This list is incomplete!

Along with the fantasy/reality issue, Mike Erre’s book raised the question of what it means to be a Christian man. Specifically as we think about what we see in the Scriptures, things like this come out:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

This is a great list, but the list applies as well to Mr. Rogers as it does to Jesus Christ.

So what gives? Did Paul err in giving us an incomplete list?

I don’t think so. You may have noticed that verse 22 begins with “But” — But what? Like the rest of the Bible, verse 22 isn’t a systematic theology; rather, its function is to show the contrast vs the “works of the flesh” (verse 19). Additional insights come if we look around that passage a little more. Verses 13-15 warn against selfishness and malice; verses 16-17 urge us to live by the Spirit, as opposed to the flesh (which the NIV renders “sinful nature”). Again, verses 25-26 urge us to walk with the Spirit and avoid selfishness and malice. So verses 22-23 are part of the overall argument: rather than idolatry, hatred, fits of rage, etc., better to have joy, patience, self-control and the like.

So if that’s not the complete list, what are some other things we would expect to see in someone following the Lord Jesus? I remembered another list:

Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith.

from 1 Timothy 6:10-12

Like the list in Galatians, this isn’t just a list; it’s a list against something — in this case greed, as the Galatians list was against selfishness, hatred, greed, etc. And immediately after the list is an exhortation to fight–which, come to think of it, is something Fred Rogers actually did, though it wasn’t always visible on his show.

What’s my point? Just this: though I’m a fan of Scripture memory, we need to take the entire Bible in, not just favorite verses. This is as much of a problem if we only memorize Galatians 5:22-23 as if we only memorize Psalm 139:22.

And also that I want to read more of Mike Erre’s book.

Fantasy and Reality—for men

…that is, “especially for men.” Why especially for men? Because women have a lock on reality and men don’t? No, because

1. I’m not a woman; and
2. I’ve been looking at Mike Erre’s Why GUYS Need God, which has some really important things to say on this topic.

If you haven’t seen the book, the back cover has this provacative note:

Why, after years of being told otherwise, do we still chase after bigger paychecks, better homes, and cuter women to define us as men? Why does the church often seem so fake and irrelevant to guys?

So here’s a little about fantasy:

Reality bites. … God, the universe, other people, traffic, disease, death, love, risk, pain, and depression all refuse to bend to my will….

And I suppose this simple truth is what fuels a bewildering (and in some cases bizarre) array of options for escape from reality.

… If reality disappoints us, we can find substitutes at the click of a mouse. Video games gobble up countless hours of youth, lust engulfs healthy sexual desire, and the anonymity of cyberspace creates the illusion of community and friendship without the real demands of true intimacy. Wherever reality falls short, fantasy promises a quick and painless escape.

Fantasy also exists in the church. Instead of engaging in real discussions about the pressing issues and concerns that confront men today, we often accept a caricature of masculinity that bears little resemblance to the portraits we find in Scripture. Instead of anger, we learn about serenity. Instead of ambition, meekness….

Erre, pp.27-28

As long as we pretend (“No, I’m not angry [dammit!]” for example), we never confront our weaknesses, and we never have to face -gulp- growth!

The Bible has a phrase for this sort of pretending; here’s what John says about it.

If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:6-9 (NIV)

To make progress, to be purified from sin and unrighteousness–in short, to grow–we need to face the truth, to face reality.

Reality has both good and bad news, like “modern” gospel presentations from the BGEA or the Navs always say: The bad news is that we are weak and easily distracted. We are not the men we’d like to be, or the men we’d like others to think we are. Even worse, as Erre says, “God is the one who led us into this mess.” We can’t blame the media or the feminist movement or Hollywood (or Bollywood for that matter either).

The good news for us, as it was when we were sinners, is that God will lead us out of this mess (Erre, back cover).

It’s really part of the same gospel: we were foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, spending our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another, and God by his mercy saved us. That’s the gospel, right?

