when the answers and the truth have cut their ties

You start out as a reprobate, a sinner bound for the gates of hell, or at least that’s what you later learn was your spiritual standing before you knew Christ.

And then you meet Christ and you love the church and you love going to church even if the music is slow and boring; you even start reading the Bible and find pieces of meaning in the the archaic narratives.

You continue in this state for a time, a long time, and then something bad happens.  You respond in the way you’re supposed to respond–crisis of faith averted.  The Bible helped you and Jesus walked with you and there you still were, sitting in church on Sundays with the church, singing old songs and learning about Calvary and hell and how wonderful it is that you’ve been covered in blood.

And then you meet people who say that they love Jesus but they don’t love Jesus in the same way you love Jesus and so they probably don’t really love Jesus.

But a seed was dropped and you don’t even need water for it to grow because it hasn’t yet broken the soil and so you can’t remove it.  Soon after this you meet some more people who say they love Jesus but they don’t love Jesus in the same way you love Jesus and yet they’re less of a jerk than you are and that presents a bit of a problem.  The seed grows even in the dark.

And then life happens.

And this time you sit with your emotions a bit longer before bee-lining for the default position you know is expected of you.  Everyone around you knows the answer and you know the answer, too, and yet its truth rings less loudly this time.  This is honesty breaking through.  This is your soul radar asking more loudly what you’re going to do when the answers and the truth have cut their ties.

hymn

it’s been a long few years journeying away from some things and toward others.  along the way i’ve de-emphasized some things while emphasizing others.  i don’t think it has to be like this, but i suppose it’s just natural.  perhaps i need to learn to better live in the tension, to think with two hands rather than one.

it’s good to remember, though, that the god can’t be an individual’s “all in all.”  we already tried that back in the garden.  it didn’t work.  even before brokenness entered the picture, the god could not satisfy the man’s deepest needs.  the god even had the audacity to utter, “it is not good for the man to be alone.”

alone?

the power and the infiniteness and the love and beauty and faithfulness given for the pleasure of the man…and it’s not enough?

how far we have come from those days!  it’s common now among some circles to insist that only the god can truly satisfy, but i bet most of the people saying this are married and having sex, so we can’t really trust them.  he said he will make a companion for him.  because companionship from his powerfulness

was still
not
enough.

and now we have songs saying that “all of you is more than enough for all of me”!

such damage this does.

of course there are times for that aspect of life, though.  remember: two hands.

for me, one of those times is now.  what sermons and books and conversations cannot do, music can.  music has a way of cutting through the cognitive aspects and beelining straight for the soul.  almost as if to say, “i don’t care what you think.  this is good.”

“Party on, Wayne!” “Party on, Jesus!”

“Christians have nothing to say to the world until they throw better parties.”
–Rob Bell

That night was like a scene from a Billy Joel song.  A few scattered, leftover men were attempting to drown their sorrows while a rock band tried to generate some enthusiasm.  All were unsuccessful.

There are few more depressing places than the lounge of an interstate Holiday Inn on a Friday night.  On weeknights the businessmen are still around, and they come in and give some life to the place.  But on Friday, those that can have managed to get home.  And since the hotel is on the interstate and far from anywhere, there aren’t very many locals to take the businessmen’s place.

Mid-way through the evening there was a noise at the front entrance and about sixty people in their twenties came charging in.  The momentum began to pick up at once, and as the evening wore on, things got livelier.  A few couples began to dance and managed to get the businessmen to join them.  Soon there was improvised line dancing, which required us to move the tables.

The band caught the infectious humor and its performance level picked up several notches.  Later yet, a conga line started growing, extending around the room and even out into the lobby, drawing desk clerks and waiters into its rhythm.  As the line snaked back into the lounge and the music hushed for a moment, one of the band members yelled out, “This is great!  Who are you guys?”

The crowd shot back, “We’re evangelists!”

Sadly, the evening ended all too soon after.  We’d been in staff training down the road all week and had simply taken a break.  We had to get back so we could get up early the next morning for further training and Bible study.

Did anyone become a Christian that night?  Not that I know of.  But nobody there will ever again think about “evangelists” in quite the same way.  “Evangelists” will now mean people who are great to have around, no matter what you believe.  Those young Christians were people you’d want at your party, especially if things were looking bleak, just as Jesus, according to the Gospels, seemed to be the type of person who was invited to many parties.

*story as told by Paul Marshall in Heaven is Not My Home

“Maybe the true mark of a Christian is someone you would eat chicken wings with, and shoot pool with or throw darts with or go to the game with, not just if they could exegete the Greek text and beat you in Bible jeopardy like some Sunday School jerk.  Maybe the true mark of a mature Christian is someone that is actually kinda fun to hang out with.”
–Mark Driscoll

second mile | third way

photo by Michael Belk

concept: third way thinking

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love letter to a blind woman

If Christ had not said that in heaven marriage would be unnecessary I should greatly delight in a shot at the heart of one Miss Helen Keller, but this is only because I adore beauty, and what a beautiful soul!  I would give Miss Sullivan a break and write into dear Helen’s hand all the glory that shines around us, and when my hand got tired she would read my lips with her fingers as I compared the lilies before us to her soft cheeks and our joy would rise into the atmosphere like sweet burning incense.

And she makes me want to explore the world of books and wonder what a wide view of creation might look like rather than a narrow one:

But Hugo and Goethe and Schiller and all great poets of all great nations are interpreters of eternal things, and my spirit reverently follows them into the regions where Beauty and Truth and Goodness are one.
–The Story of My Life pg. 84

It is true–I am too deep into my Christian faith to climb out of the rabbit hole and attempt to see authors and flowers and women and hurricanes from an Atheistic or Muslim or Buddhist or Hedonist view: a person can waffle only so long before he either commits or becomes eternally confused; it is not healthy to remain on the fence indefinitely.  I have chosen to believe that the world as we know it has been made through a person–crazy as that sounds–and that if a thing is beautiful then it is beautiful because of him; if it is true then it is true insofar as he deems it so; and if it is good then it is good to the maximum capacity of his goodness.

How about exploration, then?  Yes!  Yes!  We fear nothing and celebrate with the happy and drink to good health, laugh up an entire Tuesday evening and then wake up and laugh Wednesday morning before work because our abs are sore.

Sometimes it’s so good it hurts.

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