Soup and Self Righteousness

Disclaimer: now that I have a job, there is no time to blog, so things that aren't necessarily related get lumped together where before they could have been two posts. 

Snow and cold weather make me want to eat large quantities of soup. Yesterday at the grocery I caught an unmistakable whiff of potato soup and decided that's what we needed in our menu for the week. Unfortunately, they were not only completely out of potato soup mix, but also out of all the other common soup mixes so that the only flavors that were left involved wild rice. Don't get me wrong, a little wild rice isn't bad once in a while, but not when you're in the mood for creamy potato. This is the fifth time that I have been distinctly in the mood for something that my grocery store has been inexplicably out of. First it was the kikoman soy sauce, then, Campbell's tomato soup, then the correct size Mission tortillas, then the Barilla lasagna sheets, and now this-- potato soup mix. It seems like everyone wants to buy exactly what I want to buy, only they get there first. It could be attributed to the change of seasons; yesterday was the perfect day to buy soup mix because it was cold and rainy. And, smart people would have looked at the weather and anticipated that it was going to be cold this week, or, they could have just looked at their calendar. Everyone knows it's November, but I keep refusing to believe it, and the consequence is that I miss out on the good soups! I think I am somewhat justified in not believing that it's November. First, we've had pretty mild weather. Second, we haven't had to turn the heat on in our apartment yet. For some reason, our apartment retains heat very well, which is a blessing in that we will have a remarkably low electric bill for most of the winter, probably, but, I wake up sweaty most mornings even though it's 30 degrees outside. We haven't even switched to our comforter yet. So I was in denial... until today. Today, I heard the sound of little ice chips hitting my bedroom window. I left for Bible study, and it was sleeting. I don't think I've ever seen sleet. Always missed that one, somehow. So, it sleeted all the way there, and I was thinking, "This is so bizarre, but it's kind of nice, because you don't get wet because it bounces right off of you." I went to the first part of my class in a room with no windows, and when I walked out of the room, it was blizzarding outside-- big, wet snowglobs. And all the moms said, "my kids will be so excited!" I was in shock. Once it snows, there's really no turning back. I finally have to face the reality that I live in Wisconsin and it's going to be cold cold cold until April/May. I actually really like snow. But now I have to go to Target and buy those inside floor mats for our snowy shoes, and you know what, all those other rational/plan ahead people will have gotten to them first and they will be out of stock for weeks!

I did learn something today, and it's not at all related to the weather. I just wanted to get all that off my chest, but today at the Bible study we were talking about the Acts 15 passage and the Jerusalem council. The context is that Paul and Barnabus have gotten back from their first missionary journey where they saw huge numbers of non-Jews believe in Jesus. They are spending some time in a city called Antioch. Some guys come up from Jerusalem who are part of this group called the "Judiazers" (cool name, huh?) and they are telling everyone at the Antioch church, people who are mostly Greeks, not Jews, that they need to follow the law of Moses and get circumcised if they want to be saved. Basically, they have to become Jews before they can become Christians. Paul and Barnabus are like "No way Jose! We have worked too hard to teach these people the truth for you to come up here and wreck everything." So they go up to Jerusalem (one always goes "up" to Jerusalem no matter what direction you're actually coming from because of the altitude) and have this meeting with all the leaders and elders of the church there. And they decide that it's by grace through faith that both Jews and non-Jews/Gentiles/Greeks/everyone else are saved, not through following the law or being circumcised. The law and Jesus aren't of equal importance. Jesus gets all the importance, and nothing can be added to him and his work on the cross.

I thought I understood all this pretty well, until the speaker started relating this incident or crisis in the church to today. She asked this killer question about the things that we add to the gospel that aren't actually a part of it. And immediately my mind flashed to my church, and all the homeless people who are part of the congregation, and the people who didn't grow up in the church the way that I did. People who had wild lives before they came to faith. It is hard for me to accept people in the church who lived in what I would deem "big-time sin" before they got saved. And God has worked with me on this before through the parable of the prodigal son where I am the older brother who says, "What the heck. How can you let them in? I've done everything you ever asked (a far cry from the truth)." But, the point of that story is that the brother was too caught up in his own achievements when he should have been looking at God. It isn't about what he did or about what the brother did. The point of that story is to showcase the mercy of God, without which neither he nor the brother would have had anything.

What are we adding to the gospel? I had to sign the community covenant again to do some editing for a Wheaton prof. For those who don't know, the community covenant is a document that all the students and faculty at Wheaton commit to uphold. It basically outlines what the Bible says about how to live. There was a clause that I noticed this time through about self righteousness. It defined self righteousness as "the imposition of extra-biblical standards on others." Whoa. Wait a minute, I'm not self-righteous... at least, I didn't think I was. Yeah, I can relate to those guys who went up to Antioch, because they were basically saying, "We wish that all of you pagans who now believe had lived like we had-- without idol worship or big time sin." They saw the Greeks from their Jewish perspective. They wouldn't have even been allowed to go into one of these people's houses to eat a meal because it was against the law. But then Jesus came along. Dr. Duane Litfin would call this a watershed moment. After Jesus came, Peter was directed by God to go to the home of a centurion named Cornelius, a Roman (this is in Acts 10, and it's a great story). He goes into the house and tells them the message of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit fills all of them, just like it filled the Jewish disciples. Whoa! What about the law? God told Peter, "don't call anything unclean that God has made clean."

