Prism.

"Only the prism's obstruction show aright

The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light

Into the jeweled bow from blankest white:

So may a glory from defeat arise."

Robert Browning.

Pain is the Prism, through which

The true Beauty and Grace of God can be seen.

The abundant light pours forth

From the Heavens, and meets a focal point.

By that obstruction, 

The contents of light itself are displayed.

Light everywhere, like Grace

Is generous and ignored.

Light is delight, warmth

On a sunny day.

But in the Dark, Light

Is life itself.  

So then, such is the nature of the world

The fallen and dark, the tarnished.

That which was meant for good, decays

And screams in Pain.

Light and Grace, 

Falling everywhere and in all corners

Meet an obstruction, they meet the Pain.

In that singular experience,

The Light meets the Prism

And the full Glory of God is revealed.

The seemingly innocuous white light 

Is shown to contain far more that we knew

And travels faster to the Darkness than we could have hoped.

So may a glory from defeat arise.

Identity.

I am: White, Male, Mid 40’s, Christian, fiscally conservative. I believe in a smaller government and that religious freedom is important and that you cannot have a thriving government rule without operating from a set of values that is based on an absolute truth.  I believe that capitalism in conjunction with democracy holds the potential for the most effect use of time, talent and resources for the betterment of all.  I am pro-life.

I should be a Republican.  But there is nothing attractive for me there.  All I see is a group of people who are so focused on their own rights and protection that they have ensured that evil will not only thrive, but that they will help them ascend.  Claims of freedom and liberty and prosperity are sincere, but not for all people, just the ones that can make it to the top.

Democrats are a hot mess. But the bend towards service and the rights of the powerless is attractive to me.  In the end, I won’t be either a conservative or a liberal.  I will be both.  It is my firm conservative convictions that create a tender heart and a security to give up myself for others.  It is my assured acceptance by Christ that allows me to release my own desires for security.

My Savior, Jesus Christ, is all powerful, yet gave up everything.  And both through the written word and the conviction of my own heart and experience he has repeatedly declared that:  you are not your own, you are built to serve, you have no rights if you are to be obedient to me.  Feed my sheep he says.  Who are Christ’s sheep?  The powerless, the poor, the wounded, the orphan and the widow.  He never asks us to attack or defend, instead he calls us to serve the people and proclaim his name.  Many fight tooth and nail for the right to serve Christ: pro-life, religious liberty, etc. yet they never actually do it.  They demand the space for something to be built, but they never build it, they simply focus on the space.

I will err, that is the only thing I am certain of, but I will err on the side of the sloppy mess that is compassion and love versus the protectionism, isolation and power loving legalism.  There is much to loathe in all directions, so I must surrender each interaction and decision and believe to Christ and let him determine my course.

As the sign in your Grandma’s Kitchen reads: God Bless this Mess (Our great country and our own hearts)

Free Falling.

You are already free falling by the time you become aware of what is happening.  It's a screaming, kicking, sensory overload when you find yourself already living without any recollection of how you had gotten where you are.  Life, the act of living, is like being pushed, unconscious, from an airplane and only coming to in mid air.  You try to process what it happening, but things are already moving so fast.  The only certainty is: the ground.  We all hurtle towards the ground, our eventual end.  We have free will in the sense that while we are falling, while we are living we can do whatever we want.  We can move in the direction we please, we can believe what we wish.  But no matter what we do, we cannot stop the ground from getting closer, and right quick.  If we have any sort of blessing, we have people around us to give us comfort and structure and hell, we even have a chance to enjoy this fall, to see the beauty and experience joy.  But for most of us, at least at times, the impending impact can feel so near that it is the only thing we think about and that makes the fall hard to enjoy.  

