I’ve heard for Myself

Morning is always kind of a crazy time in my house. Probably because I have four young kids and I’m not particularly a morning person to begin with. But one of the things I try to make as a part of our morning routine is to spend some time reading the Bible to the kids. I don’t particularly expect them to understand everything I’m reading to them – I don’t understand all of it myself. But my hope is that through familiarity, understanding will come for them earlier and more easily.

We’ve been reading through the Gospel of John.

Chapter four of John is a pretty significant chapter. It records the history of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well at midday. As I was reading the rest of the chapter this morning though, something else stood out to me. I think I’ve always been so caught up in the theology of Jesus’ discussion with the woman, I’ve allowed it to overshadow a profound truth found in the way the people of the woman’s town interact and respond to Jesus, and what that means for me and for my kids and for us.

When Jesus dialogued with this nameless Samaritan woman from the town of Sychar, He was able to describe the details of her life that He had no way of knowing other than by divine cognizance. She was so amazed that she positively identified Jesus as the Messiah and tells everyone in Sychar about what happened. The townspeople come out to see Jesus and investigate Him for themselves. Jesus stayed in Sychar a couple of days and many more came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. The people of Sychar then make a profound statement about the condition of their belief:

“We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man is the Savior of the world.”

This was pretty huge for me as I was reading this to my kids. At some point in time they will have to come to believe certain things about Jesus, not just because they believe me and what I say as their dad concerning my experience with Jesus, but because they have heard for themselves, because they have investigated, searched out and heard from Jesus through the Scriptures and prayer, and His community of faith – the Church.

Interestingly enough, it was the same for Jesus’ first disciples. They believed and pursued following Jesus based on the word of John the Baptizer. It wasn’t until they had interacted with Jesus themselves for some period of time that, when Jesus would say to them, “come and follow me,” that they could drop everything and do it.

Really, you and I are no different than Solomon, Zeke, Mary Jane and Ella. We’re no different than the townspeople of Sychar or Jesus’ first disciples. At some point in time each of us has to have a time of evaluation wherein we personally investigate Jesus and His claims and make a decision about Him based on what we’ve personally discovered and experienced in that search.

I suppose, then, this is my encouragement to all of us: personally investigate Jesus of Nazareth and His claims. Prayerfully pour over the Christian Scriptures, and participate in Jesus’ faith community, the Church. Who knows? Perhaps you could find yourself saying that you no longer believe because of what some pastor or priest or minister or friend or family member said at some time or some place, but you believe because you have now heard for yourself and you know that the Man is the Savior of the world.

From Sumo to Rocky

Who doesn’t like Rocky movies? People who also hate all things good and decent; the same people who hate fireworks, apple pie, America and babies; the same people who like things like USC football and the New England Patriots… people who are dead inside. I love Rocky movies. (Except, of course Rocky V… Really?!?! Tommy Gun and a street fight?! But hey, only one dud in six isn’t bad.) I know the movies are terribly unoriginal, the plot lines are predictable, and line delivery is often times weak. But there is something about a good Rocky movie that speaks to me.

If you read my last note, “Reflections & Sumo,” you know that for me, most of life is a fight. It’s a struggle, battle and many times all out war. It’s a battle to be a new man. This new man takes a beating from time to time, and sometimes I’m sure he’s losing due to the pummeling he’s received. But like Sumo, as long as you’re still fighting, you haven’t lost – at least not yet; and sometimes fighting is winning. Maybe that’s what resonates so deeply with me and Rocky movies.

For Rocky, he typically gets pulverized to a near unrecognizable pulp. Yeah, he gets a few good licks in there along the way and he’s scrappin, but he’s paying the price for having the gall to remain in the ring. At various moments in a Rocky fight, Balboa hits the canvas. The whole crowd responds egging the juggernaut to get up and keep swinging. It’s like everyone in the venue has something personally vested in the fighter getting up just one more time, each time. Mickey, his trainer is yelling at him to get up and Rocky glances between the ropes and sees Adrian. For love and dignity and honor, for everyone watching and cheering him on, and for himself he gets up one more time, each time, and fights.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Hebrews chapter 12. There’s a ton of meaty stuff in there that can keep you chewing on a spiritual banquet of truth for a long, long time. Right now I want to think about the first few verses. Among other things, the author urges the reader, because of this crowd that is watching us, to live their life of faith with perseverance, and with their eyes fixed on Christ.