Whatever the past was, it's totally obliterated in Jesus. And his followers are supposed to act like it never happened. Oh, you used to worship idols? No biggie. For the Jews and Greeks/Romans/Gentiles, the difference between them was still probably outwardly visible because of culture. For us today, the difference is visible as we get to know people and hear their stories. But, learning about someone's past shouldn't cause us to draw back from them, it should cause us to praise God for his mercy in bringing this person to a new life. This is hard for me, and maybe it's hard for other people who have lived their whole lives in the church and don't know much from their own experience about what it feels like to live outside the church. You would think that being a part of the church would give people better experience with welcoming others from different backgrounds, but that is a topic for another day. If we can only relate to people who are like us, where's the hope for everyone else? I am learning how to do this better at my church where I can talk to homeless people and I can watch other people interact with grace and love.

Screwtape Ch. 7 & 8

Wow, chapter 8 is amazing. I wish I could type the whole thing into this post.

It begins by exploring the theme of undulation in humans' lives. In everything we do, we have times of peaks and times of troughs, in "interest in his work, affection for his friends, his physical appetites" (pp. 37-38). Then, Screwtape talks about the differences in the way that God uses the trough periods in our lives and the way that devils use them. The following section contrasts God and the devil's driving motivations as they look at humans.

[He wants to fill the universe with] creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct. p. 39

Wow! Isn't this sweet?! That's the beauty of God, and for someone who's supposed to sound like a demon, he sure is good at proclaiming truth about God and praising him for who he is. I love these images of God because they are so freeing. They show a God who is full and flowing over-- a God of abundance who doesn't need us but wants us. The structure of the paragraph with the barrage of paired statements really makes it effective from a literary standpoint, too.

We can use this list as a measuring rod for ourselves in our relationships with people. Are we acting out the first part of the paired statements or the second part? Are we full and flowing over in our relationships or empty and trying to be filled? We can act out either of these roles, the dark role or the light role, in our relationships, and I think whichever one we act out reveals something about the state of our heart and whether or not we are living for God that day or if we are living for ourselves. It can be easy to try to suck in or control or manipulate or seek affirmation from friends, but isn't it better to already find ourselves full so that we can love them? Living a "full and flowing over" life shows evidence of the Holy Spirit in us.

I love the last phrase "united to Him but still distinct" from p. 39. We are united to him through Jesus and we have peace with God, but we are distinct because we retain our selfhood and our human will. Looking back to creation, we are united to God in another way-- we are made in his image. We are like him in whatever way "his image" refers to. From creation, we also learn that God loves to celebrate. We see a bunch of diversity in creation-- really weird animals, think about it. Creatures who are not only functional, but beautiful, and superfluously beautiful, colorful, patterned, tall, small, almost invisible. Planets, galaxies, things that humans will never see but God still made them because he wanted to. And then, think about the passages that describe the body of believers-- one body, many parts. Think about all of your friends who can do very different amazing things-- artistic abilities, musical abilities, incredible brains, incredible athleticism, people who build things and know intuitively how parts fit together. People who can see beauty, people who get math, people who are inexhaustibly kind to others. When God made humans, he didn't make them boring. His plan was never "to cancel or assimilate" (p. 39) but to celebrate. His character of freely "giving out" and blessing shines in his creative design of humans and his lavishing of gifts, abilities, and uniqueness on us.

Where does the human will come into all this? It seems to be the focus of Lewis' attention in much of this chapter-- the devil wants to take more and more ground in humans to control them, but God wants humans to freely conform their wills to his. "Merely to override a human will... would be for Him useless... His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve" (p. 39). The two ideas-- the trough period from the beginning of the chapter, and the human will-- are connected through God's felt absence. Read the fascinating and powerful passage below:

He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs-- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual temptation, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. pp. 39- 40 

What a faith! These ideas go back to one of the first chapters when Screwtape says something along the lines of "He leaves them to do it on their own" and this leads to less reliance on emotions. These trough times can be agonizing though. We just want to get out. We feel like we're in the dark and we don't know what, if anything, is happening to us in terms of "growth." And we don't really care about growth even if it is happening. Everyone has these periods of feeling forsaken by God. I love one of the lines from earlier in this chapter, "some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else" (p.38). The troughs offer us the opportunity to cultivate obedience, even though it hurts. But God doesn't demand that we execute the task perfectly. "If only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."

Screwtape Letters, Ch. 1 and 2

I picked up The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis) to supplement my reading this morning. I haven't read it since I was in high school, and I always love going back to a book full of wisdom to see what will jump out at me that I didn't take note of the first time or that I have since forgotten. Here are some observations from the first two chapters. For those unfamiliar with the premise of the book, it is a series of letters written from one demon to another, his nephew, on the subject of tempting humans. It is written from their perspective and so refers to God as "the Enemy" and the devil as "Our Father Below." The chapters are short but packed full of insight into the human condition and spiritual life and realities.


The first thing that struck me was that the tempters know what is true themselves, at least, in a twisted sort of way. I had been under the impression that they were always trying to persuade humans to believe what they believed, but that's not the case. They try to keep humans from God, but they themselves know that there is a God and that he is powerful, etc. They are trying to keep people from the truth, not persuade them to believe in what demons believe in, because even they acknowledge the existence of God (and shudder, James 2:19). So what they're trying to sell fits into a different category and I'm not sure what to call it. I don't think it's a positive thing like "belief in x," but more of a negative thing like "any way of living or believing that does not acknowledge God." As long as that criterion is met, they would probably be happy, because, no matter what kind of life a person lives, in the end that determines who has victory over a person's life. Their job is distraction and distortion...

