Things that Come in a Box

Cereal
Appliances
Books
Rings

People
Genders
God

The human brain is very good at classification and pattern recognition. Based on even a very small amount of evidence the brain can leap to a conclusion. This is good for avoiding being eaten by a tiger, but not so good when it comes to our relationships with others.

One doesn't need to look far to see how even the church tends to box, classify and divide people. There are groups for youth, groups for elderly, for women, for men, for singles, for college singles, for career singles, for the "re-singled", and so on down any set of classification you wish to explore. Take a look at Christian bookshelves. One example in point: "Every man's battle: winning the war on sexual purity." Really? Every man's battle? Classifying sexual purity as a male issue seems, generously, to be a viewpoint at least 50 years behind the times if not more, which I suppose is par for the church as a whole.

Sometimes it makes sense to group and classify. For example, those struggling with particular addictions or traumas can receive great benefit from a community focused on that particular issue. But due to the nature of our minds, it is also exceeding easy to go much further down the road of division and classification than is really beneficial to anyone. Its easy to ignore someone's opinion once you've labeled them as insignificant or even to treat someone as less than human once you've labeled them as such. We must always be on guard against these divisions, which Christ has reconciled in his body.

Forgiveness

I've been reminded recently of the profound interconnectedness of truth and love. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have written about this inter-relatedness in varying degrees. The latter remarks even that in Christ, the expression of this interconnectedness becomes the "Face of his Person."

As I reflected on this, my thoughts turned to forgiveness. Perhaps in no other practice do truth and love so completely unite than when they result in mercy and absolution. Forgiveness does not deny one iota of the seriousness of an evil or the harm it inflicts on the innocent. This is truth. Nor does forgiveness forget the humanity of the offender or the price that Christ paid on their behalf. This is love.

Christ who was the incarnation of the eternal Word of God is also the incarnation of Truth. And through His divine nature, He is also the incarnation of Love for God is Love. These two aspects of the nature of God became flesh in Christ as the Face of his Person. In a way then, he is also the incarnation of forgiveness itself - the visible expression of God's love and truth. Forgiveness was ultimately the reason for His coming and it is no wonder that Christ has so much to say about forgiveness in the gospels.

Forgiveness, like all expressions of holiness, is mutually beneficial both to the giver and the receiver. The giver is freed from the chains of anger and bitterness while the receiver is freed from guilt. Likewise, the only alternative to forgiveness is mutually harmful to both parties. One path results in a life in chains while the other a life in freedom. Christ, in this way, expresses, models, and makes possible the freedom for which He came to set us free. What is most mysterious is why a life in chains ever seems so appealing?

Towards Knowing God

He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?
declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 22:16

Crazy

Rash.
Impulsive.
Not well thought out.
What if you're wrong?
Look at everything you'll be giving up.
Life is good, don't mess with it.

Well, what is the appropriate response to finding a pearl of great value?

Adventure

I just finished reading Wild At Heart and am mostly through Captivating. I like the messages of each of these books - that God has designed men and women differently but complimentary so that the happiness of one is also the happiness of the other.

These books both also talk about adventure as a built-in desire of our humanity. Wild At Heart talks about a lot about adventures outdoors, climbing sheer cliff faces, facing bears, doing dangerous things. This desire for adventure is true at least for me and would appear to be true for many more like me based on the popularity of adventure movies, epic sagas, etc.

I believe the author at one point said that some men even turn to stock trading, marketed as "adventures in capitalism" as a substitute for real adventure. I don't know remember if he made this point or not, but all adventures are substitutes for the real adventure. Traveling to exotic lands, leaping headfirst from skyscraper sized cliffs, fighting bears, international intrigue, battlefield combat - these things are all exciting to varying levels but none of them are truly adventurous. The excitement and adrenaline wear off after a while like the high of a drug. All of these are just substitutes for the only true adventure that could ever fully captivate the heart: the pursuit of God. For one man, this pursuit will lead him to distant lands and for another to corporate offices. I trust though that this is true: that the man who follows God on his couch is more adventurous than the man who has his own adventures apart from God.