But wait — there’s a lot more! Paul goes on to tell us about the Holy Spirit who makes us heirs. This is the same Holy Spirit that Jesus promised, who would lead us into all truth (i.e., reality). And as the passage above says, the way we get purified, the way we grow, is by accepting and acknowledging reality and confessing our weaknesses, not by escaping and pretending.

May the Spirit of the Lord help us to do so!

What did God have in mind when he decided to create you?

Whatever else spiritual growth is about, it must have something to do with becoming whatever (or whoever) it was that God had in mind he had the idea of you.

It’s a question worth thinking about, and now that I think of it, should lead us to worship.

Placing our bets

Every day, we decide with our hearts, with our feet, with our checkbooks, what we think about God’s presence with our lives. Put differently, we’re placing a bet.

If I had to bet my life on one possibility or the other, which one would I bet it on? If you had to bet your life, which one would you bet it on? On Yes, there is God in the highest, or, if such language is no longer viable, there is Mystery and Meaning in the deepest? On No, there is whatever happens to happen, and it means whatever you choose it to mean, and that is all there is?

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark, pp. 172-173

As I go through my day, through my week, what do my decisions say I actually believe about God’s work in the world, in my life. My mouth may recite that “our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20) but what do my feet, my calendar, my checkbook say?

And what does my prayer life say?

Are we going through the expected, habitual motions of prayer, without vigorous belief in what we are doing? Have we lived as functional atheists until faced with personally desperate situations, prompting us to pray deeply only then?

Keith Swartley (ed.), Encountering the World of Islam, p. 435

A son of our friends was hit by a car, and our prayer life has rather intensified since then. I think Swartley’s rather pointed questions are right on the money for most of us, at least some of the time.

Now I’m not a fan of navel-gazing, but it’s important to reflect from time to time on where we are, and where we’re headed — where our bets are currently placed, and where we want to place them.

Psychology for Spiritual Growth?

Some Christians don’t trust psychology. I don’t believe all its conclusions, but that doesn’t mean it’s without benefit. I wrote a short piece about psychology as it applies to spiritual growth at http://collinpark.blogspot.com/2009/11/power-to-change-ourselves.html, which I hope you find helpful.

Why did God put that tree in the garden?

…where “that tree” is the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil — Genesis 2:16-17, The Message.

What a great question! I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. My assumption was that this incident wasn’t historical, that this story was in Genesis to say we’re a race of a moral agents rather than a race of mindless slaves (the predominant creation myth of the day implied the latter). But looking at Romans 5:14, as well as other passages, it became clear that Paul considered Genesis 2-3 historical.

So the tree was historical — why did God put it there? I looked at an Old Testament commentary (Keil and Delitzsch), which said the tree was put there “to train his (Adam’s) spirit through the exercise of obedience to the word of God” (p. 84–parenthesis mine). This reminded me of what Lewis wrote in Perelandra, book #2 of his space trilogy: that some commands are given just so we’ll have an opportunity to obey.

I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but not only because they are His will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless he bids you do something for which His bidding is the only reason? When we spoke last you said that if you told the beasts to walk on their heads, they would delight to do so. So I know that you understand well what I am saying.

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
(MacMillan Paperbacks Edition 1965) p.118

In other words, we can’t exercise obedience by doing what we were going to do anyway; it’s when we do what we wouldn’t otherwise do, and we do it because God commands it — that’s exercising obedience.

Keil and Delitzsch have more to say about the tree, and the effects of this kind of voluntary and joyful obedience:

The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil; and, according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accomplished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming eventually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntary resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good. By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e. to one in accordance with his own likeness to God.

Keil-Delitzsch vol. 1, p. 86

That is, Adam was supposed to learn about good and evil by abstaining from that fruit. As he continued in abstinence, he would

• come to see that [against-God's-will ⇒ evil ⇒ to be avoided];
• develop real freedom (become better at resisting evil); and
• come to a true knowledge of good and evil.

This knowledge would have been of a “godlike” nature, i.e., corresponding to the fact that we were created in God’s image. That sounds really good, actually! If only he had listened….