Chapter 11 of Hebrews is about all these great men and women of faith that have gone before us. They are men and women of sordid and spiritual pasts and legacies, and they are our examples of lives of memorable faith. And these men and women and many more others than could ever be names are our cloud of witnesses. They are at our fight. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob Joseph; Moses, Samson, David and Samuel… they are at our fight. They are watching blow by blow. But not measuring us up seeing if we fight like they fought or evaluating whether or not we could make it in their club. They are cheering us on, calling our name, pushing us to keep fighting, keep swinging and to get up one more time, each time. They have something personally riding on us. It’s the valor of our God.

The crowd is great. They’re on my side, they want me to win. But sometimes the crowd just isn’t enough. For Rocky, he had to see Adrian. She was the only one that mattered and she is who he needed to see to get up when it mattered most.

In my struggle, my fight, my battle, my war; I have taken my licks. There are times I find myself sprawled and bleeding on the canvas, disoriented and lost. No matter who is saying what to me about how “good of a guy” I am, or how “gifted of a speaker” I may be in their opinion, my ministry gifts or skills or whatever the encouragement may be. I know the truth. I am beaten. I want to lay there and bleed. Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it to stand up one more time, each time, and take another blow. But in those times, I have found Christ in the crowd. He’s not shouting or screaming, urging or imploring. I find Him watching and knowing. Knowing what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling and what I’m dying to do… just lay there. But he doesn’t look with disappointment and condemnation, disgust or condescension. He looks as one who has at one time also prayed, “If there’s any way… let this cup pass.” His look emboldens me, solidifies my resolve and it affirms I can do what’s next. And with eyes fixed on Him… get up one more time, each time, and keep swinging.

And for glory, honor, immortality and love – for Christ because He is for us; I and we keep fighting and keep swinging.

Reflections & Sumo

Seriously… what’s better than Sumo wrestling? I mean, what would you rather gaze upon other than two men lauded for their clinical obesity hurling their 95% naked bodies at each other till one of them either falls down or out of the ring? Honey, go butter up the popcorn and add a case of Twinkies to my bedtime snack… and if you wouldn’t mind, bring me the molasses to wash it down with, I’ve got a new goal in life.

Seriously, though, you know what I really love about Sumo? You could be getting absolutely pummeled, but as long as you’re still up and in the ring you haven’t lost. For all intents and purposes it may look to everyone that you’re losing. The bigger, stronger, fatter, faster guy (fatter and faster… hmmm) might be serving you your butt… but if you are still up and still in the ring, no one has won or lost yet.

I suppose, at times, this is what I need to be reminded of. For some, all of life is a stage. For others, life is a playground. Some say life is a dream; others a nightmare. For still others, life is a struggle. A struggle to live or survive, a struggle to relate, struggle to achieve, or just simply a struggle to be whoever it is we so desperately want or need to be. Certainly, at different seasons and stages of our existence, life is each of these things and other analogies still. But for me, and perhaps for you, the underlying experience of life is struggle. It is battle.

As a Christian, my desire is to be a man who loves and models his life after the life and teaching of Jesus. And I believe each of us, Christian or not, experience the reality that there are internal and external forces in our lives that seek to keep us from experiencing life the way it was intended. As such, it is ultimately an attempt to rob us of life at all. It is an attempt to take our life… to murder. It is homicide to our experience, our dignity, our humanity and our identity.

Just as each of us experiences this conflict, each of us has attributed a source or label to those internal and external assassins warring against us. Some have identified their adversaries in terms of prevailing societal, religious or political norms that attack externally and worm their way internally to the depth that it thwarts our self-actualization. For others it is karma, or just good old fashioned bad juju. For me, as a Christian, it is sin. Yup… there it is again, the Christian “s-word.” Now is where I talk about how queers and democrats are going to hell, right?

If only sin and righteousness were as easy to reduce as to a socio-political agenda. Sin is much deeper than that. Sin, categorically, is anything that deviates from the entirety o f the nature and character of the good, gracious, loving, righteous and just Creator. And the more I follow Christ, the more I realize how much the battle isn’t simply against societal ills and people participating in immoral behaviors that deviate from God’s character, as it is against sin itself, against evil, and against those forces which oppose, deface, defame and slander God and His character and promote, glorify, and advocate those attitudes, actions and desires that are contrary to good and pleasing nature and character of God.

The real stinger of it all is how those forces mentioned above don’t just reside on some mystic ethereal plain pulling marionette string on drug dealers, marketing agencies, pornographers, record labels, corporate executives, politicians or whoever could be demonized for why our world is so screwed up. The farther I have journeyed with Christ, the more I have been confronted with the devastating reality of the depth of that sin within myself. Not only is it in me, but I am no innocent victim, ravaged against my will by some usurper of my life. I am, all too often, the willing accomplice. Crass men have said you can’t rape the willing. Jars of Clay sang, “I’d rather feel a pain all too familiar, than be broken by a love I don’t understand.” The truth is that inside me lives Cain, a jealous murderer. He sits across the table from Esau who will sell his inheritance for only a single meal. In the darkest recesses of my heart there is a ruthless, heartless survivor. There is a hedonist for whom no one and nothing is too valuable to be sacrificed, too precious to be done away with, or too sacred to be blasphemed if it gets in the way of what it wants.

