Thoughts...

Out of nowhere, or out of anywhere it seems unavoidable: sin pops into my head.  It might be lust or greed or envy.  No matter what the subject matter, once that appealing counterfeit enters my brain, the wrestling match begins.  There are all sorts of methods of discipline that can help a sincere Christian cultivate a pure mind and pure heart.  Eventually though, we all fall short.  The more practiced the Believer is, the more cunning our enemy and the more subtle the sin.  The point is that there is never a moment when we can coast and there is never a day when we don't have to give it all to God.  The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ remains the only power for prevention and more importantly, the only power for redemption.  

Matthew 5

21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[e] 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

So, once the creep of sin enters your mind, what can you do?  No doubt that a burst of excitement from lust can make you feel like it's already too late.  The ache of Greed or Anger may send you down a road that seems impossible to come back from.  I've gotten texts from friends saying, "Pray for me brother, I'm feeling weak."  I do pray for them, but what I feel in that moment is "It's too late."  

Once these prompts toward sin enter our minds, these temptations, we begin maneuvering for either a defensive stand or an offensive assault.  We see the destruction down the road and then we beg, plead, command God, Satan and the World to act to prevent this act from happening.  From experience, I tell you there is no place that feels more desperate and more isolated than this limbo land.  We don't feel God's power, all we feel is the tearing of flesh and the building blocks of justification beginning to form.  In a bold move we take steps to eliminate all temptations or sources of gratification.  But our sinful desires remain and in fact seem to become inflamed.  We curse God for making us this way or for not helping to take away this ache that we truly do not want anymore.   We fail.  Well, unfortunately that happens.  We fail and then we repent and turn back to God and pick up the pieces, humble and broken and ask for his forgiveness to begin again.  He does.  He does not fail.

But what if we could change our perspective in this scenario?    
In the verses above, it is clear that Jesus is saying that the Sin comes before the Act.  However in our behavior we often repent of the Act and not the Sin.  What if we began the repentance process one step earlier?  What if we treated our crooked thoughts like the Sin that they are?  What if we didn't treat our depravity, perfectionism, and pride like they were some cute affectation?  What if we could train ourselves to be convicted in our own thoughts and not just by where these thoughts may lead?  What if we were bold enough to ask forgiveness for the failing of our minds and hearts instead of praising our own will power.  Because the truth is that even if you can save yourself from the Act, you have still committed the Sin.  If you can't see this, then you cannot access the overwhelming power of Christ and will be left to navigate this treacherous territory on your own.  This will leave you bitter and rigid instead of triumphant and at peace in his victory.

The outside world can view the offerings of Christ as either too restrictive to be practical or that Grace is too much freedom to be real.  In a way they are both on the right trail.  The freedom from Sin leads to a binding with Christ, a union that overtakes your whole life.  And the restrictions imposed on your soul by this new found freedom cut you to the quick.  In this new love you find that the surface infractions that you used to feel bad for are nothing in comparison to what Jesus is exposing in your heart.  So what is the selling point, this sounds awful?  The selling point is the gentle erasing of your very self.  All along you have known that there is a seemingly unreachable purity within you.  All along you have known that there is a fleshy selfishness that blocks the way.  Only in Christianity and in the person of Christ himself do we have a path that leads us to the best version of ourselves that he has been working towards since before the world was made.  Once in Christ, you will realize that you were made for a different world.

2 Corinthians 10

3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

Sandy Hook

Most of my twitter feed is pretty left leaning, lots of comedians and otherwise funny people.  It's made up of people that make me laugh and people I think are like me.  When something terrible happens, the posts get weird.  The Batman theatre shooting, hurricane Sandy and now the school shooting in Connecticut.  Otherwise jovial smart-asses get serious and try to deal with their hurt and fear and sense of injustice over the twitter waves.  A lot of it is good.  Most frequently it is about gun control and as the right leaning folks respond to the left leaning folks, that is all it becomes about and pretty soon good minded people are taking political positions over the dead bodies of children.  Better gun control seems reasonable to me as a reaction.  However, to pretend that is a solution seems pretty naive. 