The trouble is that it is easy to use God as an excuse to remain comfortable. It is easy to remain somewhere safe and say it is because God called you to the sacrifice of safety when in reality you fear the dangerous. And it is easy to live a life of so-called adventure and say it is because you are following God when in reality you fear the greater danger of becoming a tame man. I've often asked "what do you what me to do God?" and I wonder if He often has not answered because I am too afraid of what the answer may be.

Fellowship in Suffering

Have you ever met someone that you just "clicked" with? Someone whom you felt you could talk with, or just listen to, for hours on end? These people strike some chord in our hearts such that we feel an immediate connection and relation. I've found that in my life, these people share some common interest, passion or way of thinking that is very similar to my own yet made distinct by their own unique life experiences and challenges. The cake of deep intimate fellowship is formed from similitude and it is made sweet by the icing of differences, not the other way around.

God calls us into fellowship with His Son. There are many ways by which to pursue fellowship with God: prayer, fasting, study, obedience, etc. These are disciplines by which to nourish the connection to the divine so that we might, at a heart level, be transformed by the renewing of our mind to conform to the image of Christ. This likeness is the heart of fellowship, but there is something to be said for likeness of experience as a well. After all, a true likeness in heart should ultimately produce similar experiences.

The apostles talk of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. When you've been abandoned by your friends, lost worldly possessions and status, been wrongly accused and hated, beaten down and mocked, betrayed with kisses and abused, when justice turns away from you, it can be very hard to see God through the disaster. The darkness into which you have been thrust can be very dark indeed and even the very sense of the presence of God can be like the sun which moves behind the clouds. There is nothing left then but to sit among the ashes and mourn.

Then something very surprising happens. You look over and you see Jesus sitting beside you among the ashes. It should not be surprising, after all where else would Jesus be? The profound sense of kinship that floods into the heart cannot be expressed by words. It is the overflow of joy that transformed Job's pain into worship.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, the avatar of the Supreme Being in the Hindu mythos, claims that that the greatest of his worshipers are not the suffering but the wise. Christ, by contrast, seems to extend a special brotherhood to those who suffer for his sake, or perhaps he makes no distinction at all between the faithfully suffering and the wise. As G.K. Chesterton notes, it is revealing to mediate on the differences between the way Christ is portrayed by Christians versus the way other gods are portrayed, especially the Eastern ones. Those gods are well-fed, smiling, content, and serene with closed eyes. Christ is fully revealed on the cross in his greatest moment and finest hour. He is thin and bloody with a sad and tortured expression in his face and his eyes are wide open fixed on the prize. What a sublime paradox that the greatest joy is found not in following the serene gods but in joining the tortured one on His cross.

Living Among Wolves (Part II)

In my first post on this subject I discussed the outward characteristics of wolves. Wolves are predatory by nature and sheep are their prey. Those sheep who do not graze in the world as craftily as snakes meet the fate of perishing through their lack of knowledge. It is therefore important, as a sheep, to be on one's guard. This bears reminding since sheep can forget that not all are sheep - a fact that a wolf never loses sight of.

However, to leave the discussion merely at a description of the wolf nature and an admonishment to be wary misses another import aspect of this parable and therefore leaves the thought incomplete. That fact is this: all sheep were once wolves. Some wolves become sheep before they begin to hunt and others after they have slain a mighty throng. But all sheep were once wolves who through a mystery that angels long to peer into have become sheep: an experience which, like all births, is both painful and joyful.

Sheep therefore, in a sense, walk between two worlds. The first world is a prey-predator relationship where self-preservation, diligence, and caution are the driving motivations for action. The second world is another plane of relationship where compassion, pity, and sacrifice are the driving motivations for action. In the first one, a sheep flees from a wolf once recognized as such. In the second world, a sheep approaches the wolf with fear and trembling and bares its neck for the slaughter.

We are reminded to live in the first world by the proverbs, the psalms, the epistles of the apostles, and so on. We are reminded to live in the second when we see the Messiah break bread, declare it to be his body broken for his friends and then had it over to his betrayer whose feet he has just washed. So how do the sheep know which path to take when? Because the sheep hear and know the voice of the Shepard and where he leads they will follow, even where they do not wish to go.