In a passage on p. 2, the uncle Screwtape says:

By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can forsee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'.

Here is a fascinating passage. Screwtape goes on to relate the story of a man he tricked out of thinking about deeper issues by getting him to go eat lunch instead. He's distracting people from the unseen with what is seen and felt. But the problem with that for people is that what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal (2 Cor. 4:18). "Real" life, our surroundings, can be deceiving.

Another example of the difference between the seen and unseen occurs on p. 5 when Screwtape talks about the church:

One of our greatest allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate...

How often do we forget the true image of the church or trade it for the image we see on Sunday mornings?

He goes on in this chapter to describe the people in the church, their faults and areas of inadequacy to the human eye, but also their appearance to him, "you may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side" (p.6). In this book, and in The Great Divorce, Lewis does an excellent job at contrasting the reality that is seen with the eye to the eternal reality. In The Great Divorce, there is a section describing a seemingly ordinary woman, who in heaven is completely transformed, or rather, revealed in her true form of beauty and grace. We are at a great disadvantage when it comes to seeing things as they really are. We cannot recognize "great warriors" when they sit in the next pew.

My favorite section from the first two passages touches on some of the themes I've been exploring in this blog, namely, discipline and getting where you want to go. Lewis calls it "the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing." Here is the section:

Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His 'free' lovers and servants-- 'sons' is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to 'do it on their own'. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.

God doesn't force us. He leads us to the path and then the rest is up to us. Perhaps it takes a little longer, but there are lessons for us along the way-- the lessons of hard work and the lesson Lewis points out-- less dependence on emotion. That's a big one I need to learn. Sometimes emotion can't be trusted and it just needs to be put aside. I wish there were an easy way to do this. God's goal in this is our freedom. How interesting.

Tune in next time for chapters 3 and 4, or, go pick up the book yourself and read it along with me. It's quick in the reading, but provides thinking material to occupy hours and hours...

Choices

Caleb and I went for a run the other night, and when we do that (like, the two other times it's happened), we usually do a cool-down lap around our apartment complex. I have a bad habit of looking into other people's windows. Just want to see what they're up to, you know. Most of them are watching tv. Do you know how boring it is to watch someone watching tv? It's like they're dead, frozen, completely immobilized. Vesuvius erupted and the gas asphyxiated them right where they were. 

Becca Ashton just wrote something great on her blog on this very theme, "the endless hours spent watching movies, playing games, or whatever other entertainment we mindlessly take in is just a means of avoiding silence, doing the things you know you ought to, and ultimately avoids the question of meaning..."

Doing the things you know you ought to.

The day after our little jog around the neighborhood, I was reading in 2 Corinthians 4. Verse 4 says, "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ." What a crystal clear reason for people not knowing what they really need or what brings them meaning. Their minds are blinded. They don't know what their soul needs, so they try to fill that need with other things, things that Christians would call idolatry. They worship pleasure and try to find peace in things they think will satisfy, but ultimately do not. TV stops satisfying the moment you switch it off. Square peg, round hole.

2 Cor. 4:6 talks about the light of the knowledge of the glory of God that we have in our hearts. Part of this is knowing our need for God and also knowing that God IS God. We worship him, he directs our lives. The next verse, "But we have this power in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."

Think about this verse in light of the tv question: in ourselves, we are mere humans. We might get to the end of the day and think, "Wow. I'm so tired. Time for tv therapy for the next six hours, time for a couple of beers, time to check out and turn off my brain until tomorrow." But, through the power of God we don't have to do that. We're not so weak that we have to turn to other things-- we can stay focused and keep our minds engaged through the day doing things that bring meaning to our lives and further the kingdom of God.

This is not to say that it's bad to rest after a hard day's work. I fully support rest and self care. It is also not to say that tv is evil. But, for me, this whole issue is a question of self-indulgence vs. discipline. I do not have a full time job, so the choices I make about time have become very important. Am I going to play brick-breaker on my phone everyday or not? Those kinds of things. Am I going to intentionally try to talk to Caleb about deep stuff in the evenings or not? Do I have the courage to make choices that are good for me? And what are they?

As a person with the knowledge of what my soul needs (Jesus Christ) and where it finds meaning (writing, being with people, singing, making things, teaching, being who I really am vs. tv, listlessness, inaction), do I have the courage to choose? These things bring meaning to me because they are part of how God has made me-- these are my gifts, these are the things I am here to do. At times when I am tempted to spend time in ways that I know will make me feel sick and purposeless later, will I remember that I have the power of God to help me choose something different?

My friend Brittaini and I went on a breakfast date yesterday and were talking about building a life. We both feel like we have some kind of people network here and friends we can call, and now we are thinking about the cracks. The time that connects the pieces of our days is the most significant part-- the part when nothing is scheduled and it is up to us to be who we are going to be. She said something awesome, "Having the life you want isn't doing what you want to all the time." This is the crux. I am spontaneous and follow my feelings when I make decisions. But to get where I want to go, I can't always do the things I want to do. I can't always say "not now." Discipline, discipline, you are so hard! 

Note: These are some loose thoughts. I don't have this idea completely nuanced yet. Let me hear the problems or other questions/issues so I can think it through more fully. 