What is not dealt with is a fundamental broken-ness in all of us.  As many good minded people deal with the insane hurt they feel, does anyone stop to wonder where this fierce sense of justice comes from?  Why is the slaughter of the innocent such and overwhelming blow?  We seem to talk about these issues while only dealing with the pure emotions and the surface reasoning.  In a world without God, these random acts fit into the "order" of things, trucking right along with the random "order" of Natural Selection and Evolution.  Time+Matter+Chance.  Is Justice then just a protective reaction that has developed over the course of evolution.  That is plausible, I can't deny that.  What I can't shake, as I consider my God in the world of the Godless is that I am even able to consider it at all.  If we accept that there is no God, then we are left to make sense of this on our own.  We are smart and we will come up with increasingly clever reasons for the way we feel.  The problem is that we are perpetually a part of the experiment.  To deny God as a possibility in the name of Science is to corrupt the scientific process, because we will never be able to remove ourselves far enough to see what is really there.  We will ALWAYS demand a solution, and our efforts to search for those solutions will be tainted by our beliefs and emotions.  Only in God do we find a pure starting point for our emotions.  There is Truth, and if we start there we are free to roam in sensible directions looking for answers instead of scattering ourselves across the great breadth of knowledge looking for patterns in Time+Matter+Chance.  That leaves us hollow.  These great tradgedies will continue to occur and we are left with only ourselves and our wit to try and explain why and how to our children.

So if God is real and a real part of the equation, what then?  This tradgedy is no less awful.  In fact, for some it becomes even more awful.  How could God let this happen?  What kind of twisted God are we dealing with?  The answer lies in our own broken-ness.  This world contains glimpses of Heaven and glimpses of Hell and we all live right there in the tension.  It seem that we can't quite shake the feeling of God and we can't escape Hell on Earth.  The mercy of God is explained in the fact that we are allowed to exist at all: you , me and the mass murderers.  We are all allowed to live in this world.  The weeds grow and thrive right along with the beauty of the field, but there will be a harvest and the beauty will remain forever and the scourge with be burned forever.  If the world were only filled with beauty, then we would already be in Heaven.  We all know that that is not the case.  So in times like this, God is the only thing that makes sense.  Our fierce sense of Justice burns.  It burns because we are made in his image and he is Love and Justice and Mercy.  We want justice now, but because of our less Godly attributes, our fleshy human sense of right and wrong we have no way of administering or sustaining Justice.  We know this in history, we will mess it up.  We mess it up because we can't shake our own flaws and broken jealousies and lustful vengence.  The shooter is dead and no one feels better about it.  If he were alive and tortured, that still wouldn't do the trick.  The only Hope that remains is that God will make all things right, that the wicked will get what they deserve and that the wounds of the believers will be healed and the tears of the innocent will be wiped away.  Here and now we live in that Hope, and we try to restore our world in the little ways that we can, because we are like him.  Even as our world hurdles through this entropic path of pain, we will continue to hope and love because we are like him.  And in the end the Love you recieve will not be equal to the Love you gave.  In the ultimate sacrificial display, God gives all. We get to call on his name and be saved.  That may not seem like Justice, but that is because it is a Justice we cannot comprehend.  It's a Love that overwhelms all.  We just surrender to the name of God: Jesus and we will receive his Love forever.  It is a love a million times greater than we even catch a glimpse if here.  God is Love, and this pain doesn't make sense without him.

Marriage 1.

Under the direction of the Divine, in marriage you are more and more attracted to what your spouse is becoming and less attracted to who they are or were. Your role as a spouse is to help your husband/wife become more like Christ.

The Call

I cried out to Him, "Lord, there are many brighter, more righteous, kinder, more learned, stronger, and less sinful men than me!"
He said to me, "Yes, I know.  However, your location is promising.  And all I really need is your obedience."

