by Joshua | Jul 31, 2014 | Faith
*Credit for this image from mic.com and this article
I tried to sleep – safely in my bed in my quiet neighborhood – yet the image of flames, darkness, and rubble remain in the forefront of my mind. Homes, neighborhoods, and families – destroyed. Sons, daughters, husbands, wives – dead. Their suffering causes restlessness in me. I cannot sleep.
Rather, I wonder what I can do. One lone voice, a single life swimming in a world of several billion people. I don’t lead a nation. I don’t have a platform. Anything I might do seems ineffectual.
As I wrestle with this I conclude, for the time, that whatever I do must bring me closer to suffering rather than further from it. Just because I live halfway across the world in some small, quiet suburb does not exempt me from joining those who suffer. I am called to solidarity.
My culture plots to feed my consumptive tendancies. This consumption leads me to a state of being desensitized to what’s going on in the world. I can turn the channel or entertain myself with the current series I’m streaming on Netflix, as I feed myself with processed foods, numbing my mind and desensitizing my soul. This is what I’m told is luxury. This is what I’m told is freedom. The choices are endless – and I agonize over what choice to make to feed the black hole of my desires. All this does is make me numb and ignorant of what’s going on in the world.
I have a choice. It will not change the world – but it might just change the way I experience the world – the way I experience others. It might move me closer to suffering rather than further away from it.
What if I removed the extras? What if I stopped the entertainment? What if I refused the excess? Rather than entertaining and consuming myself to death, just because I can, why not refuse the extras that those suffering do not have? Can I allow myself to be disturbed, disquieted, and dissatisfied with the cycles of violence I’m seeing? Rather than avoiding them, why not engage them? Why not be disturbed? Why not shed tears? Why not move closer where I can hear, see, feel, and understand (even in the smallest of ways) the suffering countless innocents experience each day?
I must move closer to the suffering of the world. My brothers and sisters around the world don’t have the luxury of ignoring it like I can. The bombs and sirens they hear are too loud – their fear too penetrating.
No, I will lay down the excess that demands my time and the entertainment that distracts my heart. I will attempt to quiet the noise that prevents me from hearing the cries of the widow and the orphan.
by Joshua | Jul 29, 2014 | Faith
I am currently reading a remarkable book by Antonio Gonzalez entitled “God’s Reign and the End of Empires.” In the opening chapters Antonio works to describe the structural problems of sin – seeing the same structure supporting both an understanding of individual and corporate sin. I find his desciption here compelling. As he reads the opening chapters of Genesis, he describes sin as our attempt to justify ourselves.
Understanding self-justification has acted as a key to unlock the door to understand not only my humanity, but humanity in general. As human beings we look to be valued, and self-justification is our attempt to find value for ourselves. It is self-justification, or the attempt to show myself right, that puts me at odds with God, with others, and with my own self.
Self-justification makes God my enemy. In the attempt to justify myself, anyone who stands opposed to my sense of right-ness is my enemy, therefore God becomes my enemy. Not only does he become my enemy, but he now becomes one I fear. Instead of seeing God as author and giver of life, we now see him as the one who stands opposed to how I author my own life and give my life meaning. Rather than seeing God as a source of life, we now see him as our opposition.
Self-justification leads us to treat others as a means to our own security. We are, in our broken state, deeply insecure beings. We look and long for the affirmation of others or our own successes to provide us with a sense of security. In our attempts to justify ourselves, others become enemies or ones to fear (much like God) when they are seen to disagree with us. Therefore we can end up looking for ‘friends’ who hold the same opinion as we do, and therefore isolate ourselves from a truer experience of community grounded in diversity.
Self-justification also leads to the exploitation of others. In order to justify ourselves we need to prove ourselves – and we go about proving ourselves by doing and accomplishing more and more. As we accomplish more and more we are put on a different level than those who accomplish less, and may also have used those people to accomplish more – therefore rather than maintaining a sense of mutuality we’ve created distance with our fellow human beings. Our culture defines itself on what we have and what we achieve. This is how we justify our worth, and this is destructive to our own selves (emptiness and even workaholism) and to our relationships with others (using them as means to an end).
All this attempt at self-justification erodes the soul. We cannot prove our own worth. That which is made does not determine its own value, nor can it earn its own value. The created always derives its worth from the creator – and the reformation of humanity happens as we return to our Creators words about us and his ways for us.
by Joshua | Mar 27, 2014 | Faith
Each Thursday morning a small group of friends meet to read two things: 1) prayers that help us examine our hearts and 2) a gospel reading. This morning’s reading came from John 4 – the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well.
In this story there are two contrasting images. One image comes from the physical gathering place where Jesus encounters the woman: the well. The other image comes from Jesus’ offer to her of a ‘spring of water welling up to eternal life.’
A well and a spring. We spent time sitting with these contrasting images.
A well. A controlled environment. You approach it with your bucket. You put the bucket down into the depths of the well. You draw out as much as you want. You go home. You return as needed.
A spring. Gushing. Overflowing. Uncontrolled. Abundant. Messy. Refreshing.
The well is described by the woman. The offer of Jesus is the spring.
Our traditional spirituality, understanding, and experience of God can look much like a well. It is something we know we need – and we approach it as needed. Then we go about our daily business, returning when we need it again. This type of spirituality lies completely within our control. We can have as much or as little as we want. I believe, in God’s grace, he will meet us at this well, but each time we meet him at the well we are invited to a different way of being. We are invited to a spring.
This spring, Jesus says, lives within us. It does not depend on place. We carry around this gushing, overflowing, uncontrolable abundant, sometimes messy but always refreshing life of God. We cannot control it. We can only be consumed by it. It spills out of us because it is uncontainable.