Somewhere along the fall, through the guidance of others or perhaps our own self-discovery, we get a notion of salvation.  It is a sense that though the ground is inevitable, there may be a way to be saved.  Maybe it is just fear of impact that forces us to delude ourselves into seeking this salvation.  But then, what do we have to lose.  Some want to be their own saviors.  They flap their arms, or perhaps they steer themselves towards apparent safety, or maybe they try to use their pants to break the wind.  There are others that are sure that it is their mind that is the way to be free.  If they can will themselves to peace, they will be free of the fall.  There are those that realize that we have been given something in this fall, something inherent to our journey.  Strapped around us is of course a parachute.  It is the only way to be saved.  It will not deploy itself, you must choose it.  Certainly there are those that feel the straps of the parachute and call it a hindrance.  They believe that if they could just be rid of the straps, then they would really be free to fly.  Of course this is foolishness to shed the one thing that could save you.  

Choosing Christ isn't as simple as pulling a rip-cord.  You must have some inkling, some belief that if you pull then you will be saved.  And you must look to him and ask for his help in believing.  But it is available to all.  No one is thrust into this crazy fall without a parachute, but you do have to act in faith to make it open.  

As I am now half way through my fall I look around at the conditions.  I see so many beautiful things.  I also see so much pain and self destruction.  People are falling to their certain death, seemingly rushing to do so.  But in this a pain and across the horizon I continue to see white billows of hope.  Countless others have reached for their ripcords and sought refuge in the great Grace of Christ.  White dots go on and on and give hope to an endless falling humanity.  Dear Christian, may your chute shine bright, that those falling might understand and be saved.

The Lie (3).

If you know the truth and choose to alter it or omit it intentionally, that is a lie.
How should a lie be measured?
By it's consequence or impact?
By it's intentions, either good or bad?
If you only lie to yourself, does that mean there are no victims?
If your lying to protect others from harsh truths does that make it okay?  If that is the case then, who judges whether the protection is justified?

If we step back and look at any scenario in the light of God's Grace, we see that he does not leave room for interpretation.  Grace, our own acceptance, bought by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which removed our accountability for our sins, cannot be measured.  We cannot do enough to earn Grace, we cannot calculate our good deeds and weigh them against our bad.  Grace is an all or nothing equation.  God gave all.  We either accept it on his terms, which are wonderful but hard, or we get nothing.  This should be good news, but our desire to seek our own will, our own control, and our own power makes this Grace feel unnatural.  Scenarios that should be black and white, are made grey by our own desires.

A lie is the result of the calculation of the consequences of the truth.  And what is a lie but the promotion or protection of your own will over all others?  Even the best of intentions, a sincere effort to guard the emotions of someone you care about betrays an arrogance.  If you determine that you cannot tell someone the truth, you have concluded that because you possess the truth, that you have an understanding that is above everyone else.  If you lie to protect yourself, to protect your own will, that is a betrayal of faith.  You have seen the consequence and failed to trust that Christ will sort out what's best for you.  A lie is an admission that you question God's sovereignty, or perhaps you choose your own sovereignty over his.  A lie is the removal or keeping out of light.  A lie declares a space: Dark.  If a lie and the darkness is to remain, then that will require great effort to keep out the light.  Darkness cannot drive out light, it can only hide.  It is the purpose of light to drive out the darkness.

Light in this case is Truth.  Truth is like Grace in that it is relentless.  Our efforts to avoid it damage our communion with God and each other.  This darkness creates a separation that doesn't just separate us from a specific person but from everyone.  And if choose to share my lie with one person, I don't cast light in their direction, but instead we bring them into our darkness.  The beginning of Evil isn't about pledging allegiance to Dark forces, it is first about pledging allegiance to yourself.

This is simple really.  The commandments tell us, "Don't Lie."  Ever.  End of story.  Why does this then seem like such an impossible task?  Well we must understand who Christ is to give this command power.  If we tell our kids, "Don't Lie.", then that becomes merely an effort of will.  And will power alone is not sustainable.  If we tell our kids, "Don't Lie...because it is not good for you or others.", then we get a bit closer to real power.  If we can, over time and repentance, demonstrate that we serve a loving and powerful savior who will always protect us and do what is best for us even when we can't see it, then the command goes from the very Old Testament "Don't Lie." to the very New Testament "You don't have to Lie."  In those moments when Christ seems real and we have surrendered to him, our calculations of what we think is best tend to disappear.  In those moments we are able to say, "This Truth is hard and painful and I really don't want to face it.  But because I trust you Jesus, I will shed light in all the dark places in my life.  You sacrificed for me, therefore I will sacrifice my comfort and control and power for you."

