in us and among us

repost from November 2010

We were at a missions conference last week where I taught a workshop on discipleship and sanctification. The title was initially proposed to me as “Sowing where the Gospel has been preached,” and in that conversation, the next phrase that immediately came to my mind was “keep preaching the gospel.” And when you start talking about how to preach or know the gospel, you can’t get very far (or even start) without the Holy Spirit. If the gospel is Christ (as Paul states in Rom 1.3) and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, then we need to be careful that all this gospel-talk is not just busy back-patting fact-rehearsing, but a talk empowered and sweetened by the Spirit to change our lives.

In my preparation for this workshop, I read a lot of James Dunn and some of the things he said are still swirling in my head. Here’s one: “The ‘functions’ of the body are precisely the charismata of the Spirit (Rom 12.4)…Charismata (or charisms) thus understood are the living movements of the body (1 Cor 12.14-26, Eph 4.16). Without them the body is dead. Christian community exists only in the living interplay of charismatic ministry, in the actual being and doing for others in word and deed…There are no dead organs in the body of Christ…”  (Dunn, The Christ and the Spirit, p. 249, emphasis mine).

First, don’t jump when you read the word “charismata.” Having and using these (the Biblical word) doesn’t make you one (the English cognate). Dunn uses it here in the best sense and it’s a word Gordon Fee defines as “a concrete expression of grace.” Now what could be more beautiful than that? And Paul uses it of lots of things other than specifically Holy Spirit-dispensed actions (such as eternal life and marriage, to name a couple). But the work of the Spirit in our lives is also in this category and I’m learning that nearly everything the Spirit does He does to us. Not just me. I used to think that the Spirit has regenerated me, sealed me, illumined my mind… But after reading Dunn, I started looking at those passages in Greek and realized that Paul kept talking to the saints in second person plural, which is difficult to translate into English. So Paul doesn’t pray (for example) that, “he may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being” but that God would grant you all (me, my sisters and brothers in Christ, the church) to be strengthened.

The image Dunn gives really helped me to process this: the Spirit’s work is the movements of the body. A body naturally does things; muscles and tendons and bones work together to go somewhere and do life, to live. But without those parts working together, no movement happens. And then our “body” is just a collection of pointless parts. That is why he says that the Christian community (and evidence of the Spirit) exists precisely in the interplay of our ministry to each other. I think I’m just beginning to understand this, but it has already changed the way I’ve experienced my conversations with fellow believers this past week. The Spirit’s goal in gifting us is uniting us to Christ and each other. This might sound goofy, but I think we often live out the body like an octopus body—each person connected to Christ, but barely connected to each other. This isn’t the Spirit’s design, though, and Christ is exalted and His work on earth furthered by our connection to each other. Not just as I read my Bible and try to become more like Christ on my own, but as the Spirit uses that process to enable me to encourage others to become more like Christ as well. And really, what kind of “Christlikeness” would focus only on my own spiritual state and leave others in the dust? Not the kind that looks like the Christ who abandoned all self-interest. So where is the Spirit’s body? Not at an address, not in a random collection of individual mystics, but in the interaction of Christ-followers as they discover the “concrete expressions of grace” in their lives. As we talk and give and serve and pray and push out into the world everything that God dwells in us to give.

a practical theodicy

I’ve been reading up a bit on Gnosticism because I’m reading Colossians and it seems that Paul is fighting some pre (not-quite-full-blown-yet)-Gnosticism there. Gnosticism is, for the record, not an easy thing to get your head around, a situation further complicated by the fact that it was a “mystery” religion that kept a lot of things, well, mysterious. But one thing I’ve grasped is that it was, like all religions or spiritual beliefs, attempting to deal with the problem of evil. Theodicy is the classic Christian problem of evil: as in, how can evil exist if a good, all-powerful God also does? Gnosticism tackled the problem by putting a buffer zone between its god and the world they lived in. They believed there was a divine being who either lived in or was equal to a “fullness” which was a sort of heaven. This Divine being began expressing itself with “emanations” which are sometimes portrayed as beings, sometimes as cosmic forces. Imagine it like a chain of bubbles and the further the “emanation-bubbles” get away from the “fullness” the more corrupt they get. Until you get to one emanation who had a mind of his (or her, depending on which Gnostic you listen to) own and started creating a world when he wasn’t supposed to. And this is our world. All that to say that they believed the world and life here was messed up because God didn’t create it and had nothing to do with it. Sometimes this meant they advocated a very ascetic lifestyle, very carefully monitoring their contact and involvement in the physical world (apparently like the people Paul was arguing in Colossians) and sometimes the opposite extreme. Salvation would come through proper enlightenment about these things (and a lot of other mysterious things that history didn’t record) and eventual reuniting of all the emanations within humanity (the super-spiritual people) with the Divine fullness—this would happen if they followed the ascetic practices (according to some Gnostics anyway).

Thinking about how other people attempt to handle the evil and corruption of this life made me take a closer look at how I handle evil and corruption in my own life. Every day we face this, whether in big ways (reading about truly terrible things happening all over the world or even people we love suffering) or in little ways (the frustrations and failures of daily life).  Oddly enough, it’s the little things that usually do me in. It usually works like this: I’m plugging along through my day and then a couple things just go wrong. Also oddly, this never fails to shock me. At this point, I’m probably frustrated but still steaming ahead, working hard to rectify whatever’s gone wrong, stay on course, etc. And then, if it’s one of “those days,” another few things go wrong and I reach the limit of my own strength. I’m suddenly mentally overwhelmed, emotionally drained and then, like dominoes falling, the few little things that have gone wrong seem somehow, in my pea-brain, to be connected to everything that is wrong in the whole world. Oh no, we have not just lost a sock people—did you know that there’s also people starving everywhere and beating their children and plotting to bomb other human beings? And in the face of everything that is wrong in the whole world, I wonder what ‘s the point of holding my tongue and exercising some patience? And I usually end up sinning over a sock. Which only serves to further emphasize that everything really is wrong in the world, especially me. You know how your mouth feels when it’s bone dry, with everything in it sticking to itself and unable to move well and tasting sourly of only itself? That is how my soul feels when I come so squarely up to the evil around me and in me. My question is about what I do in those moments—what is my practical theodicy? “Practical” because it’s not an abstract philosophical discussion, but the evidence of what I really believe the solution to the problem of evil is. What do I turn to?