Also, within me, by God’s grace, is a new man; a man who wants to know Christ and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. There is a man who wants to know honor; a man who seeks integrity. There is a man who fights the good fight of the faith and takes hold of eternal life. There is a man who worships Christ, who lives, gives, protects and preserves life, a man who loves. There are times when the survivor seems bigger, stronger, fatter, and faster than this new man.

But this new man is a fighter.

Too often I’m rooting for the survivor. I want, or at least think I want, what he offers and represents. I find myself wanting to lose to him. I find myself feebly trying to muster up the stuff to fight a battle I actually want to lose. And like the Apostle Paul, my soul cries out, “what a wretched man am I?! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Maybe you identify with this experience? My soul echoes the Apostle, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The truth is: this survivor is no survivor. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus have conquered sin and death. Sin has no rightful hold in me. Being defeated by and enslaved to sin are no longer necessary modes of existence. My soul echoes again with Paul, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Sin’s tactics are the cheatings and cheap shots of a desperate loser. The reckless shots and blows of the “survivor” are powerful and sometimes dominating, but are not knocking the new fighter down, or thrusting him out of the ring. This new man is taking a beating, he is brutalized, but he just won’t die, he is not lost… he isn’t even losing.

Sometimes fighting is winning.

This new man – this fighter – is growing… bigger, stronger, leaner, faster. The reality of who Jesus of Nazareth is and what He has accomplished satisfying God’s wrath on sin by His death and defeating sin and death by His resurrection feeds this new man. This “survivor” is wearing out, the fight is still on, he’s an ornery cuss, but we fight the good fight of the faith and take hold of eternal life.

Sometimes fighting is winning.

Faith & Deeds: a Judeo-Christian Distinction

For the past while, I have been reading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. The read has been challenging, slow, enriching, enlightening and has resulted in a defining and shaping of my understanding of what it means to have faith in, and follow the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish Rabbi, who I believe is the Messiah, not only of the Jewish people, but of all nations, tribes, and languages. So, as a gentile with little to no Jewish foundation from which to understand this Jewish Messiah, whom I worship and seek to follow, this book has been tremendous!

Without trying to boil down a 400+ page book into something that fits on a facebook note, suffice it to say that mitzvah, or divine commands and their observance, are central to Judaism, and the redemption of our fallen world. On page 404, Heschel describes the redeeming process of the deed in these terms, “For the good, even if it is not done for its own sake, will teach us eventually how to act for the sake of God… Purity of motivation is the goal; constancy of action is the way… The way to purify the self is to avoid dwelling upon the self and to concentrate upon the task… It is the deed that carries us away, that transports the soul, proving to us that the greatest beauty grows at the greatest distance from the center of the ego.” Certainly there are some profound statements in this collection that any Jew, Christian or morally concerned person would embrace and be encouraged by. However, inherently within these statements is exactly that which distinguishes the radical teachings of Jesus and His Apostle’s from the ongoing traditions and wisdom of institutional, religious Judaism.

The grandest Christian scholar of orthodox Judaism is the Apostle Paul. Having studied as a proven and zealous student of first century teacher Gamaliel, Paul understood the ins and outs of Judaism. What is Paul’s take on the role of deeds? Do deeds and obedience to mitzvah redeem fallen man? In Paul’s famous record of the inner struggle within man between deeds and purity of motives or presence of sin found in Romans chapter seven he makes it painfully clear that there is no redemption achieved by constancy of mitzvah. When opening the gift that faithful observance of mitzvah gives, rather than finding redemption and life, the tissue and ribbons only bound up death. Paul then concludes in praise to God for the true rescue from death through Jesus. Jesus alone is the one true redemption from sin and its effects. Jesus alone is the bridge between deeds and pure motives.

This was always the intention of the mitzvah according to Paul. Mitzvah is our guardian that leads us to Christ to be justified by Him through faith, not constancy of observance. Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians instructs this clearly in chapter three. This is really at the essence of the gospel and a defining separation of Christianity from its Jewish heritage.

