making time for non-work reading.

So, the year of the BEAR, something to shoot for.

Losing God

2008-09-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-31T19:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-03-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

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.

The Flannel-Graph Stopped Short

2008-02-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

There are lots of tracts and organizations and Evangelists out there who break down the gospel into three steps or four laws or some kind of acrostic. Their motivation is good – let’s make the message simple, so we can pass it on quickly and to the greatest number of people.

It’s a little bit like the stories I heard in Sunday school. If you didn’t grow up in church, you may need a little background. Most small churches, especially in poorer neighborhoods, don’t designate much of the budget to resources for first grade Sunday school. Consequently, the lesson usually consists of a teacher and a flannel-graph. It’s a big square board, just small enough for the teacher to hold or stand up on the ground, and (as you may have guessed) it’s covered in flannel. The reason for this is so that little felt cut-outs (of people dressed in Bible-time clothes and bushes and arks) will stick onto it. And the teacher would use this to provide an interactive element to the story.

"Let's see who's sitting nice and quietly? Joey, you have been very obedient today. You may place the staff in Moses' hand."

Joey is the envy of the class.

I remember reading some of these stories later in life and realizing that some of the details had been left out. I guess they don’t make those little felt pieces where Goliath’s head is chopped off or where Noah gets drunk and exposes himself after getting off the ark. It was probably best that in first grade the stories were simplified and censored, but the continuation of that practice has proven dangerous. It’s like all we need to know about God can be told in A, B, C (Admit you are a sinner. Believe that Jesus died for you. Confess your sin and be saved). That’s got to be leaving out some important things, right? Otherwise God wasted a lot of time and energy inspiring authors over hundreds of years to write the longest book ever.

I mean, it’s true that sometimes God’s message to us is simple. Jesus said that whoever believes has eternal life. Easy enough, right? Well, He also said that a person must be born of water and of spirit. He likened this truth to the wind, which you know is there, but you cannot know where it comes from or where it goes. He also said “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” Paul called the gospel of Jesus Christ a mystery. It is a mystery that God can reveal to us, but it must be sought out. We cannot settle for Sunday school answers or an explanation of faith that is finished before the barista is done making your vanilla latte. We can hold on to the simple truths of faith, but we must not stop there. There are layers underneath, truths that will impact our lives forever. And the effect is in the searching, the prying, the looking, the questioning, the learning.

With this in mind, we turn to one of the most basic doctrines of our Christian faith, the atonement. Jesus died for you. Jesus died. What does this mean? Let’s dive deep into the flannel graph story of a man in a loin cloth with one drip of blood on His face, who died for our redemption.

When we think of the atonement, the question - “Why did Jesus die?” – we often find ourselves primarily focused on one answer. This answer is given by Paul, the author of Hebrews (if he is another), and John. The writings of these men supply that Jesus died as a substitution for us; He died in our place; He was the payment for our sins (Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17; 1John 2:2; 4:10). While this may rightly be considered the predominant significance of the atonement, I venture that there are other layers to be peeled away. These layers and various implications are not a threat to the central theme of the atonement, rather they bring it out and expand on it. To look at the atonement only as a substitution is short-sided. It leads the Christian to separate perspectives of himself and Christ; Christ was crucified, so I am not.

A.W Tozer, the Christian mystic from the last blog who I think had incredible spiritual foresight, wrote about a dangerous new conception of the cross which he saw rising up in society.

All unannounced, and mostly undetected, there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles. From this new cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian life, and from that technique – a new type of meeting and a new kind of preaching… The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect.

The old cross is a symbol of death. God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life. The new life is a life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross.

Among the plastic saints of our times Jesus has to do all the dying and all we want is to hear another sermon about His dying. We want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king (or queen) within the little kingdom of (soul) and wear our tinsel crown with all pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility (Gems from Tozer, pp. 41-42).

Tozer wrote long before the explosion of comfortable Christian churches that promise happiness and peace, even “Your Best Life Now.” He saw it coming. He saw men and women fixated solely on the idea that Christ died for them, preachers who loved to preach that good news never mentioning Jesus’ words in Matthew 8. The gospel is good news, but it is not easy to swallow. Jesus said take up your cross – the most grotesque symbol of suffering and death He could find. He said you must lose your life. Ultimately, of course, you gain real life, abundant life. I’ve heard southern Baptist evangelists say it a hundred times, and it’s true: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. That doesn’t mean giving up your life is easy. No one wants to die, but this is the call of a disciple – to follow our Teacher wherever He goes, and He goes to the cross.