But most of us don’t want an uncontainable, uncontrolable God. We actually want the well. We want our controlled environments. The inate spiritual side in each one of us wants to taste God’s life – just not be consumed by it, because being consumed means losing control. And we love control. Therefore, we prefer the well.
Each trip to the well we meet God, and each time we go to the well we are invited by God to experience the spring. While we may be satisfied with our experience of the well, God is never satisfied with our experience of the well. He knows the spring is much better. It’s what we were created to experience. It’s how we were created to live.
I think God’s hope is that someday we’ll become weary of the well – tired of having to take a break from our ‘real’ life to go to the well to get our fill of ‘spiritual’ life. I think his hope is that we will get tired of the meagerness of our efforts to control the reality of God in our lives, and receive his invitation to experience the abundance of His life in the spring.
by Joshua | Mar 20, 2014 | Faith
I’ve wanted to share, but have been lacking the words to say. Often I process through writing, and the following is an excerpt from my journal…
It seems all I can do for the time being is function. I feel numb most of the time – as though I’m in a daze. Sorrow and Grief come and go – sometimes quickly and sometimes lingering. Largely these two things make up my ‘feelings’ – when I am able to escape the encompassing numbness, able to feel anything at all.
I grieve for what is – the loss of someone dear to this life. Even more I grieve as I see my wife experience the loss of her father – her hero.
We don’t grieve for Rich or for the future. We know he is with God, at peace, free from disease and sickness. We know we will be together again one day, when God makes the wrongs right and renews all things. I hold onto this hope of a new creation, new bodies, new heavens, new earth – all things new.
But we grieve the now – the harshness of disease, the uncertainty caused by his absence, the inability to simply acclimate to the new reality of missing his presence – his wry jokes, encompassing arms, and raspy laugh.
A feeling of heaviness surrounds us. It is unseen. The weight of the loss of (Rich’s) presence is nearly indescribable, but its experience is inescapable. The pangs of death resonate around our thoughts as we remember our loved one.
Yet at the same time hope sounds out in our ears as we know this bitter present is not a forever reality. Hope beckons to us – wanting to break through into the current mire of sorrow. This future hope breaks in and holds the present sadness.
If I could put words to anything, anything at all, it is that in this time I feel held. In the midst of pain and death and loss and grief I feel held by the one who holds all things together, by the One who is the Resurrection and the Life. And at this point – this held-ness is what I need. It is my prayer for our family.
by Joshua | Mar 3, 2014 | Faith
Last evening Ruby and I tucked the kids in bed a little early. We said we wanted them to get rest, but in reality we wanted a little down time, too. Mixed motives! Not too long after, our oldest came down because he couldn’t sleep. We sent him back upstairs to read – his choice…the Bible, a devotional, or the first of the Hunger Games books that he’s halfway through.
He came down a short time later and said he was freaked out. I thought he was reading the Hunger Games (great books, by the way). Nope. He was reading a devotional.
The line he was freaked out by…”Tomorrow it might be too late.”
This devotional written for young people exemplifies a trend in discipleship, especially among discipleship for kids, that greatly disturbs me. It is the trend that uses fear and emphasizes all the sin parts of the bible to get them to make a decision for Jesus. This is not just prevelant among kids – it’s the emphasis of much preaching, too. It is what prompted Scot McKnight to write his corrective to this trend in his (outstanding) book, The King Jesus Gospel.
There is so much wrong building our discipleship around the sin issue. The bible does not begin with Genesis 3 and humanity rebelling against God. It starts with the creativity of God in Genesis chapter 1 and bringing life out of nothingness. When we begin our discipleship in Genesis 3 the driving theme in our spirituality and our discipleship is death.
I would suggest we begin in the beginning – with our kids and in our churches – with Genesis 1 and the life God brings to all of creation. Framed that way, the narrative begins and ends with life – and the middle is filled with God’s work to return us to life in him. And this does ultimately happen in Christ – as he dies to defeat sin – and welcomes us into life.
Our kids are to precious to use fear to manipulate them into decisions for Jesus. I would encourage us to go back to the instructions given to us in Deuteronomy 6 that instruct us, as parents, to live out our faith. The thing that will impact our children most is how we are present with them – how we show them Jesus through living a life of grace and truth grounded in the life and love of God.
**As an aside, for those looking for an excellent resource for kids, check out The Jesus Storybook Bible.
by Joshua | Oct 7, 2013 | Faith
We have dimished the value of words in our world. In the current US government (in both national and local politics) the language is filled with hatred and intollerance toward one another. For some mysterious reason we believe we can isolate these words from actions. We think it’s ok to hold an aggressive posture toward others with our language as long as we are doing nothing aggressive in a physical sense.
I have no scientific proof – but I believe our language shapes and contributes to the environment we are creating for ourselves to live in. Violent language creates the space and gives permission for violent behavior. It sets the tone for what we will allow. And right now, locally and nationally, we are doing great violence to one another.
Sadly, when this violence materializes in a physical sense those who have been verbally violent will be ignorant of their contribution. Let me say it plainly: Those who speak violently toward one another contribute to the violent culture we experience. You cannot separate the two.
Words matter.
But words can also be healing. We don’t have to accept the majority tone: demeaning words, hateful words, prideful words, defensive words. You and I can change the tone. We can use words of peace, words of understanding, words of hope, words of belonging, words of love, words of forgiveness, words of sympathy, words of unity, words of affirmation.
So many times we wonder what we can do when the world around us seems so in love with its violence. I would suggest we change the tone, using our language and tone to be instruments of peace.