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Hello folks--sorry that I've been MIA for the last couple of days; between car issues and getting ready to go out of town for a wedding, things have been a bit crazy. Bear with me though--I will be back next Tuesday, so take a breather and check back then!
(This excerpt is from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis—I am curious to hear some thoughts on it…)
One part of the claim seems to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description that we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivaled by any other character in history.
Afterward the Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?” “I don’t know!” Cain retorted. “Am I supposed to keep track of him wherever he goes?”
--Genesis 4:9
When we left off on Saturday, all was well in the garden. Man had been created for relationships with God and other people, and had been placed in the perfect environment to nurture those relationships. However as with most good things, man managed to find a way to mess it up. The story is fairly simple—man was given one rule, and of course, he broke it, leading to his getting kicked out of the garden, suffering and toil, and so on. But what we need to see here is in verse 7, just after they eat the fruit.
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
They eat the fruit, and instantly everything changes—they have broken the communion that they shared with God. What is more, they realize that they are naked and are suddenly ashamed and cover themselves. By breaking the one rule that God gave them—asserting their own will and desires above the instruction of God who made them and cared for them—they have broken that community that they shared with Him. In so doing, they have also broken the community that they shared with one another—they are now covering up—hiding from one another as well as God.
This is a fundamental law of life—as you sever your relationship with God, it severs your relationship with people. And the converse is true as well—as you connect to God, you will naturally begin to connect with people. Your connection to God is demonstrated in your care for people. The Scriptures amply bear out this idea, and it only takes one more chapter to make it plain—Genesis 4. Here we have the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve—one is a rancher and one is a farmer. Abel brings an offering to God, and God is pleased with it. However, Cain brings his offering, and God does not accept it. Look at why, though—God says to Cain, “If you do the right thing, will you not be accepted? Sin is waiting for you Cain, it desires to master you, but you must master it.” Basically God is telling him that the very thing in his soul that drives a wedge between him and God is going to cause him to do things he will regret. And sure enough, in the next verse, Cain goes out to the field with Abel and kills him.
Do you catch the significance of this? Cain had no quarrel with Abel. God didn’t reject Cain because of Abel or anything like that—Cain was mad at God, and took it out on the one that God loved. As Cain separated from his relationship with God, he separated from his relationships with others. We live in a society that is at open war against God—and that separation from the relationship that we were designed to enjoy with Him has caused us to become fragmented in our relationships with one another as well.
Anyone experience this kind of connection?
And the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
--Genesis 2:18
I would like to offer some more thoughts on the idea from yesterday—about our utter loneliness in the midst of our ability to fulfill our every physical desire. Our society of indulgence has given us ample opportunity to test this theory firsthand—having everything you want does not fill the emptiness of the soul. Our self-centered culture has yet to understand a basic component of the human condition, namely that we were made to live in community. We were made for relationships, and as we sever those relationships with one another and with God, we reap a fractured society and a broken sense of self.
As any lawyer or counselor will tell you, a crucial part of figuring out what is going on or how to solve a problem is learning the backstory. We have to learn where we have already been in order to understand who we are and where we go from here. If we are going to understand how to relate to one another, then we must understand how the whole thing was originally supposed to work. We see in Genesis 1 the story of creation, and of God creating everything out of nothing (which is a fairly impressive feat, if you’ve never thought about it). Notice that after each thing that he creates, he declares it to be “good”—not just “finished” or “adequate,” but “good.” Then at the end, he creates man “in his own image” and declares him to be “very good.” This is an absolutely crucial distinction to make here—God has made everything to coexist with everything else, and it is all “very good.” In order for us to properly understand what has gone wrong in our world, we must understand that a guiding principle of creation is relationship—nothing was created in a vacuum. God did not make things and simply throw them on the planet or haphazardly toss things together—everything was made to work together and to depend on one another. We see this easily in nature—we are just now beginning to understand the far-ranging interconnectedness of the created world. We understand now that if we dump motor oil in the river, then it will poison the physical world around us, and eventually end up poisoning us as well. The world and everything in it is created in a state of relationship. What is more, we see when we flip over to Genesis 2, that God himself declared as he watched Adam do the work that God had given him, that “it is not good for man to be alone.” God looked at the situation and said that “you need more than relationship to the world around you and relationship to me—you need a helper, a companion who is like you.” So he puts Adam to sleep and makes Eve. (Just as a side note, can you imagine how disorienting it might have been for Adam to wake up from that nap???) Look at Adam’s immediate response in verse 23—“this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” He immediately understood that there was a deeper connection than just “hey, you’re pretty cool.” They intuitively understood that they needed one another, that they were made for this kind of community and commitment. The writer even describes the union between them in the most intimate kind of terms—in verse 24, he describes the joined husband and wife as becoming “one flesh.”