I heart rowing. I hate the squeak.

Happy Birthday Mike Mathias! Thanks for being a great dad and teaching me so much.

What a week. We're still trying to get that sick burnt pork smell out of here. This week was the week at the beginning of the change of the seasons where my allergies attack. I never know what's happening, even though it's happened for the past three years during this exact week. Last year, it was right before the first all-school communion where I had to sing. Two years ago, it was right after I got back from the Dominican. So, I spent the week sleeping and watching daytime television while doing laundry. I discovered that I really liked black TV(My Wife and Kids and Everybody Hates Chris). Yesterday, I realized that it was probably allergies and got a left-over prescription re-filled. Now I am back to being my chipper self.

I am really enjoying crew. So much. I always wake up before my alarm because I'm paranoid about being late and having to cox the next practice. I've never coxed. I don't know how. Don't make me responsible for the boat and everyone's safety please. Although, I have practiced the calls in my head and know exactly what kind of a coxswain (pronounced "cóx-in") I would be. My rowers would never be bored. I would keep them focused for every second of that piece.

On Monday, I counted from the wrong end of the boat. You see, in a shell, the rowers are numbered from 1 to 4 or 1 to 8, starting with the bow of the boat. Evens are ports and odds are starboards. But, the coach names people off starting with the stern, not the bow. I just figured that out today. So, on Monday, I was trying to put myself in a spot to be on the port side, and I counted 4 from the wrong end!! We got in the boat and pushed off the dock, and then I realized that I was in the 5 seat-- on the starboard side of the boat. I had never rowed on the starboard side, but you can't go back to the dock until the practice is over. It's a huge row boat, you can't turn it around just like that. So, I decided I'd just have to pretend like I knew what I was doing. It went pretty well all things considered. I definitely caught a couple of mini crabs ("catching a crab" means that the blade of your oar gets stuck in the water weird. A big one will knock you completely backwards. A small one will stick the handle in your stomach and cause a jerk to the boat) and missed water ("missed water" is what it sounds like-- you do a stroke but don't get any water in your blade. Also causes a jerk because your blade goes through too fast and you rush to the back of the slide) a few times, but for the first time on starboard, it wasn't so bad. The pieces we did that day really helped-- we did some drills and that was good for learning to row starboard. Today I was a port again, and that felt better.

All this green stuff gathers up on the dock everyday and in the morning before we go out, some rowers will pitchfork the dock and try to get all the seaweed and grasses off it. There's tons of it. And it's not just seaweed. There's yogurt cups and other trash and sticks and feathers and duck poop and things that I don't even want to know what they are. So today, I decided to help pitchfork the dock because there was so much seaweed on Monday that we had to walk over piles of it. Great idea, right? No. It turns out that there are other things in the grasses that are still alive! I got a nice big fork full of the stuff and was walking it over to the compost pile and I heard this squeaking, like a mouse would make when it's stuck to one of those glue traps. My grass kept squeaking, and I was freaking out. I wanted to throw my pitchfork and run. I set it down on the ground a couple of times, but there was nothing I could do and I had to get it over to the pile because three other people were all needing to use the same path. And then when I did dump it on the compost pile, I was afraid to look because I didn't really want to know what it was. I do alright with other gross things. Blood is no big deal. Feces are fine. Unclogging hair in the drain, throwing out month-old leftovers, raw meat is okay depending on the cut. But this I could not handle. I was terrified to the core. You have to imagine-- it's dark outside. It's like 5:28 am, and you can't see a thing, and something about arm's length away from you is squeaking and gasping for breath or something and you have no idea if it's going to get loose from the grasses suddenly and fall/jump onto you. One of the guys said it was probably a fish, but that wasn't comforting because then I just imagined its big eyes looking at me and its mouth opening and closing. And, how big is this fish? Is it bleeding? It's probably going to die a slow death now buried in seaweed. This happened twice this morning and I thought I was going to throw up or run away or throw down my pitchfork or all of the above. No more pitchforking the dock for me. I will encourage others from the sidelines.

I keep thinking of this analogy between rowing and faith. Actually, I keep thinking a lot of deep thoughts about faith. It's like I can't get away from them. Somehow, not being at Wheaton where I am surrounded by all things Christian makes me take the Bible more at its word (haha no pun intended). But anyway, the thing about rowing is that you can't see where you're going. You can only see what's behind you. The boat moves forward, but the rowers sit facing the stern so that they can see the stroke, the rower who sets the pace for the boat (the bow moves forward, the stern is the back of the boat). You watch the stroke at the stern or the rower directly in front of you the whole time, and the only way that you know where you are is by seeing the markers you pass along the shore, but you only see them after they have passed. This is like life where we don't really know where we're going, but we know we're going somewhere because we can see the markers along the shore. And we only see them after we've passed them. We've gotta be making progress. So then, who steers the boat? The coxswain. She knows where the boat is going and can see the destination the whole time. It's called picking a point. The coxswain is responsible for the safety of the rowers and will coach them to get to the destination. But the rowers have to listen to and trust the coxswain. There's your deep spiritual metaphor for the day.

Here's a race clip to help you visualize this. This is the Wheaton men's novice team in spring 2008 on the Skokie River in Il. They are going forward, looking backward, and the coxswain is in the stern. She can see the rowers and the race course. Oh, turn the sound down on your comp before you press play.