This idea, that obedience brings strength and knowledge, reminded me of a theory that if we obey God in little things, we become better able to obey him in the big things. Oh, right, that theory came from Jesus, in Luke 16:

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

Luke 16:10-12

I’ve usually taken this to mean that if we esteem material things correctly (i.e., not taking them to be more important than they actually are), that’s a kind of prerequisite for being trusted with really important things — the care of men’s souls for example. So that’s why it’s important for me to tell the truth on expense reports and tax returns, even if I were certain I wouldn’t ever be caught. And why it’s also important to be kind to all, patient when wronged, etc. (from 2 Timothy 2:24).

One more thing this reminded me of:

[Y]ou need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5:12-14 (NIV)

This passage, too, points to the way things work: by obedience, we gain strength and discernment and maturity. I’m not saying we should go looking for more things to obey (e.g., giving up bacon and shrimp), but that by doing what we already know we should do and avoiding what we know we should avoid, the Lord will help us to grow up in every way (Ephesians 4:15 NCV). That sounds pretty good.

How much is enough?

Talking with a friend about the greatest commandments from Mark 12:28-31 and what it means to follow them, the question arose: how much is enough? How much volunteering, giving, serving, prayer, fellowship, solitude is enough?

Let’s think about that for a minute. “Enough” for what? Enough to get into heaven? No! We really don’t believe in the “minimum requirements” model (see “What is the Gospel?“, or “True (and False) Transformation” or this sermon [transcript here; see p.5]).

But simply by using the word “enough,” we’re showing that we still have a little of this “minimum requirement” mentality. We’ve really got to get rid of it somehow, because it’s poison for any relationship. I mean, imagine it:

He: Dearest?
She: (turning toward him) Yes?
He: I have a question, but I’m not sure how to ask it.
She: (looking into his eyes) Yes?
He: How much do I have to kiss you? I mean, how much is enough?
She: (turning away) (to herself: What kind of idiot am I involved with, and why?)

She is right, isn’t she, to think she’s involved with some kind of whack job? Here’s the thing: really the gospel is about a treasure — something so great that anyone would sell everything in order to get that treasure. Josh Hunt gives a great summary in the aforementioned article.

What we need here is real transformation. We need something inside us to change. Think about what the psalmist says in Psalm 40:8 (or see the King James), or look at Psalm 119 and see how many times the words “rejoice” and “delight” come up. He delights to do God’s will; he rejoices (Psalm 119:14, NIV) in following his law. That’s not just Old Testament times, either; think of Anna from Luke 1, who was worshiping at the temple all the time. I don’t think this was a poetic exaggeration. And it’s not just Biblical times either; Luther prayed two or three hours a day. Mother Theresa said, “The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.”

How did these people get to be that way? You know they had to be transformed; they started out just like the rest of us — self-centered and full of all kinds of other folly. Well, I have a few ideas on how that transformation happened, and how it can happen for us:

• over a long period of time (as with overcoming anger or anxiety)
• totally under God’s power; we can’t do it ourselves. I read (or maybe wrote) somewhere that the command in Romans 12:2 is to “be transformed”; it’s passive–that is, it’s something that happens to us–and yet it’s a command.
• generally, the means of grace have something to do with it. The sun’s rays have a beneficial effect, but if we want to get that effect we’ve got to get out of the cave. So: solitude, Scripture, prayer, celebration, fellowship, service — this sort of thing.

When it works, then like Eric Liddell, we feel His pleasure in doing what he made us to do. Liddell was talking about running in particular as an act of worship, but I think it applies to everything we do that’s in our Father’s will.

Occasionally I get glimpses of this, when I find joy in serving or in giving. And I’ll tell you, when I think of “Good News for 12th Century [BC] Man” — i.e., Genesis 1 — of how much God loves us, to tell us this incredibly great news. I mean, have you ever heard that the Bible is “God’s love letter to us”? I used to think, “yeah, whatever” but what Genesis 1 meant to its hearers — it was revolutionary! It was paradigm-shattering! And even today I get a little choked up whenever I think about it.