In what sense is there death for me on that cross? “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20). .” In context, I have died to the law. When I was crucified with Christ, I died to my own attempted righteousness. I died to my vain good intentions. I died to any concept or practice that might nullify the grace of God by assuming to gain righteousness apart from the death of the incarnate deity. I died to the idea the I still hold my own life, for as long as I hold it, I cannot truly live. To be crucified with Christ is to step down from the throne, dissolving all pride or merit.

In another book, The Pursuit of Man, Tozer proposes that Christians, too focused on remembering the God of the past and trusting in the God of the future, are left in a state of “temporary atheism” where God is practically absent from the actual present. This idea sheds light on this discussion of the atonement, for I do in fact find myself looking at the atonement as a thing of the past and of the future. It was something God did at the moment of Christ breathed His last, and it is something that will be brought into play later when I stand at the great throne and am somehow counted righteous and worthy to enter into the everlasting presence of God. What of the atonement meets with my present?
I confess that I live with an absence of the constant awareness of the presence of God. It returns to me often when I am in places of great aesthetics, wonders of nature, or instances where God is visibly working, speaking, or moving. But these are the exception more than the norm. If I have been crucified, why am I still living in the false reality that I live the moment by moment of my life alone?

If I am to be crucified with Christ, I must die to this self-lived life. I must realized, that having been crucified with Christ, I am empty-handed on my own. I am returned to a state of childlike dependence. If my self is dead, He must live in me; I need Him to; my life depends on it. Taking up my cross daily means realizing His life in me constantly.

It means seeing the atonement as something not only of the past and the future, but something that is vital to my every day.

I Want to be a Jogging Sunflower

2008-02-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

A.W. Tozer was a Christian mystic who wrote amazing books in the 1950’s. He was a man truly ahead of his time, calling out dangerous trends in the church that, sure enough, surfaced after his death. He wrote about the danger of a generation who thinks that their ideas about God don’t really matter, and he explored what it really means to seek out God and what sets apart those people who truly know God. He wrote this about the Christian struggle with sin:

From Hebrews 12:2 we learn that faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God… Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves – blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.
O Lord, I have heard a good word inviting me to look away to Thee and be satisfied. My heart longs to respond, but sin has clouded my vision till I see Thee but dimly. Be pleased to cleanse me in Thine own precious blood, and make me inwardly pure, so that I may with unveiled eyes gaze upon Thee all the days of my earthly pilgrimage. Then shall I be prepared to behold Thee in full splendor in the day when Thou shalt appear to be glorified in Thy saints and admired in all them that believe (A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God, pp. 84-85, 91).

I did a little internet research on Sunflowers recently. They are interesting plants because when they are young, they exhibit heliotropism. What? I know… but actually, this is pretty cool. At sunrise, the faces of most sunflowers are turned towards the east. Over the course of the day, they move to track the sun from east to west, while at night they return to an eastward orientation (I got this information, of course, from Wikipedia).

This is a great picture of the “gaze of the heart” that Tozer describes. The sunflower’s face follows the sun because the sun is its source, its energy, which gives it the ability to grow and develop as it should. In the same way, we must turn our gaze toward Jesus Christ who is our source, who gives us the ability to develop and become more like Him.

Hebrews 12 shows great balance. First there is the phrase “fixing our eyes on Jesus.” Tozer brings out the indirect side of this endeavor – focusing on the beauty of Christ which allows Him to work out faith in the onlooker’s life. The verse also shows a direct and active side, “Let us run with perseverance.” The runner does not stop and blankly stare; rather, as he goes, He focuses on the example and love of Christ which empowers Him to continue on. We must look to Him, for as Philippians 2:16 says, “It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” I want to be a jogging sunflower.

We jogging sunflowers are in good company. I challenge you as one of Martin Luther's teachers challenged him when he was despairing over his depravity - rather than looking to your own corruption, look to Christ and the cross!

Inauguration isn't Just for Presidents (with a side of M&M Casserole)

2008-02-03T12:06:00.000-08:00

(sorry for the repeat of this beginning part- I know many of you have read this blog of mine before. I tacked on some additional thoughts on the end... if you're interested).

We may not like the fact that we have this lifelong struggle with sin, but the more we realize and accept it, the better equipped we will be to deal with it… The believer struggles with the sin God enables him to see in himself. This is the picture we see in Romans 7:21, and it distinguishes believers from unbelievers who lie serenely content in their darkness (Jerry Bridges in The Pursuit of Holiness, pg. 60).