Radio Slogan

Tomorrow at 5:30 am I will be rowing on lake Mendota!!!!! I am so excited and nervous I don't think I will be able to sleep tonight. I couldn't sleep last night because I was quizzing myself on rowing vocabulary and trying to remember if there is a difference in port and starboard oars (I think there is). I want to know what kind of shells they have and the pattern on the oars.

I've been wanting to talk about Christian radio station slogans. We heard one this past weekend that was truly unique. Caleb and I were driving home from visiting his parents. We spent the first hour of the ride with the windows down and Switchfoot blasting. We never ride like this, but we were happy and the weather was great and it was the weekend. When we got tired of driving like that (let's face it, you can't sustain that kind of drive for four hours), we rolled up the windows and switched to radio. After a couple of songs, we heard the slogan: "88.7... bringing the good news to sinful Iowa." We both sucked in our breath and exclaimed, "Whoaaa!!" at the same time. Caleb said, "and with such a soothing voice, too." We are bringing the good news to all you filthy sinners out there in the great state of Iowa, where we both happen to live and work. We have a church too, if you ever want to come to it, you sinner. What person who hears that slogan is going to want to have anything to do with Christians, judgmental or otherwise?

I mean, we're all in need of some good news, right? Wheaties, remember the chapter in Bonheoffer's Life Together when he talks about being shocked to discover a sinner in our midst? Christians still sin, so I don't think we should be so quick to create stark dichotomies between those who possess the good news and those who do not in terms of their sinfulness. It's not just one side that has sin issues. Both sides do. How about bringing the good news to ourselves and getting rid of that superiority sentiment? How about embracing an attitude of humility? If we put up walls and project to the world that it's so sinful and so different from us that we can't relate to it, the church will not grow.

It's this kind of pretending that causes even bigger credibility problems for the church-- like when it turns out a pastor has been sleeping with members of his congregation. Pretending that all sin and temptation has vanished from our lives and projecting that image to American society sets us up for big problems when the truth comes out that, oh, I'm really not perfect.

Another problem with this handy little slogan is that it assumes that non-Christians should, and do, try to live up to Christian standards for "holy living." Why would they when they don't believe in Christianity? Christians condemn non-Christians for not living in accordance with something they don't believe. Now, that's twisted. If a Buddhist condemned me for not following the Buddhist principles, I would say, hey man, I'm not a Buddhist. And he would say okay. And that would be the end of it. But Christians can agitate so much! and get away with it on the radio!

If I'm not a Christian and I flip to 88.7 on scan and hear "bringing the good news to sinful Iowa" I will either feel judged, confused, guilty for vague reasons, or angry. Calling people "sinful" creates distance instead of an environment of care and welcoming. What about getting to know someone instead of slapping on that "sinful" label? Ask them what they care about. People are very different, and a lot of times this creates fear in Christians. But what reason do we have to be afraid? Fear of people's thoughts, fear of things they're involved in, fear of being wrong, fear of being labeled. These are common fears. When we are firmly grounded in our identity (in Christ, etc.), we don't have to be afraid. Maybe who we are is just what was needed to reach someone (D. Klee). I'm not a pro, but it's somewhere to start.

A String of (Unconnected) Thoughts: Hope Abounding

Someone says that men's thoughts could be compared to a waffle-- everything has its own compartment and the divisions between individual compartments/thoughts are clearly defined, while women's thoughts are more like a spider web or a giant bowl of spaghetti-- thoughts lead to other thoughts and it's not really clear how. So, a woman can leap from talking about a recent lunch date to remembering that the trash man came this morning (oh darn). Here are some of the things I've been thinking about recently. Judge for yourself the semblance to waffles or spaghetti.

Cars: I don't like getting work done on my car. Here's why: everyone knows that girls get ripped off unless they know something about cars. Thought process: How do I know where to take it? Everywhere is expensive. How do I know if a cheaper diagnostic will pay off in the end or not? Is it important that the brake test is 25 at one place and 50 at another if they can both be applied to the end cost? Well, it depends if the problem ends up being with the brakes. Dahhhhhhhhh. Whichever decision I make seems like the wrong one.

Jobs: I got a job. From one Monday post to another, I got an email asking me to interview, interviewed, and got a job. It was a whirlwind. And I am thankful for it because I was getting to the end of my jobless rope. Not only did I get a job, I got my dreamjob using almost everything I am passionate about: teaching, Spanish, kids. In addition to these awesome things, my job is only 18 hours a week, which will allow me to continue doing wifely things and writing (and rowing! see end).

Before I knew I was hired, I had a conversation with a friend about defining ourselves by what we do. This is a BIG temptation for me. Last year, I was working all the time in a bunch of different roles, and I came out of that constant flurry of activity to a position of relative non-doing-ness, a position where I was forced to sit around and think about the source of my contentment with myself. Did it come to me because I was successful or because I knew who I was in God's eyes? It is hard for me to be still. I hope that I am growing to be more comfortable in stillness. Knowing that I start work soon helps, but I hope that the time that I was without a job was long enough to teach me that lesson.

Prayer: I got this job because people prayed for me. When I thought I was going to be doing the teaching program with conflicting hours, I sent an email out to the big prayers in my life and asked them to pray that I would get hired anyway. What happened was that the program didn't fill, I got interviewed, and I got the job. I asked them to pray because I got to the point where I realized that with doing the program, it was unlikely for me to get hired, but I really wanted the position. I asked for prayer because I was so desperate. (Why don't we seriously ask for prayer before we reach the point of desperation???)