Christianity is not to be understood as yet another religious tool towards behavior modification, or that through constancy of obedience to divine commands, the evil drive within us would be redeemed. Shannon Miller, my new youth ministry co-laborer at Orchard Hill Church commented to me today about how the boulders of sin in our hearts and lives are not boulders to be slowly chipped away at until they are no more, but rather require a stick of dynamite in the center, at the heart, that obliterates it. That’s exactly what our observance to mitzvah do. Our obedience does not slowly whittle away at our sin; it drills a hole to the heart of our sin, our sinful natures. This, in turn, allows that dynamite of faith, Christ’s redeeming work in His death and resurrection, and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit residing in us as participants in a new agreement between God and man regarding God’s dealings with our sin, to decimate the sin within us, cleanse us of our sin, and rescue us from the death brought about by the mitzvah.

The power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us as participants in God’s new covenant with man transforms our hearts and minds to bridge the gap between deeds and intentions. He puts the mitzvah in our hearts and minds as the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah wrote. No longer are we enslaved to the capricious whims of our own efforts for the redemption of our souls and our world. No longer should we labor and strive in unwrapping the gift by observing mitzvah only to be rewarded with death. Rather, Christ has received in His body the death of the mitzvah, so that we who believe may be led by the mitzvah to Him and to life.

Hey Jude

I got rocked by the book of Jude a while back.

You should read it. It’s only one chapter and hardly a page long depending on your Bible’s format. Jude is a letter pretty much all about the horribleness of false teachers and a warning against them. These false teachers are described like this… changing the grace of God into a license for immorality, similar to the Israelites who – though rescued from Egypt – were not permitted into the Promised Land and died in the wilderness, like the angels who rebelled and gave up their places in Heaven, and like the inhabitants of Sodom, Gomorrah and the surrounding towns who gave themselves up to sexual sin. The common thread in all of these examples is that they started out good, on the right track, or at least not as wicked as they became, then plummeted into depths of sin. Jude goes on to say that they ignorantly slander celestial beings, pollute their bodies – with sin – and reject authority. The only things they understand are those things understood by mere instinct – like brute beasts.

That’s a tough description.

Moreover, they have taken the way of Cain, the way of half-hearted worship and service. They have taken the way of Balaam, serving God for profit. They have rebelled against God and His Word like Korah.They are faultfinders and grumblers, boast about themselves and flatter others to their own advantage…

They reject Jesus Christ, our only Sovereign and Lord. That is, they reject Christ’s authority in their lives.

How often is that me. How often is that you? Too often. If you’re like me, you sit back and say, “Well, I don’t slander celestial beings and I’m not openly deviant in my sexuality and I’m not a demon so clearly Jude is not talking about me.” (Especially for me being a pastor). But isn’t that just like us? To pick out only a few examples that we feel like we can use to justify ourselves, or declare ourselves innocent?

I’m convicted. I grumble. I faultfind. My ministry is my income and at times, to my shame, that enters my mind. I think I’m pretty awesome. I’m not above flattering for my own advantage. I believe worship is not isolated to singing songs, but is a way of life… I often worship poorly, like Cain. Too often, I willingly reject the authority of my Sovereign and Lord, Jesus, to do what I want to do, the way I want to do it, for my own purposes and my own pleasure, not Jesus’.

So often I, and I think we, think of false teachers by measure of the content of their messages, or their doctrine, not their character. What is rocking me right now is that the reality, which I’ve always known but am realizing freshly, that false teachers are identified by their character.

In the era of facebook and online social networking, we have the ability to present a self image of our own construction to the world. We choose the pictures, we can de-tag ourselves, we choose what everyone else knows and doesn’t… which is appropriate. But what if it was heartbook? What if it were the thoughts and intentions of our hearts that were recorded and displayed without abridgment or editing that was displayed on the world wide web? Would we, or I, be able to feel justified because I don’t slander Satan? My guess is no.

Which is why I must, and you must, turn to our true Justification – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He is our righteousness. He is our Peace. He is our salvation. And what I mean by turning to Jesus is to put our faith in who the Prophets and His Apostles have declared and demonstrated Him to be. He is the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the Eternal and Immortal One, the One who was dead and is alive again. Putting faith in Him is demonstrated not only in an ability to give the right answers and follow conventional Evangelical wisdom. It not about some mystical “personal relationship” that is defined by some type of nebulus existential experience. But the personal relationship of submission and obedience. The personal relationship of emulation. the personal relationship that results in the rejection of sin and self pursuit. The personal relationship of the study of Scripture and prayer. The personal relationship demonstrated through fellowship with the Body of Believers. It is not that these things save us, it is that these disciplines and this obedience demonstrate the authenticity of saving faith. They outwardly demonstrate the inward reality that Christ is my, and your, only Sovereign and Lord.