Sunflowers

If I had the skill and the time, I could re-create a painting.  I could match Van Gogh's Sunflowers stroke for stroke.  Perhaps I could even use period paints and materials to make it a complete exact match.  If I did so, what would it's value be?  A couple hundred?  A couple thousand?  It would still be the same beautiful painting as the original and based on that maybe someone would offer even more, appreciating beauty for beauties sake, even if it is a facsimile.  But because the painting was made by a restaurant manager and not a master, then it will never reach the millions of dollars that a painting like Sunflowers is currently worth. ($83 Million)



So what's the difference?  The difference is the author, the creator.  This painting has value because of who created it.  It is the same for us.  Our value is derived from our Creator.  

We hear cries for Truth, Mercy, Justice, Love and Peace.  We all want these things, but why are these things in demand?  Did they just randomly and through time show up in our culture of humanity?  Or were they placed there by the One who created everything?  These concepts are operating on the seemingly universal truth that life has value.  However, if humanity has arrived at it's current place only by chance, through the machinations of Time + Matter  + Chance then what is the argument for the importance of life?  If we came from nothing, then despite our immediate desires for survival, we are worth nothing.  But that is not what I believe and that is not where I put my hope.  And if we find the courage to put our hope in God, believing that he has created and trusting that our value comes from him, then that changes everything.  In this truth we find the realization that all human life has value. And well, as flawed as we are, that seems like a good place to start.  

Eden and Starbucks and Control of the Universe!

(Warning: the allusions to Howard Schultz's divinity are somewhat overstated.)

Howard Schultz is Chairman and CEO of Starbucks.  He is a marketing genius, admired leader, motivator, and billionaire.  He is known for strong vision and strong convictions.  Starbucks is an undeniable financial and cultural icon. They provide an outstanding product with an emphasis on a great experience through their people and technology, remaining socially and environmentally sensitive.  And beyond that Starbucks patrons are extraordinarily loyal to the brand, which is thanks to the fact that the employees of Starbucks love working for the company.  From the outside it seems that everyone from the Management to the first day Barista are "all in" for whatever Schultz has coming next.  He has delivered for them, so they in turn trust his vision and are ready to deliver for the company.  And of course, the shareholders couldn't be happier!

With that in mind, imagine if I were a newly trained barista.  Let's say one day I were to head over to Seattle to Starbucks Headquarters.  I walk into the beautiful brick, former Sears and Roebuck building, head into the conference room where members of the board are waiting for Schultz and I plop down his seat.  "I'm in charge."  is my first statement.  For the sake of this thought game, imagine if Schultz's creation were forced to go along with this scenario.  What would be the consequences?  I'm a pretty clever guy, but I fall well short of the qualifications, experience and necessary fortitude to run one of the most successful brands in the world.  Upper management would begin to scramble under the chaos.  Without the security and magnitude of Schultz's presence and the terrifying uncertainty of an unknown restaurant manager at the helm, order would break down.  Some would leave and some would begin to stake their own claim, trying take control.  Every aspect of the company would be affected.  Relationships with vendors and suppliers once held firm in the confident grasp of Schultz and his team, would now come in to question.  Job security at the store level would turn into complete distrust.  People would start thinking more about their own needs instead of the good of the company.  Even if all my intentions were good, my mere act of taking the place that rightfully belongs to the grand architect of the company would mean disaster.  Shareholders revolt!  Starbucks would be broken.  

This scenario came into my head as I pondered the question, "What would you want people that don't know Jesus to know?"  Well, I would want them to know about his great and powerful and redeeming love.  I would also want them to know that he is not who they think he is and there is so much more for all of us to learn.  Ultimately, and the point of this story is that they would need to know that they are currently occupying the seat that is rightfully his.  

This is indeed the story of The Fall as told in Genesis: Man occupying the throne that rightfully belongs to God.  We get hung up on the act of Adam and Eve eating the apple or whatever un-named fruit it was, but the real act that caused Sin to enter the world was the assumption that Man and Woman could know better.  Whether you view the Garden of Eden as Figurative or Literal doesn't diminish the inherent truth of the story.  The story of Adam and Eve plays out again and again throughout time and history:  We think we know better. The reason the world is broken is because we assume control and turn from the goodness of God.  He has constructed every individual particle of every atom and fashioned the universe and then gave us a choice:  Free Will.  Instead of surrendering to God's will for Creation, two chapters in to existence and we broke it.  