During the past school year, a situation came up that was very desperate involving family. I had no hope that it would get better, and I was afraid, so I asked for prayer-- I asked my roommates, people I worked with, I asked pretty much everyone I was close to because the situation was so desperate, and God came through in a way that was so far beyond anything I could have imagined. Why don't we tap into the sweet resource of prayer all the time? Would we see more happen if we believed that God was the only one who could help?

Belief: I got to have dinner with a dear friend two Saturdays ago, and she said something that I have kept thinking about. She used this illustration to talk about belief: a homeless man stops referring to himself as "a homeless man" and starts referring to himself by the job he just got. He's choosing to believe that he's headed in a different direction. This is cool, because it actually works. It's exciting to talk about yourself with hope instead of despair. If I say outloud to other people, "I'm a writer," I'm closer to being one than I was before. I'm telling myself who I am instead of letting other people put labels on me like "unemployed," at the time. Saying who I am helps me to become it more. I ordered some business cards with my blog address on them. Self promotion is scary, but it also builds confidence.

Cooking: I made some awesome chicken tenders with ranch dipping sauce the other day. I didn't know ranch was so easy to make, and you could get it to taste like real ranch. I was amazed. It's just buttermilk, mayo, and some spices. Amazing. I also discovered the goodness of Japanese breadcrumbs: panko. Yum.

Joy: I want more.

Rowing: I found a rowing club and I am going to start again, as soon as my car is fixed. I hope I survive morning practices. I am itching to start, even though I know it's going to kick my butt. Caleb has promised that he's not going to let me quit in the first two weeks. Rowing is calming. There's the initial moment of hating everything because it's 5 am and why am I awake everyone else is sleeping I hate this. But then, you get on the water, and all is calm. The only sound is the oars dipping in and out of the water doing the warmup in pairs and the sun is coming up. No one is around. No one gets to see this except you. It's priceless.

Summary: I'm doing a lot better. Hope differed makes the heart sick... desire fulfilled is a tree of life, as my dad always says. Hope abounds.

Monday

Laundry day. Our sheets keep collecting blue fuzz-- it's the combination of our new towels plus either a too high or a too low thread count.

The teaching certificate program I was going to do didn't fill, so now it's not happening, which was surprisingly a relief to me. Now I can get a real job without worrying about class times conflicting or having to observe at a school during the day.

I set out for Panera this morning armed with that discovery and ready to get myself a job, but no one answered their phones and the lunch crowd was too loud and really I was too late to spend time working at Panera because the lunch rush is way too distracting. It's better to get there at 8.

The result: a rather grumpy afternoon spent reading Jacob Have I Loved in my underwear while washing sheets and lights. Food seems boring. I did call all the places I applied, poking around, asking questions. Why don't you want me? That's the real question.

The program not filling is an answer, for which I am supremely grateful. Whenever I talked about the program to other people, I never sounded like I was sure that I was going to do it, and I guess I really wasn't sure about it. I never treated it like something that was really going to happen at the end of August. I told everyone during my last semester of college that I was going to take a year off and I didn't want to go back to school right away. Little did I know how hard it would be for me to take a year off. What did I picture myself doing? Sitting around happily crocheting scarves and painting and cooking and reading and "being a good wife." I should have known I would be bored out of my mind. All of us do-ers who can't sit still-- time off is like a slow death. Reading all day isn't good enough. It's not a justifiable use of time. I can't bring myself to apply to Starbucks or Bed Bath and Beyond because I think about speaking Spanish with eight year olds and playing and doing craft projects and everything I want to be doing that doesn't involve stocking blenders or blending frappucinos.

I'm not in a bleak situation. It just feels that way. Somehow all the hope of the morning got squashed even though nothing has changed and options are still wide open and there are still jobs to be had in this booming city and writing projects for me to do and friends coming over tonight for pizza. Sometimes being melancholy just sucks. Emotions suck. Boredom sucks. Not being Jeff Smith or someone who can just walk outside and create their own destiny with only raw charm and initiative sucks, too.

One thing I did learn yesterday that I desperately needed to hear was about reliance. At our church small group, the pastor told a story about our reliance on God. If God is a pillar, are we clinging to him with our whole bodies wrapped around the pillar, or are we standing off to the side with our fingers barely touching it. I am being brought to a place where there's nothing to do except cling to the pillar. Even if I had enough charm or initiative, I wouldn't be worthy of relying on myself. I am not a safe bet for myself because I do not have the power to weave things together. I need that pillar to show me the way. That is the lesson in the midst of whatever this season is.

Waiting

Hebrews 6:12 "We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised."

This verse has never stood out to me before, but today I find it intriguing because I have been feeling pretty lazy. I've been comparing myself to a cat and wondering which of us would be getting more done, or which of us would be happier about what we were getting done. The cat probably wouldn't be upset with itself for spending its days lounging on the windowsill.

I don't like waiting to hear back from jobs I've applied for. I wonder if I will ever hear back at all. I wish they would at least guarantee a "no" so I could move on. The temptation in the meantime is to cross over into this sort of mind-laziness and just give up, turn to despair (this sounds so melodramatic).