Without Christ, we are on our own to determine what is good and right and what is bad.  Our deception is always properly justified, because it is in our very nature to protect and promote ourselves over all others.  Even our Charity is tainted by our desire for status and recognition.  It is only in surrender to Christ that the dissolution of the self is possible.  In that dissolving surrender we get to experience the Grace and Healing and the formation into the person, into the being that we were always meant to be.  We shed our will in order to discover his.  God's Will has been formed in us since before time, like stardust from the beginning of the Universe.  Lies prevent the discovery of his will.  Light, of course reveals it.

Making Bricks.

"And I prayed and said, 'God if you are real, make that branch move...now...now...right now.'"  

A few years ago I was talking to a friend and he was telling me about how he would test God when he was a boy.  He wanted to believe in God, but he just needed some sort of confirmation.  As soon as he told me this story I immediately remembered doing the same thing.  I would lay in a field and as different things came into view I would whisper "Make it move."  This friend had just recently come out of addiction and was starting to feel the presence of God again.  However I don't think he could shake the boyhood disappointment.  As grown men we may not ask God so innocently to show himself, but the ache remains of not knowing if he is there.  If he would just show himself, then I could believe!  Arguments about the nature of faith and doubt and why God can't just reveal himself don't quite do the trick in this scenario.  There is plenty of theology to be offered, but none of it gets to the heart of the matter.  This is a boy in the open grass looking at the sky asking to be loved and protected.  He is asking for hope.  

Whatever we ask of God, everything we send his direction, is a prayer.  There are good prayers and there are bad prayers.  For every human emotion, there is a brand of prayer that corresponds: embarrassment, fear, hope, gratitude, loneliness and on and on.  A boy wishing for God to make a tree or cloud or rock move, is a prayer.  An angry grieving father screaming at the sky is a prayer.  A young girl standing on a mountainside overwhelmed with emotion, is a prayer.  

Prayer is like making bricks.  We each have to make our own.  When we first begin to pray, we really don't know what we are doing.  As a child we may have someone teach us, show us how, but until we can make it personal it can feel like we are just piling up bricks, not knowing what to do with them.  Christ has always heard my prayers and certainly answered more than a few as I grew up.  But I could only make that connection in retrospect.  I think I only began to really understand prayer about 10 years ago.  I was sitting in a doctor's waiting room.  There was a young child getting blood drawn and he was hysterical with fear and pain.  I was a tender Christian at that time and everything felt magic and new.  In the moment I just felt the urge to pray.  I offered my prayer to this Jesus, that I still didn't quite understand, basically saying "Is this right?".  The boy immediately became quiet and passive.  He was still, like someone turned off his fear.  It's certainly debatable if Jesus answered my prayer or this was just coincidence of timing.  But what I began to understand in that moment is the idea of offering something to Jesus and asking him to do something with it.  In that moment, I was a boy, offering Jesus a clump of mud.  I didn't know how to make bricks yet.  

We dig in the mud and we make these bricks, hoping to do something with them.  When we make them we have something in mind, we are expecting an outcome.  We may make them with care or in desperate haste but it is not the quality or the skill of the brick maker that matters.  What matters is that we offer them to Jesus.  He will decide what is to be done.  We have to learn to trust him with our bricks, to do whatever he knows is best.  He may build a wall to prevent you from an area of weakness, or pave a path to some new road, or stairs to take you above and over something awful.  Or he may just make something beautiful because that is who he is.  We get so lost sometimes in our faith that we scramble to make piles and piles of bricks and forget to give them to the master mason.  We sit among our ruins wondering why things are so desolate, why is God so far away.  At times we make terrible bricks, with our sin hoping to be hidden in them and hoping God will use them any way.  He cannot.  Building with faulty bricks will lead to our destruction.  At times, the amount of bricks needed seems too much and we are overwhelmed.  And then we look up to see our brothers and sisters making bricks with us, offering them with full hearts to our Christ.  And then sometimes it is our turn to bare the burden.  A worn out and desperate soul drops a load of bricks at our feet and cries, "Help!"  We can tell them what to do with those bricks or that we will offer our own.  But of course what is needed is labor and time, help in carrying all that weight to Jesus.  For some, they see the enormous amount of bricks that are needed, yet they persist.  There is no reason for them to think that they could ever produce enough to make a difference, but they continue anyway.  They are head down, thoughtfully making bricks in the dirt and heat, head bowed and lifting them one by one to their savior.  When they finally look up, they will be in awe to see the work he has done.  The Great Architect has laid out the plan for his creation.  The Great Mason has called us into his work.  We can accept this and worship him with our surrender, or we can go off and build our own crumbling world.  Either way, his will be done.