There is more to this story (we’ll get to that on Monday), but don’t miss the significance here—from the very beginning, we were designed to live in community. Our insistence on independent and solitary lives is not only counterintuitive to our nature, but it is detrimental to our overall wellbeing.
Where do you want to go today?
--Microsoft ad campaign
Think about the advertisements that you see every day—“Get a brand new car with no money down!” “This pill will help you to shed that unsightly bulge and get you ready for the swimsuit season!” “I made $25k last month working from home 3 hours a week!” “The Jack LaLanne Power Juicer will help your family to live healthier, more active lives on only pennies a day!” And so on. It is estimated by some that the average city dweller is exposed to 3000-5000 advertisements per day, a fact that both astounds and scares me. We have at our fingertips access to fulfillment of any conceivable desire, urge, or interest.
Think of the common thread that unites virtually all advertisements—every single one of them appeals to our obsession with ourselves. This product or service will in some way make you happier, more fulfilled, richer, more famous, and so on; in other words "this" product is the golden ticket to the life that you’ve always wanted. Yet as we all well know, such claims are rarely if ever fulfilled. Things just never seem to measure up to all the hype. So we live in a world where we are constantly pressed to acquire the newest gadget, get a better job, lose more weight, become more sexy—and all of this simply leaves us more and more empty—full of disappointment and unfulfilled promises.
Perhaps even more telling is the fact that we have entire websites, television channels, publications, and news segments dedicated to nothing more than celebrity gossip. What is our fascination with the lives of the rich, famous, beautiful, and powerful? I think that it might just be in part due to this deep-seated desire to achieve lasting happiness and fulfillment—I think we identify with them at some level. We may recognize that we lack the ability or resources to achieve this happiness, but if anyone can do it, they can. Deep down, we are rooting for them because we want to believe that our dreams and desires really can come true.
So the question then becomes—why is this the case? Why is it that we are more capable than ever of acquiring anything our heart desires, yet those things once we have them leave us with little more than more desire? How can we be surrounded by more stuff and people than ever, yet still be so lonely?
Even if I am imperfect in so many ways, nonetheless I want my brothers and my family to know my mettle, so that they may clearly recognize the set of my soul.
--St. Patrick, The Confession of St. Patrick 1:6
This is an interesting thought. I have been fond of this quote for a long time, and I ran across it again the other day. If you are not familiar with the story of St. Patrick, it is quite a compelling tale. According to legend, Patrick, a young British boy, is captured by raiders at the age of 16 and taken as a slave to Ireland. After six years of slavery, he manages to escape and return to his family in Britain. Some time later he becomes a priest, and feels God calling him to return to Ireland to minister to the people who had once enslaved him. This particular quote is part of a larger work attributed to him which contains letters to various individuals as well as a kind of running diary of his thoughts and experiences.
All that aside, the idea that is particularly compelling to me is this: do people know my mettle? Do those around me recognize “the set of my soul?”
What I mean is this—the vast majority of people lead lives that are commonplace, obsessed with the ordinary and trivial things of existence, focused on accumulation of decaying possessions and fleeting social status. Am I one of them?
Or, do I live life differently? Do I live my life in pursuit of a compelling purpose? Is my life shaped in practical and observable ways by a deeper belief about life and God?
It is a question for all of us: can those around us clearly and easily recognize the things we stand for—the “hills we die on?” If not, do we really stand for them at all?
Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have overcharged people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”
--Luke 19:8
The story of Zacchaeus is absolutely fascinating—a man encounters Jesus and his life and outlook are completely and utterly changed as a result. Yet I find that a great many people fail to recognize how significant the change really is. In order to fully grasp what is going on here, it is necessary to understand the backstory at work.
First of all, Luke states that Zacchaeus was a “tax collector.” Unlike our modern day IRS workers, who are paid by the government, tax collectors in Jesus’ day actually paid the government for the right to collect taxes in an area. Potential tax collectors would bid for the rights to a particular area, and whoever had the highest bid won the right to collect the taxes. Once the rights had been awarded to a particular area, that was the end of the Roman government’s involvement in the matter—as long as they received the predetermined amount of taxes for an area, they did not care how much was actually collected. So a tax collector made his profit on any additional taxes he was able to collect above and beyond his predetermined amount. Needless to say, these guys weren’t particularly popular. (You can imagine how well-liked a “chief tax collector would have been.”)
Second, you also have to keep in mind that Zacchaeus is a Jew. To become a tax collector in Jesus’ time was to essentially side with the Roman government against your own people—tax collectors were seen as traitors, heretics, and outcasts from Jewish society. Again, not a very popular position (although a very lucrative one.)
For the third element, let us return to the story itself. After he has encountered Jesus and spent some time around him, he states that he will give half of his wealth to the poor and pay back those he cheated four times the amount. Here’s the significance of this: to begin with, he’s giving half his wealth away off the top, no questions asked. Beyond that, there are three categories of theft in Jewish law:
1. Intentional theft—you steal it, and you sell it or kill it (in the case of livestock). You must pay back four times the amount.