This passage strikes me because on the surface, it doesn't seem like there are many differences between the way that laziness looks and the way that faith and patience look. I could be sitting on my windowsill drinking a cup of coffee and you wouldn't know which one I was wearing that day. I have always thought that the opposite of laziness was doing everything you could think of all at once. If you don't want to be lazy, you have to get up and move, get going, generate as much energy as the Tennessee Valley Authority.

But it doesn't say that. The verse doesn't say, if you're tired of waiting for something, here are all the things you need to DO to get it. Waiting can be one of the most passive and difficult things to do, because it means doing nothing. We've already done everything we can do towards getting what we want, and now we have to wait for someone else to do something. This is so hard for me! I want results and I want them NOW. When we are in a situation of waiting, we can respond with attitudes of laziness or we can respond with attitudes of patience and faith.

When I think of the word patience, I see this woman who is about fifteen years older than me, and she's a little bit weathered, but she has this smile on her face, this small little smirk in her eye like she knows something. She's the kind of mother who says, "Oh, ok," knowingly to her children's wild ideas and you know she's wise. She doesn't mind the waiting because she has belief, the faith element. She is secure, whatever comes. I love that the word "inherit" is in this verse because who ever did anything to earn their inheritance? "Inherit" takes the focus off of us and our "doing" and puts it back on the Father who is the giver of our inheritance.

I realize that I am talking about waiting for a job, while a lot of other people are waiting for things that are a lot more heartbreaking to wait for-- a child, to be loved or in love, a sense of belonging, to be seen and valued as a person of significance. Through patience and faith, God offers us a peace that we cannot manufacture on our own. The peace doesn't take away the desire or the felt pain, but it takes the worry and fretting out of it. This is the gift or the fruit of patience and faith, and this is what doesn't look any different from our conception of laziness. This is the look of the woman. She isn't disturbed and running around, frantically trying to put things in order. She is calm and her heart is at rest. She could be sitting and reading a book like one of those "typical lazy people."

It is tempting to say that you can't wait patiently if you don't have faith that God will come through in the end, but hopefully, what we learn through this exercise is that it isn't about us getting what we want. If "God coming through" means that I get exactly what I wanted every time, there is a problem. The second gift of patience and faith is that we are more focused on God than we are on ourselves. We are closer to him through calling out to him from a place of pain and longing. We believe and know that he has the power to answer us, however it looks when he does, and, turning full circle back again, this gives us the courage to have faith and patience.

I will always remember this quote, "There's no music in the rest, but there's the making of music." In music, there are notes where sound is produced, but there are also rests where no sound is produced. Although sound isn't produced in the rests, the pauses are necessary for the music to sound the way that it does because music is made of sound and the absence of sound. Waiting for something you really want can suck. But, waiting is also an opportunity to receive rest from God, to stop doing and try to be for a while. To listen.

Dialogue on Market Values and Joy

I'm reading two books that are nicely dialoguing with each other. C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy and Cornel West's Race Matters. 

In the first chapter of West's book, he describes nihilism in black America, partly caused by corporate market institutions (25). Institutions want profits, and they convince people to consume. The goal of consumption is pleasure. Here's West on pleasure: 

"In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation... especially evident in the culture industries-- television, radio, video, music..." (26) 

"These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values-- love, care, service to others-- handed down by preceding generations" (27) 

Why is this "market-inspired way of life" chosen by so many people? Consumerism thrives because we aren't satisfied.  

In Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis tells the story of his growing up and conversion to Christianity, and in one of the chapters,  he describes getting Joy and pleasure confused. 

"At the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from that erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming, "Not that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But haven't we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. Sometimes I wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy" (170). 

I haven't finished the book yet to know how Lewis talks about finding Joy in the end, but I'm guessing it has something to do with God. When we're not with God, we become vulnerable to other things that promise to satisfy us. They all lie, of course. This lie fuels advertising and marketing and business and provides jobs, but it also keeps a lot of people miserable. The problem with a "hedonistically driven present" is that we lose sight of everything that actually matters. We forget who we are. The life that we were meant to life isn't about pleasure as it's described by West. 

Like Lewis says, we can go to any of those other pleasure givers, it doesn't make a difference which one we choose. Afterwards, we know it doesn't meet the need or the desire that we have. Sometimes we get stuck in the trap of going back over and over again because we believe that it will, if we only give it one more try. 

Are all pleasures substitutes for Joy? How would our bank statements change if we were finally satisfied? How would we spend our time? 

We can't live like the market tells us to live. We need to recover "nonmarket values," love, care, and service to others. 

The problem I see in pockets of the Christian community is the loss of Joy and the sell out to pleasure, the objectification of the opposite sex, and an obsession with consumerism at the expense of the forward call of God and discipleship. We've settled into the nest of our culture, and we've chosen its worst parts. 

To get back to contentment and life in nonmarket values, we need to address the roots of our deep dissatisfaction and identify the lies that we believe, say with King David, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation" (Psalm 51:12a). 