Genesis 2:
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

God sets Adam up for a life of bliss, yet Adam questions God and makes a choice that says, "I'm taking control!"  If I really did enter Starbucks headquarters with the intent of taking over, I would justly be tazed into submission.  Schultz wouldn't let this happen to his company, but why would God let it happen to Creation?  That is a good question.  I don't know if I can answer it completely.  God is love.  In order for love to be love, there must be a choice.  If we choose to take the CEO's chair, the King's throne, God will let us.  He will all at once leave us to our own devices as consequence.  And yet still provides a way back.  It's a great mystery that God never wiped out his disobedient creation.  It's hard to deny that humans have a way of mucking up the good things we are given.  In his great patience and mercy, and in spite of all the pain that has occurred because of the persistence of Evil, God himself provides the sacrifice that can rectify creation.  

The King Returned and is set to return again.  In the meantime there is still work to do.

In 2000, Schultz publicly announced that he was resigning as Starbucks' CEO. Eight years later, however, he returned to head the company. In a 2009 interview with CBS, Schultz said of Starbucks' mission, "We're not in the business of filling bellies, we're in the business of filling souls."

Currently, I have a job that I really, really love.  No I don't work for Starbucks, but I do work for a company that is driven by an uncompromising set of values.  Although I've never met my company's founder, I see the evidence of the good things he has done.  Even though I don't physically see him at work, I reap the benefits of the work he is doing.  I trust the leadership and therefore my desire to take control is diminished, however it is not entirely absent.  I still tend toward distrust and desire to have my own way from time to time.  This is similar to my relationship with Christ.  I have surrendered my life to him because of the work he has done in me.  He provides every answer I need, although not without mystery.  My trust in him is based on Evidence I have seen and felt and I have reaped the benefits of seeking his will. And like loyal workers of a benevolent leader seeking to help the company,  Believers have the great task of spreading evidence of God's goodness in a temporarily broken world.  We fail time after time, but thankfully the evidence is overwhelming and God is unrelenting in his love for his people.  Some have everything and yet don't believe.  Some have absolutely nothing and yet praise the name of God.  We pray for peace and comfort now, but Hope will be fulfilled upon his return!  We have a choice.  Will we surrender control of our lives to the one who made us, who has better things in mind for us or will we defiantly proclaim, "I am God!"  Will we seek him or seek our own will?

Luke 12:

29 And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30 For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

PG: Parental Grace.

My wife and I have experienced some amazing success in our children.  Just amazing. Anything good we have instilled in our children, has come from God and God alone.  It may sound like false humility, but it is the truth.  Jesus in his goodness has allowed us the opportunity to witness his power and Grace in the rearing of our children.  More often than not, though, I fail on subtle and then sometimes grand levels in teaching them.  Sometimes I hear my own voice speaking in terms of Grace, using the language and the divinity implied, yet falling short of the real heart of Grace.  I end up teaching Grace for my own comfort and sanity.

Out of the many things we teach our children, Grace is the hardest.  I guess that is true in general.  True Grace is hard to teach, even harder to exhibit and harder yet to receive.  On one side of the ledger of our hearts, God has imprinted his sense of Justice; right and wrong exist and we yearn for fairness in a world that seems to have none.  On the other side of this ledger is Grace:  an overwhelming desire to be loved no matter what, whether we deserve it or not.  These things are a reflection of the image of God in us.  As humans we contain these imprints, but because the world is in a fallen state (waiting to be redeemed) we struggle to exhibit these concepts of Justice and Grace.  Many turn their backs on the concepts completely, thinking it too hard or rather hoping these Truths don't really exist at all.  Yet they remain and they haunt us.  Our desire for Justice persists, no matter what we believe in.  And our hope for Grace remains, against all odds.  As we wrestle with these lingering concepts they seem in conflict.  I think this is part of the reason people struggle with Christianity.  "How could a Just God allow all of these horrible things happen, to me, and to the world?  If Grace means that he loves me/us unconditionally, then this world and Love itself does not make sense."  Most of us lean towards one or the other.  Either we are really adamant about fairness and justice or we speak in the all accepting terms of Love.  (Parents lean toward Justice and Grandparents lean toward unconditional Love...that's why Parenting is hard and Grandparenting is the best gig in the world!) However the more we come to understand Jesus, and our position in relation to him: the Creator of the Universe and our Savior, the more we realize that true Love needs true Justice.  