Early on in seminary, I learned a concept that revolutionized the way I look at a lot of things. The concept is called inaugurated eschatology. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia describes it this way:

There is truth in both consistent and realized eschatology; that the OT hope is in some real sense fulfilled in the person and mission of Christ, while the consummation of the hope awaits an eschatological consummation.

What? OK, so since the Fall there has been this building anticipation, this hope that shows up in the Old Testament quite often. Usually it is thought of in terms of promises yet-to-be-fulfilled, blessings and freedom for Israel, a coming kingdom, redemption. This is where it gets interesting. See, when Jesus came he did all sorts of things to show that this hope was being fulfilled. Like in Luke 4 He says “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” right after reading a verse from the Old Testament that was one of these verses of anticipation. And He is called the Son of God which links Him to the long-awaited king.

Here’s where inaugurated eschatology comes in. It is undeniable that when Jesus came, He fulfilled this anticipation, these Old Testament prophecies. But there are parts of this expectation, and aspects of this hope which have not yet been fulfilled. They have not been forgotten; rather, God designated the coming of Christ to inaugurate or usher in this fulfillment. So the question, “Is the kingdom here or is it coming?” is the wrong question. The answer to that is “yes.” The kingdom has been initiated, and there is a process to its coming that is going on now and will be realized at a future time. As many scholars put it, the kingdom is “already, but not yet.”

Now, I realize this sounds inconsistent. The statement contradicts itself… yet it is a cornerstone for my theological perspective. Why? Because (for once) theology doesn’t force out a tidy answer to a messy question. And because (for once) the answer maintains the tension which the truth demands – that which we have waited for has come and is coming. It’s an answer you can’t pour concrete into and let it set. It demands something pmore like Jell-O. Or better yet, think about it like that paper football game 4^th grade boys play in the cafeteria. You know the game where you scoot a paper triangle (the football) to the end of the table. It has to hang over the side to score a touchdown, but it cannot fall off. This theological truth is more like that. You have to take it far enough, but you can’t take it too far. We can’t deny that the kingdom has come, and we must affirm that it is not here yet. It is only inaugurated, initiated, introduced – the process has begun.

Weren’t we talking about Christians struggling with sin? Yes.

We see the same kind of tension when we try to understand redemption and salvation from sin. Are we free from sin now? Yes… if you’re thinking in cafeteria football terms. Salvation has come and is here in no uncertain terms, yet there is tension in this answer because we who are saved still await full redemption. We still struggle with sin. When we expect this struggle, we can head it off, and looking forward to the future fulfillment, we are encouraged to press on. The battle is not hopeless, but it is difficult. Romans 8 says, “Creation has been groaning, and not only the creation, but we ourselves groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” So be encouraged in your struggle. Inauguration isn’t just for presidents. You are in the process, and fulfillment will come. Press on. And in the meantime, consider this....
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Many Christian leaders and students seem to think that our desires are something to run from, ignore, or fight off. It might not be a bad idea. After all we must admit – or at least I must admit – that my desires seem to pull me where I don’t really want to be and get me into trouble. At the same time, I know that God designed me with desires to be loved, to know that I am valuable, to have joy, to be cared for, to feel safe, etc. He did that for a reason. So, desires are not necessarily bad in and of themselves. So, if my desires aren’t the real problem, what is? CS Lewis had an interesting take on this subject.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased (C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, pg. 26).

When I was 21 I moved out of my college dorm, into a house with seven friends, and away from the school cafeteria. It was a blast that came with a lot of freedom AND a lot of responsibility. Not only did I now have to pay rent, clean my own place, etc. – the biggest change was that I was responsible for my own FOOD. I was usually tired from school and work when I got home, and there was usually quick junk food around to eat, so most of my meals consisted of easy mac or cereal. At times it got so bad that I would simply reach for my big jar of peanut-butter M&M’s. (Peanut-butter = protein, right?) Cereal and candy tasted good, and it quieted my hungry stomach for the time-being. But later in the night, when I was up working on a paper or goofing off with friends, I would be SO HUNGRY. I was so hungry because I had quieted my hunger without really satisfying it. I had offered it a quick fix without real nourishment.