2. Intentional theft—you steal it and you still have it. You must pay back double.
3. Disregard for property of another—you borrow something and break it or it is stolen from you. You must pay back the full amount.
So according to this scale, Zacchaeus falls into the second category. Yet he willingly places himself into the first category—why?
You see, he encountered Jesus, and in so doing he recognized for the first time the condition of his own heart. He recognized what his wealth had done to him and the lives around him, and he realized what needed to be done to make it right.
This is a complete and utter change of heart and life—this is what happens when someone authentically encounters Jesus.
(This is an interesting thought from Brennan Manning’s book A Stranger to Self-Hatred)
A fellow Franciscan once challenged me: “Do you ever reflect upon the fact that Jesus feels proud of you? Proud that you accepted the faith that he offered you? Proud that you chose him for a friend and Lord? Is he proud of you that you haven’t given up? Proud that you believe enough to try again and again? Proud that you trust that he can help you? Do you ever think that Jesus appreciates you for wanting him, for wanting to say no to so many things that would separate you from him? Do you think that Jesus can ever be grateful to you for pausing to smile, comfort, give to one of his children who have such great need to see a smile, to feel a touch? Do you ever think of Jesus being grateful to you for learning more about him so that you can speak to others more deeply and truly about him? Do you ever think that Jesus can be angry or disappointed in you for not believing that he has forgiven you totally? He said, ‘I do not call you servants, but friends…’ Therefore, there is the possibility of every feeling and emotion that can exist between friends to exist here and now between Jesus and you.”
In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning, I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.
--Psalm 5:3
Let me just preface everything that I am about to say with the following statement: I hate mornings. I really, really hate mornings. It is my personal belief that nothing should ever start before 10:00 for any reason.
With that in mind, I woke up this morning at 3:30 am. I didn’t wake up because of a noise in the house (no more than usual), or because it was hot in the room (which is a shock for me), or even because I was in an uncomfortable position (even though I was—thank you very much, dog). I just woke up, and simply could not get back to sleep despite my best efforts. So, after a half-hour of laying there in futility, I decided to just give up on it and get up. Keep in mind that even though I am wide-awake at this point, I’m not really happy about it—in my mind, there is no acceptable reason to be up at 4 am.
But I discovered something this morning, something that I knew but had never really experienced firsthand. It is really still and quiet in the morning—particularly the 4:00 am part of the morning. I think that today was the first time in my life that I have ever been completely awake at this time in the morning, coherent enough to really take in the experience.
As I said, everything is still and quiet in the morning. It was one of those kinds of quiet where you could almost hear your thoughts out loud; a quiet where there is absolutely nothing to distract you from contemplating God, your life, or anything else. I understand now why monastic orders throughout history have placed such an emphasis on this time of the day—there are no distractions, no pressures, nothing to interrupt the peaceful moments that God longs to give us.
It was at that point I realized—when was the last time that I have been absolutely still before God? When was the last time that I didn’t come to him in a rush, demanding solutions to my problems or solutions to my suffering? When was the last time that I simply sat in his presence and waited on Him to speak?
I honestly don’t know, but I know after today that it has been far too long.
So if you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.
--Matthew 5:23-24
I have been thinking a lot lately about how the church/Christianity is viewed by modern society—how the world looks at us who claim to follow Jesus. I am interested in the impressions that we give to the world, the stereotypes we carry (or contribute to, unfortunately), and the way that we live out the faith that we claim.
One of the charges that I have seen leveled against followers of Jesus is that we are only interested in “religious stuff”—that we lack an authentic connection to or concern for the “real world.” In the same vein, it seems that God is viewed in a similar light; after all, if his people are only concerned with “church stuff,” then it must be that that is all he cares about as well, right?
Yet here Jesus goes completely against the grain on this idea. Keep in mind that in the Judaism of his day, offering a sacrifice in the Temple was the foremost method of worship to God—it didn’t get any more “religious” than that. Offering a sacrifice was the most important thing that you could do religiously. But essentially Jesus tells this crowd, “Even if you are doing the most important ‘religious’ stuff that you can do, if you remember that there is reconciliation that needs to happen between you and another person, then that takes precedence. Go and do it, then come back and do the religious stuff.” It is a complete reversal of their framework.
So what do we make of this for today? After all, Jesus seems to be saying that our relationships with people—how we interact, how we treat them, what we do with conflict, and so on—are a crucial part of our worship and pursuit of Him. Put simply, that if we claim to be following him, then it must bear fruit in the way that we deal with other people. If we believe what Jesus seems to be saying, then it seems that perhaps the “religious stuff” is not nearly as important to God as is commonly assumed.
What do you think? Have I blown this out of proportion, or is reconciliation really that important?