In God's perfection and in his plan for bringing his beloved people back to him in this temporary and fallen world, Grace and Justice play out huge in the parent-child relationship.  Among my own siblings I see those who are fierce guardians of what is right and fair and those who calmly distribute both love and justice.  I see me own temperament as I look back through childhood, only wanting love and acceptance and circumventing right and wrong all together.  I even experienced glimpses of God's Wrath and Judgment as my sister pushed me down the stairs.  Parents are given the task of sorting through this quagmire of personality and emotions with little creatures who bear the image of God and yet contain no small amount of crookedness in the very same flesh. 

My version of Grace as a parent is often just an attempt to keep the peace and I fail to go the full measure.  "If you are nice to your sister, she will be nice to you!"  Not only is that untrue, but it makes the act of Love conditional.  Instead I should be teaching to "Be nice to your sister.  God made her and made you to love each other.  Be nice to your sister to reflect the Grace that God has given us, that we may enjoy each other because of his work and not because of our own.  And the fact is, she may still be mean to you.  But be sweet because that is who you are, who you belong to, not what you can get out of it."

Matthew 5:
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. 

Because God Loves us, he administers Justice.  If he accepted all the evil we have wrought on this earth, he would not be very loving.  But if the only way to be with him was to be perfectly just and fair without failure, then even the best of us would have no shot.  This is how Grace evens the equation.  God loves us and he wants us to be with him.  But what does he do with our sinful nature?  He can't just accept it.  I love my children, but I can't just accept their occasional rotten behavior.  They can't kick each other, wipe boogers on the wall or run into the street.  I must make a way for them to be loved by me.  It is up to me to administer Justice in such a way that we can all be together.  I am a sinner, just like my kids.  Good and Bad, we figure out this Grace thing together.  I often fail by the way, but by God's Grace he makes it work if I submit my own desires and failures to him.  On a cosmic scale,  God has to do all the work, and he has made a way for us to be with him.  Grace is the Death of Christ.  The Death of Christ takes the place of the punishment that we were to receive.  Justice is served, we feel the conviction, but condemnation is avoided.  We get to be with Jesus, even though we don't deserve it.  If he let us do whatever we wanted, he wouldn't be good.  While my child is turned away in rebellion and anger, I still love them, but cannot really be with them.  This child does not have the capacity to rectify this situation on her own.  I must make a way for them back.  I must make a gesture of Grace, that still is Just.  However, it is up to them to choose to receive it.  Can they let go and turn a contrite heart back to their father so that we may be together again?

The Bible tells parents to teach children about the ways of the Lord, instructing them in his word, provide for them and correct them.  It is a relationship built to failure.  It just is and the Bible prepares us for that.  In Deuteronomy, God says:

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
and in Proverbs 22:6
Start children off on the way they should go,
    and even when they are old they will not turn from it.


God urges parents to make sure their children have a relationship with him, for he is the one that truly Loves, truly administers Justice and ultimately truly Saves.  As parents, our jobs become less about being the savior and hero for our children and more about pointing them to their true savior.  Without exception, every parent and child relationship will fail.  It is good and it is painful for the child and the parent when the child starts to see dear Mom and Dad as human beings, full of error and sin, just like everyone else.  This directive from the Bible becomes all the more important.  While we parents are our children's first impressions (the Good and the Horrible) of the nature of God, at some point we must be willing to let God be God.  We must decrease so that He may increase.  Children are meant to leave their parents, to put away childish things and to form new unions.  As parents, if we display Love, Justice and Grace, then our kids will have an opportunity to truly understand them.  However if we can point them to the Author of these things and indeed the Author of everything, then they can not only understand them, but live in them!

So I leave you with a little piece of the Bible from Paul that I thought was written for my father, but as it turns out, was written just for me.

Ephesians 6
4 Fathers,[b] do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.