We do the same thing with our deepest desires that I was doing with my junk food. I have a deep desire to be known and loved, so I look for it in the arms of a boy… but eventually I am left still wanting to be truly known and loved. I want to be valued and appreciated, so I put all my identity in my athletics, or my grades, or my looks. Those things also eventually fail, or I’m left feeling like people only value me because I am talented, smart, or pretty. I have a deeper desire to be valued just for me. As long as I am seeking to satisfy these deep desires on my own, I am left feeling hungry, and more often than not, hurting. And because these attempts are not satisfying, I often find myself in desperate attempts to find satisfaction, or at the very least, to quiet the gnawing hunger. These are often the desires that lead to sin. It is seeking pleasure from things which were not meant to satisfy. It is my hand in the M&M jar or the child making mud pies. The real satisfaction is found in what God offers us: Himself.

If we know that God alone satisfies, then why do we take our deepest desires elsewhere? Sometimes it is hard for us to believe that God really brings good things. I know when I was in high school I used to be afraid that when I got older God would tell me to marry some guy that was really nice and godly, but who wasn’t cute and I didn’t like hanging out with. Looking back now – married to the man of my dreams who God brought straight to me – I laugh at my doubt that God knows what I want. In truth, He is pleased when you experience good things, and He does want you to have every heart’s desire met. But He also knows that ultimately you cannot find satisfaction in anything you are looking for if it’s not first found in Him. “For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:32b-33). I can’t just tell you that God does satisfy, and He does want to delight your heart. You have to jump in, look to Him, and see for yourself. Psalm 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” With your desires being met by your Creator, there will be little left to pull you to places you don’t want to go. With a hot dinner on the table, who wants M&M Casserole?

What You, Me, and Hitler have in Common

2008-01-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

I’m not a psychologist or a psychic, but my hunch is that something like 99.98% of human beings understand that they are sinful. They may not put it in those terms or admit it as part of their philosophical stance on the world and spirituality, but there is within them a deep and gnawing awareness of something that is not right. Perhaps they are too busy to notice, occupying themselves with goals to achieve or political stances to take or even religious rituals to follow. But it is there. Alanis Morissette, in her song What I Really Want calls this out with the question, “Why are you so petrified of silence?” Following a break in the music (Which she introduces with the challenge, “Here, can you handle this?” I like her attitude) she asks if the listener thought about when he’s going to die, or if he longed for the next distraction. What we really want (to use her terms) is to be free from this gnawing sense of unfulfilled need, and whether we’re haunted by it or running from it, the awareness of sin is there (if it is not there for you, perhaps you should reflect. I’m pretty confident – it’s there). This awareness has been challenged by the idea that people are basically good – a very popular trend, at least in my surroundings. I for one know that I am not basically good. It has also been answered with moral relativism - which no one really believes when it comes down to real life. They believe it until their iPod gets stolen or their kid gets bullied or their cousin gets raped. Yes, there is an ultimate moral standard (though its definition is an inevitable source of conflict), and yes, we each fall short of it constantly. Granted, we don’t want to sit in that muck for long – but realizing the truth of who we are is essential to understanding the freedom we are given. One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, tells his personal story of coming to this realization as a child and dealing with it as an adult.

This is how the bomb fell: For my mother that year I had purchased a shabby Christmas gift – a book, the contents of which she would never be interested in. I had had a sum of money with which to buy presents, and the majority of it I used to buy fishing equipment, as Roy and I had started fishing in the creek behind Wal-Mart.
My extended family opens gifts on Christmas Eve, leaving the immediate family to open gifts the next morning, and so in my room that night were wonderful presents – toys, games, candy, and clothes – and as I lay in bed I counted and categorized them in the moonlight, the battery-operated toys of greatest importance, the underwear of no consequence at all. So in the moonlight I drifted in and out of anxious sleep, and this is when it occurred to me that the gift I had purchased my mother was bought with the petty change left after I had pleased myself. I realized I had set the happiness of my mother beyond all my own material desires.
This was a different sort of guilt from anything I had previously experienced. It was a heavy guilt, not the sort of guilt that I could do anything about. It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can’t explain, bad and terrible things. The guilt was so heavy that I fell out of my bed onto my knees and begged, not a slot-machine God, but a living, feeling God to stop the pain. I crawled out of my room and into the hallway by my mother’s door and lay on my elbows and face for an hour or so, going sometimes into sleep, before finally the burden lifted and I was able to return to my room.
We opened the rest of our gifts the next morning, and I was pleased to receive what I did, but when my mother opened her silly book, I asked her forgiveness, saying how much I wished I had done more. She, of course, pretended to enjoy the gift, saying how she wanted to know about the subject.
I was still feeling terribly that evening when the family gathered for dinner around a table so full of food a kingdom could feast. I sat low in my chair, eye-level with the bowls of potatoes and corn, having my hair straightened by ten talking women, all happy the holiday had come to a close.
And while they ate and talked and chatted away another Christmas, I felt ashamed and wondered silently whether they knew they were eating with Hitler.