Does this mean I have it all figured out? Nope! All I’ve got are occasional glimpses. Hopefully I’ll get a few more in the next 20-30 years. And maybe after another 20-30 years I’ll have a little less of the “minimum requirements” mentality.

What’s my real mission statement?

The past few sermons have knocked me rather off-balance. I think this is a good thing, if not entirely a comfortable one. Let me tell you about them.

On October 4, we looked at Mark 12:28-31, where the legal professional asks Jesus which command is the most important. Jesus answers with two of them: Love God; love your neighbor. Matthew 22:38-39 has: “This (i.e., love the Lord your God) is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (parenthesis added) Our preacher pointed out that before Jesus, no one juxtaposed those two commandments like that.

But more importantly, he challenged us to consider what it means to love your neighbor. What should someone do, how much should they be involved if their teenaged nephew, say, has been making some really bad decisions? He’s not their kid, after all. The challenge is this: “If I were this boy’s mother or father, how would I want my relative to be involved with us?”

This is a challenge! If I had lost my home due to flooding or earthquake or landslide, how would I want someone to come alongside me?

Closer to home, here’s a challenge to me: odd fellow on the train. Rather than being annoyed with him, the easy thing for me to do is just walk on by and sit in another car. Why would it be so hard to just sit nearby and be friendly toward him? He gets off at the 3rd stop, so it’s not like my train ride would be taken over or anything.

I don’t always get to the station the same time he does, but when I do, I could be kinder to him; I could treat him more like the neighbor that he actually is.

Then on October 11, the question arose: what’s my real mission statement? Is it “Love God, love people, serve the world”? Or is it something more like “Take care of your kids, get ahead, build your 401(k)”?

Note that the challenge isn’t necessarily an exhortation to neglect your kids or career, but rather a question about the primary factors, the driving force. What do my checkbook and my calendar say? What would my wife, my colleagues, my boss, my children, my neighbors say?

I think their answers would be mixed. What should you or I do? I don’t think that the answer is “well, quit your job and divest your 401(k)” — at least, not for most of us. But speaking for myself (i.e., not for you) I need to make a conscious effort and take concrete steps to serve others. Some comments about this are in the October 4 study guide, on page 2. I hope you’ll have a look at it.

Meanwhile, several of us had a good time serving at CityTeam last night. Not that I have this wired, or that we’re done with regard to balancing our lives, but I need to figure out my next steps around this. Should I make this a more regular part of my life? Or something else?

May the Lord guide us as we consider our next steps.

Sometimes, grace just happens

I love it when I have the chance to talk with young people about their faith. The other day I had breakfast with a college student I’ll call “Jill,” who had come to a new appreciation of God’s grace and mercy during the preceding months.

As Jill tells it, she was busy with classes and work and recreation, and didn’t seem to have much time for meditation or quiet reflection. Then she made some not-quite-optimal decisions related to, uh, boys — in particular, boys who don’t share her faith; this shrank the time available for sleep and studying. If I have this right, she turned a paper in late and went into an exam with insufficient preparation. She ended the term exhausted and discouraged, and headed off for a short-term mission trip, where she fell ill and spent some days in bed.

So what happened on the paper, the exam, the short-term mission?

Before I tell you, I’ll trot out the old saying that sometimes the people who benefit most from short-term trips are the people who go to serve. What I mean is, if a few dozen (or a half-dozen) people from the US go overseas to build a house or paint an orphanage or teach a few Bible lessons, the family or orphans or students get some benefit. But whose life is changed? Whose view of God has grown? In many cases, the kids have seen other short-term workers come and go, and the new homeowners have seen another family in the community get a house built by “rich” Americans. Sure, it was somebody else who got the house last time, or maybe a church building was erected before and this time they added an extension. But very often what they see is incremental.

Now consider the experience of a hypothetical first-time team member. Maybe they’ve read appeal letters from World Vision; perhaps they’ve seen flood victims on the news. But on a short-term mission they build a house and talk to the people who move in; they erect or paint a church building and go to the church members’ homes and eat a meal there.