And what of the boy in the field, offering something, but what to God?  The boy's prayers are less like brick making and more like dirt clod throwing, trying to provoke the Almighty, "Look at me!"  He is looking, he is always present.    If God accepts that dirt clod and moves the stone, that boy will never learn how to make bricks.  He will be stuck forever throwing dirt clods, never knowing what it's like to build with Jesus.  He is whispering and waiting for you to offer a sincere prayer to him, to gently take it from your hand and begin to show you the wonders of what his Love can build.

Gandhi.

"You really think Gandhi is in hell, being eternally tortured, having his fingernails torn out and skin removed, little devils poking him with pitchforks forever?"  

Yes, I really think Gandhi is in hell.  I have no idea what that means any more than I know what heaven will be or what it's like to be an eternal being.  But what I do know is that hell, in it's simplest definition is this :  not Jesus.  And not Jesus means all "us".  Hell, or torture is "that fierce imprisonment in the self" as C.S. Lewis describes it.  Jean Paul Sarte, describing a figurative "hell said, "Hell is other people" describing the feeling of being judged by others.  Gandhi of course was amazing, he and Mother Teresa are always the names used when invoking saints, the same way Hitler is used to illustrate how bad someone is.  And we use Hitler as an example for everything from genocide to bad manners.  I'm not supposed to say this, but I bet Gandhi was an asshole.  Though he didn't use force or demonstrate his power with might, he still had power.  He's an icon, even today.  Even if people don't know what he was fighting for, they still know he was a good and peaceful dude.  I wonder though, if in his quieter moments, he was internally scheming to gain more influence over those around him.  I bet he lacked some nobility in his motives.  I bet the amazing results he achieved were in part fueled by fear and ambition.  I bet he needed Jesus.  Not so he could go and free his country, but so he could free himself.  Gandhi needed Jesus, not to be a better human, but to be saved and made into an eternal creature.  Gandhi is in hell, he is somewhere torturing himself and maybe he doesn't even know he is in hell.  The distance between Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Hitler is massive in the eyes of humanity.  However in comparison with God, G, MT and Hitler are all in the same boat.  They all need Jesus, and he made it pretty clear that his is the only way to salvation.  Heaven is only heaven because Jesus is there.  Would I like to imagine that all the nice people who didn't accept Jesus still got to go somewhere nice?  Yes, I do.  I picture the faces of friends who have passed and I wonder if there is someway they get to be saved. It's a nice thought...for a few moments anyway.   But to accept that being nice or good is enough is to deny Christ completely.  No one escapes the depravity of the human heart, no matter how shiny they are on the outside, all fall short on the inside.  It's all or nothing.  Jesus is all.  So if we deny Jesus, we choose the only other God available.  And that is ourselves.  And in my experience of  self absorption, self gratification, and self worship, I cannot imagine a more hellish existence than focusing on myself forever.  When God removes his glory and presence from you, you'll see how grotesque you really are without his grace.  Gandhi will look just as depraved as any madman without the beauty and morality given by God himself.  Maybe Gandhi wasn't an asshole, maybe he was every bit the saint as we picture him to be.  But as Mother Teresa knew, all the good deeds in the world pale in comparison to what Christ has done.  She didn't serve to be accepted in to heaven, she served because she knew the love of Christ.  Without that Love, without Christ himself, all is lost, all is hell.

2 Thessalonians 1:8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.

Road Trip.