My answer to this dilemma was self-discipline. I figured I could just make myself do good things, think good thoughts about other people, but that was no easier than walking up to a complete stranger and falling in love with them. I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness. Then I would get up and try again. The cycle was dehumanizing…
Self-discipline will never make us feel right or clean; accepting God’s love will… We dream of God’s love for His bride reading like Romeo and Juliet; two equals enflamed in liberal love. I think it is more like Lucentio’s pursuit of Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew. That is, the groom endearing the belligerent bride with kindness, patience, and love. Our “behavior” will not be changed long with self-discipline, but fall in love and a human will accomplish what he never thought possible. The laziest of men will swim the English Channel to win his woman. By accepting God’s love for us, we fall in love with Him, and only then do we have the fuel we need to obey.
In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar’s kingdom is better than a proud man’s delusion (Blue Like Jazz, pp 9-11, 77, 86).

At first, admitting I am a moral failure is a bummer. My pride resists the charity of God and cries, "No, I can do it. Let me show you!" But I get weak, and the sting of my incapability is all the brighter this time around. I am no Juliet. This is not self-deprecation. I am not saying I am worthless, I am saying I am incapable, I am dependent. Bianca is just as valuable as Juliet, she just sits in a different position. She is loved freely and forgiven.

Look at the story of Simon and the woman in Luke 7:36-50. There is a religious leader and a prostitute, and Jesus compares the two. He explains that they are both sinners - but they are different in that the prostitute realizes her sin and receives forgiveness, while the Pharisee cannot see his sin and so stands unforgiven. Our experience of grace is dependent on our realization of our need for it. Jesus said, "He who is forgiven little, loves little." I want to be honest about my sin and my need, accept the charity of God, and let His love overwhelm me. I choose a beggar's kingdom.

Sin and Its Side-effects

2008-01-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

I am a seminary student who just came off of a 15 week independent theological study on sin, humanity, and the work of Christ. It left me desperately informed and consequentially wanting to take the truth from the pages and work it into my life. Out of that desire this series of blogs was birthed, which will hopefully stimulate thought and action concerning the ideas discussed.

Sin is a problem. I know a girl who- even having a deep relationship with God, even having experienced his forgiveness, even being surrounded by words of truth about who He is and how worthy He is of obedience – I know a girl who still sins.

Have you ever read verses like these:

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 1 John 3:9

Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is free from sin. Romans 6:6-7

While feeling more like this:

For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate… For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want… I find then the principle of evil is present within me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Romans 7:15, 18-19, 21-23

Like I said, I know a girl…

In His book Knowledge of the Holy, J. I. Packer speaks of two opposing tendencies to which Christians will turn in reference to the problem of sin. First is the tendency to scale down the problem of sin in the life of the believer in an attempt to uphold the tenet of victory in the gospel. The result is a rose-colored picture of the Christian life, upholding the truth of victory in Christ while ignoring the genuine struggle of the believer. Second, Packer identifies the tendency to stress the rough side of the Christian life in an attempt to be realistic, thus eliminating the supernatural benefits of the gospel in the life of the believer. This theology does not make room for the important doctrines of hope, freedom, and power in Christ. These two tendencies result in a series of questions that are crucial to Christian living:

Should the believer’s expectation of the Christian life legitimately include an inner struggle?

Does true salvation put an end to the heart’s battle with sin or “the flesh?”

How should we approach the struggle with sin, and how can we counteract it?

This tension and these questions will be in mind next week, when we enter the study of sin and its side-effects.

An introduction

2008-01-18T11:13:00.001-08:00

So after months and years of haphazard myspace blogs and the more recent facebook notes, I have decided to get organized. I think my husband (aka "King of Excel Charts") is rubbing off on me.

I will still use facebook and myspace (no, one vice is not enough), but those posts will consist of the sappy song lyrics, poetry attempts , or the occassional funny story. This blog spot will be reserved for the more intentional and hopefully meaningful discussions about life, spirituality, growth, and learning.

With the new start, there will be a few repeats (my apologies). To get into the swing of this blogging thing, I'll be posting a series of lessons, a few of which have been previously posted elsewhere. They serve as a stepping stone where I mostly consider the brilliance of other writers. Maybe someday I'll feel up to attempting brilliance myself- or at least writing my own stuff.

I hope you'll read AND COMMENT. I'd love a conversation more than anything else. So here we go - reading, writing, pondering, questioning, feeling, brewing a great many things.