Old Confessions

I was looking for a friend's address in my Facebook inbox and ran across this message. I wrote it one night almost two years ago now. I read it tonight expecting to criticize some of the word choices and logic or structure after a year and a half at Wheaton, but instead was surprised at its rightness. Not only that, but it is something for me to recover. This is an Ebenezer for me as I look back over my faith. And this is how I want to live everyday-- with this mindset, a profound sense of gratitude for my salvation. I don't want to get wrapped up in myself and "my own" things. I wish that I could make my conversations this simple with people who don't know, because this is what the gospel is. 

my confession: i believe in the living God.

tonight i went to an on-campus ministry called crosspoint. when i came back, i was so excited about being free that i sent a facebook message to someone i didn’t know to tell them about God’s love and forgiveness. and then i realized that i felt comfortable telling a complete stranger about my faith, but i couldn’t tell the people i live with. i realized that i was afraid. i’m not sure how to describe the fear, maybe afraid of being judged or labeled unfairly, afraid to go all out, afraid to cross the line and risk ridicule. maybe i never felt this passionately about it before, but i’ve got to tell you about this love, or i’m going to explode. as i sit here with shaking wrists, i’m coming out. i’m telling the world, starting with Gunn Hall and West Georgia, that i’ve sold out for Christ. i can’t hold back anymore and i am not afraid.

i have to tell you that God sent his son Jesus to rescue you and set you free. he created the whole universe and he has a plan for your life. he loves you, whether you are walking with him or not. above all, he desires to be close to you. he's turned my life upside down and given me opportunities that i never dreamed i would have. he's provided for me and saved me from depression and fear and shame. i stand in awe of the mercy and power of God, of the love that casts out all fear. i hope that you know this same freedom and joy of being forgiven and redeemed, the excitement of a fresh start and the promise of life with the one who made you and knows you.

what i have just told you means everything to me, this is what my life is built on, what i was made to proclaim. when i remember this i am filled with joy and peace, the hard things don’t seem so hard because i rely on God. he already has victory, so i don’t have to be afraid. Paul said, “to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

i want to apologize for the times when i haven’t acted out this faith, when i have been mean or critical. i’m sorry for not helping when i should have and for not being available. i’m sorry for giving an impression of indifference, that is not how i feel…

i just wanted to tell you about this love…

sarah mathias

thoughts about the church

Yesterday some of the group attended the sung eucharist at a church in Oxford that will remain unnamed. The singing was beautiful, as it was at St. Paul's two weeks before, but the sermon was as bad as the singing was good. It was nearly heretical, in fact.

Afterwards, as we were discussing the sermon, I learned from some of the Anglicans in our group that the more orthadox group within the denomination had split off from the rest, claiming to be the real Anglican communion. One of the girl's brothers was actually able to attend GAFCOM in Jerusalem. The conference of the more liberal Anglicans is going to be held this week or next here in Oxford. Here's a link for an article for those interested:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2214325/Anglican-Church-offshoot-founded-by-traditionalists-in-Jerusalem.html

In light of our discussion, the sermon made much more sense. Clearly, it was directed towards the Anglican separatists. I don't think he realized that he had a large group of them in the congregation that day- our group. Some of them did not say "hear our prayer" at times. They were excited about this- the potential purification of the Anglican church and movement back towards what is biblically sound under new leadership.

Before we left for England, Dr. Ryken talked to us about the decline of the church in Europe, the old churches falling into disrepair or turned into museums, with falling numbers of parishioners. My experience in church attendance here has been more encouraging. I loved St. Paul's, but how could anyone not love it? It's saturated with tradition, the inside is beautifully adorned-- the walls sparkle with gold and silver, deep blues and reds. The raw light coming in from the dome creates pockets of heat and light while other places stay cool- this natural lighting increases the old feeling of the church. You feel totally transported and want to cry as the voices of the choir echo against the marble walls. Here was a beautiful tradidtion and a sound sermon.

Last week also in London, we attended All Souls Church. I have never seen a more multicultural congregation. After one visit, this was the dominant impression I got from this church. The sermon was about 1 Cor. 9 and being multicultural. I enjoyed the music and the sermon and thought their message was right also.

In church yesterday, I was struck that this is a critical time for the church. There has to be more than Sunday morning. Maybe Sunday morning alone was enough once, but it's not now. To impact the world, there needs to be movement beyond Sunday. Sunday morning is for meeting together and worshipping in community and learning from scripture. But that is not all that needs to happen in the Christian life.

The sung eucharist we attended yesterday was sharply contrasted to a small meeting we had last night. We used the Book of Common Prayer, we read the Collect, the passages of scripture for evening prayer, sung the doxology at the end. There was no choir, but there was prayer. And I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit more than in church. Praying together does something in a community- it creates unity and love and recoginition of a shared purpose- the thing that is most important to all of us is the same, and even if we sometimes debate about poetry or semantics or learning or comedic conventions, this we all share.

Mega churches claim this setting in their small groups as the vindication of their large production Sunday services. And there is real value in it. The small group setting most closely mirrors Jesus' interaction with the disciples, and the closeness that would have been present in the early church. Now I feel like things are so spread out. In the early church- the body was their primary community. Acts says that they lived together, sharing everything they had.

How can it be alright to have reduced our conception of church to a Sunday morning experience? There needs to be more, especially if the church will impact the world. I'm not arguing that churches stop meeting together by any means, quite the opposite, they need to meet together more. The church needs to take action- to live service in the local community, to go out like George Herbert and help the man whose wagon had overturned. I guess I would like a refreshing in the church- for all the members to know the power of the Holy Spirit and rediscover that gospel means "good news" that changes people's lives, that the body would have this joy in their lives and it would be evident to the world through action- service, outreach, having an others-centered view of life. There cannot only be maintenance on Sunday, struggling to hang on Christianity. There must be lifeChristianity, action, reality. There is struggle present here as well, but the church needs to try. It cannot sit in the pew any longer.