"The road stretches out forever.  It never disappears behind a hill or into a forest.  It goes on and on, flat and hopeless into the dust, into infinity.  It goes on so long and so straight that only failure of sight or the curve of the earth prevent you from seeing where it goes.  She sits on the hood of her car pulled over at the side of the road.  It's a good car, old but mechanically sound if not visually pleasing anymore.  But the gauges don't work anymore, so how much gas she has left is only a guess. Her knees are pulled up under her chin and she feels the weight of it all sink in.  She could have just stopped in the middle of the road, because there is no one coming from one direction or the other.  She glances over at the sign again, hoping that some information has changed.  It has not.  In fact there is no useful information at all.  On the faded sign, next to the picture of where a picture of where a gas pump used to be, there is an empty spot where the miles used to be.  After a few minutes, she hops off the hood and goes to look closer at the sign.  She can make out a "4", but that doesn't tell her much.  It might be 40, 204 or 4 million miles until the next stop.  She has been stopped now for probably 20 minutes.  She is paralyzed by the lack of information, the lack of knowing.  Although really, what difference would knowing make?  She still has to make this trip, knowing nothing about how it will end.  When she started she had so many hopes for where it would lead, not really caring, but just happy to be on the move.  Now, as she wanders into desperation, she just hopes to survive."

Forgive me, but let me break from the story for a moment.  Driving home the other a couple of days ago, I was listening to talk radio and caught the tale end of a caller.  He was animated, but succinct, thoughtful and clear.  He was talking about the search for God, positing that Man's search for God was evidence of Man creating God and not the other way around.  His monologue was so succinct and thought out that it did not leave much room for response.  He went on to say that science had now identified the part of the brain that was evolved to be spiritual.  He referenced the book, The God Part of the Brain and the website God Part .  I'm not much of a journalist, so I didn't do the necessary research on any of this, but here's a small taste:

"What if we were to now apply this same principle to the fact that every known culture from the dawn of our species has believed in some form of a spiritual reality? Wouldn't this suggest that spirituality must represent an inherent characteristic of our species, that is, a genetically inherited trait? Furthermore, wouldn't this then also suggest that our "spiritual" instincts, just like our linguistic ones, must be generated from some very specific region within the human brain? I informally refer to this site as the "God" part of the brain, a series of neural connections from which our spiritual beliefs are generated."

The caller, after describing this God Part of the Brain went on to suggest that, early man, because their life was so short and brutish needed a way of coping and essentially this God Part of the Brain was proof of an evolutionary coping mechanism.  And Religion, Belief and Spirituality were all essentially a way of making sense of things we don't understand.  

He was a good caller.  And although he had done a lot of research, he was still drawing a conclusion based on his beliefs and not necessarily as scientific as he would have the listeners believe.  It felt like, and it often feels like, there was a proclamation that because we have this scientific discovery, there is no God.  That is quite a leap.  Essentially, he does the very thing he is arguing against.  That is offering up a way of making sense of that which we do not understand, just like those poor brutish cave dwellers.  

Generally, I believe in God a creator of all.  Specifically, I believe in the Savior Jesus Christ who died for the sins of the world.  Therefore, conclusions I draw from the same information that the non-believing caller was using is, not surprisingly, entirely different.  If you tell me that there is a part of the brain that is genetically disposed to seeking God, it is reasonable for me to assert that that part of the brain is right in doing so!  Not because we need to cope, but because there is a God. The website goes on to say, quite honestly that :

"The 'God' Part of the Brain" offers a secular humanistic [albeit atheistic] alternative to our old religious paradigms. Herein lies a new way of perceiving ourselves, our place in the universe and ultimately what it means to be human—flawed and mortal—but with the hope of living meaningful and fulfilling existences despite that there is no God, no soul nor any afterlife."

This, of course, is a belief system.  Compelling, especially to an atheist, but no more founded in science than any belief system.  It is, again, a means of making sense of things.  Scientific discoveries were born out of the desire and for the purpose of Glorifying God, discovering his nature and bringing mankind closer to the Awe of the Universe.  Now, people make amazing scientific discoveries and the first reaction is "See, I told you there was no God!"  