Thus a middle-class American encounters the developing world directly — in person, not on the screen or printed page, but face to face. And they’re changed. It’s not just that they get a heightened sense of gratitude; they see with their own eyes how God is at work in some faraway place, and they experience being an answer to someone’s prayer — in a way they typically don’t when they’re at home in the US. God gets larger for them.

You probably guessed it: Jill wasn’t docked for turning her paper in late, and she did fine on the exam (the questions were on things she had down cold). And on the short-term mission (not her first trip by the way), her teammates accepted her and cared for her lovingly; she recovered quickly. Jill loved the kids she went to serve, and came away with a renewed sense that children’s ministry is in her future.

The Bible says that the Lord

… does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Psalm 103:10-12 NIV

For those who have spent a lot of time around churches, this is not particularly new. We’ve heard many times that Jesus died for our sins, that we’re forgiven for our envy, selfishness, lust, greed, or whatever. But we also “know” that actions have consequences. And sometimes they do; sometimes bad things happen when we miss a deadline, and exams sometimes don’t go well if we’re unprepared.

But sometimes the Lord has something special in mind for us — he wants to express his love and mercy in an unusual way. And how nice it is when he does!

I hope that when this happens, we keep in mind the great mercy of our Lord, as it’s written in Psalm 107, and also here:

Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.

Micah 7:18

What is the power of prayer, anyway?

A recent sermon study guide (click to watch) referred to unchangeable things, and asked which was most important to us personally: God’s character, the human condition, the mission of the church, the power of prayer….

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say, “If God lets me down this time, it’ll be the first time.” Perhaps you’ve agreed with them, or even said it yourself. But maybe that remark makes you feel like shaking your head. I met a man whose adult son has been beset by physical and mental health problems for decades; he doesn’t have much tolerance for this sort of happy talk. He believes that God is there, but sunny Sunday School phrases aren’t part of his vocabulary.

Another friend isn’t sure about the power of prayer. By his own account, he has nothing to complain about; he considers himself very fortunate. But how much does prayer have to do with his happy circumstances? Not much that he knows of. You can pray or not, and good things can happen or not; he doesn’t see much correlation.

I’ll be honest with you: I don’t completely disagree. Sometimes it seems like God acts in response to prayer, and sometimes it doesn’t. Yes, I know, sometimes God’s answer is “No” or “Wait” or even “Wrong question.” And as Lewis says, God isn’t obligated to do what we tell him; “He’s the King I tell you!” (from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

What can we say about the power of prayer? It’s not reliable — we can pray for something, and it won’t necessarily happen. A few comments, in no particular order.

First, does this mean that somehow we weren’t doing it right? Was there some specific prayer that we missed? Did we not have enough faith? Ah, no. Consider the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12; surely he had enough faith! And how about Moses in Deuteronomy 3:23-27? And Daniel heard about how an answer could be delayed (Daniel 10:12-13). It is completely inappropriate to say, “you weren’t healed (or whatever) because you didn’t have enough faith.” How much faith did Eutychus have when he was already dead? Or Jairus’s daughter in Mark 5 for that matter?

It’s tempting to say, “well, that wasn’t God’s will,” but I’m not willing to say that to anyone. Daniel’s answer was delayed, as we saw above. And some things certainly are God’s will — for example that everyone be saved (2 Peter 3:9). I have to believe that a prayer for salvation is always heard.

But for a particular person to be protected from physical harm, for an election to go a certain way… I don’t think we can know God’s mind on those things.

Finally, does this make anyone think that maybe God doesn’t care, or that maybe he just isn’t really out there? As my friend said the other night, Jesus Christ certainly came to earth; he predicted his death and resurrection—which actually did happen. And that proves that God cares, that he loves us, that he’s powerful to act on our behalf. Why he does sometimes (miracles do still happen!) and not others… well, we can’t really know all that.

But because Jesus Christ has died, and is risen indeed, we can be certain of his love and his power.