Discovery:  There is a part of the brain that seeks meaning.  

Conclusion:  This is a trait, evolved to help humans cope.
Even if this conclusion is true, it's hardly satisfying or substantiated.  We know so little.  My unscientific conclusion would be:  Man seeks, so there must be something to find.  For an illustration, let's consider that there is a part of the brain that can use the olfactory senses to determine if something is spoiled.  It is safe to conclude that there is such a thing as spoiling. Furthermore, we have evolved the understanding that these spoiled things are harmful to us.  The brain urges us to search for food, food exists.  The brain compels us to seek a mate and have intercourse and there is such a thing as pro-creation.  Did we invent Math? Or has math always existed waiting to be discovered? Like an itch in our brain compelled us to seek it out?  C.S. Lewis says it this way,

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope")

Evolution hardly explains away God.  It's likely that whatever God's means have been for ruling the Universe since before the Big Bang, if they happen to include evolution, I will not understand them.  To suggest that anyone fully understands the implications of the Theory of Evolution is only slightly more absurd than suggesting that we can fully understand the ways of God.  The best course always starts with understanding how little we know. 

Coping, may very well be an evolutionary creation.  Belief in something does ease the pain and burden of this brutish life.  It wasn't just brutish for the pre-historic, it's brutish for us as well.  A longer life doesn't make it less so.  Our pain has evolved with our life span.  But anything man made eventually wears thin and cannot be sustained.  A belief system will fail when things get too hard, too mysterious or too weird to explain away.  It is at that point that genuine connection to a Real God becomes critical.  Up until this critical point, our self constructed world view may have done the job.  But in all our lives there comes a point, when we need more.  Life has a way of crumbling that which we have built for our selves and ultimately, we do not have the capacity to save ourselves.

Let's try to wrap this up, shall we?  Let's return to our girl at the crossroads.  She is wondering what to do next.  

"After squatting under the sign, thinking of giving up and just laying back into the dust, making dust angels until she wastes away, she has a moment of resolve.  She bounces up and heads to the driver side.  She confidently turns the key and the car rumbles and starts right up, as if to say 'I'm with you!  Let's go!'  The girl glances out at the sign again, 'It's not that far.'  she tells herself.  She looks down at the broken gas gauge and says, "There's enough."  With the car now shifted forcefully in drive, it spits streams of gravel out from under the tires until it squeals on to the pavement.  The girl didn't even look for oncoming traffic.  Out on the road, forward momentum taking hold, she smiles confidently.  "I'm gonna make it." she says almost audibly to the empty car.  A few more miles down the road, as the monotonous hum of the tires on the road plays under the wind whipping through the open windows, a question mark starts to make it's way onto the end of that lingering sentence.  'I'm gonna make it?' As she presses on, foggy thought becomes clearer in her head.  It's a persistent thought that has always been there in one form or another, 'Will someone save me?'"

The girl can tell herself that there is enough gas or that it's not that far, but that doesn't make it so.  What remains for the girl and for everyone taking breath, is that we need to be rescued.  Her fate on the road and in the physical world remains uncertain.  However, her eternal fate as well as our own is not bound by circumstances.  Eventually there is a reckoning for us all.  There is no escaping it one way or another.  Coping or explaining or hope itself may get us on the road.  However, if object of our faith in is not real, then there will be a consequence. That thing in our brain or in our heart that tells us to seek out this rescuer might have very well been put there by the one that is meant to rescue us.  That mysterious savior we crave, may turn out to be real after all.  Our path and our destination is determined by our willingness to step out in faith: To act on that urge to seek out the rescuer, the savior, the creator of all things.  My belly tells my brain to seek out food, so I do.  My skin tells my brain to put on a jacket, so I do.  My heart aches with pain and joy and tells my whole being to find rest in the author of life.  So I did.  This Faith that continues to grow and sometimes shake is only worth something if Christ is the true King and Savior of all.  I have enough evidence in my experience to have a resounding confirmation.  But it remains true that I won't know the depth and the scope of his answer until I pass on to the next life.