The first thing the Spirit has shown me is that I don’t view evil primarily as rebellion against Creator God, but mostly an unpleasant experience to “fix.” This isn’t actually so distant from the classic philosophical theodicy because most of the time when we discuss the “problem of evil,” it is very personal. Unfortunately, no one can get that abstract about evil. But the reason we discuss theodicy in the first place and the reason that I dislike those daily frustrations is because it messes up my life—not because it messes up God’s. Ironically, nothing would be truly evil if it weren’t affronting God. I mean, if I told someone not to eat something and they did anyway, the world wouldn’t fall apart (wait… that actually did happen five minutes ago…). So the fact that I feel so wronged has nothing to do with the true depth and extent of evil. The only reason I think there’s a connection is because I’ve put myself in God’s place—self-idolatry.

And the self-idolatry makes my practical theodicy a lot easier to handle. Are you still with me?… because this is where it gets practical (I know you thought I put that word in there just to tease you, ha!). If I am the Judge and if evil’s evilness is measured by how much I feel, then all I have to do is make myself feel better and get to my happy place. So I handle the discomfort of a fallen world and my own sin a lot of ways: thinking about something else, complaining, making excuses, doing something I enjoy, or something I can do well instead of fail at, whining to my husband, comparing myself to a false standards (i.e., others), the sympathy and affirmation of friends… “I might not be able to speak kindly and wisely to my kids today, so I will just get an A on this test instead.” Or I choose to feel excited about a perfect, complicated dinner rather than daring to trust God when I feel hopeless.

Furthermore, the little things do me in precisely because I expect to be able to handle them. I don’t expect to end famines or pedophilia, but keeping my house clean… surely I’m good enough to do that! This reveals another aspect of my practical theodicy. Not only do I view myself as the Judge of what is evil and what is right, but I also view myself as Savior. When faced with the fallen state of the world and my own soul, I apparently think the solution (at least on a small scale) is my own ability. If I can just work hard enough, read enough books, come up with the right words at the right time, schedule and plan carefully enough, etc. and etc. When I wake up in the morning to tackle the tiny regime of the fallen world that’s mine, I don’t pray—I plan.

So my official line is that I believe in an unfailingly good God who created, defined and is the standard of all that is right and good, but my practical theodicy shows that I actually consider myself the standard. I judge evil not by comparison to God’s character, but by comparison to my own desires and ideals.

And another thing I profess to believe that there is an all-powerful God who is sovereign over all, but my practical theodicy shows that I consider him less than trustworthy. Instead, I choose, time and time again, to fall back on my own resources.

So far, this has been really negative. But it’s going to get really positive next (in a pending part two), because scripture declares that God is both capable and willing to resolve the problem of evil. And he has.

Soft-scrambled

(juicy, tasty, not well done…)

-Sometimes being with your children is like eating your vegetables. Sometimes it is like a truffle, a split second of richness gone before you can grab it. But a lot of times it’s like a giant bowl of spinach with nary a bacon bit in sight: you do it because you know it’s tremendously good for everyone involved but endurance is required. Most of today was spinach, but there was one truffle… Clive’s lunchtime announcement: “I don’t often use my original voice.” Funny, but also, upon reflection, oddly true.

-In Acts 15, Peter calls legalism “testing God.” Usually I think of the sin and consequences of legalism as it relates to the other person (i.e., who I’m judging), but not as often to God. But, as Peter explained to his fellow apostles and elders, how obnoxious is it to determine the grace of God insufficient? To refuse to trust another’s Creator with the details of their salvation? To hold God accountable as though He doesn’t know His own promises and standards?

-There are a lot of days where I’m more than a wee bit tired with deputation. This timeline helps: God first tells Abraham to leave his country and family. Abraham gets to Canaan and it’s ten years before he sort of throws in the towel with the whole Hagar-Ishmael thing. Then it’s another thirteen years before God comes to meet him and promise him that the child will be born within a year. Then a year later Isaac is born. Ten years plus thirteen years. Ironically, it wouldn’t have been that surprising if Isaac had been born at the beginning of that timeline, when Abraham was more like 77 years old rather than 100—Abraham’s father, Terah, was 70 when Abraham was born. The point being that God intentionally waited for it to reach the point of impossible. I don’t have a specific promise like Abraham and Sarah regarding deputation, but I do want their faith. And I want to enjoy the character of our God who loves showing us the impossible, even absurd. When Isaac was born Sarah said “God has brought me laughter.” I’m sure that reflects a lot of the joy of a barren woman holding her only child, but I also can’t help but suspect an element of irony from the woman who previously gave a knowing snicker to God’s promise. I hope to be with Sarah someday, laughing at my own faithless skepticism and God’s unexpected designs.

-The “comfortable” life in America just goes to prove that you can’t get away from sin. No amount of physical comforts, labor-saving devices and everyday luxuries can make us happy. It only shifts the problem—we may not be hungry or reduced to tribal warfare but we still find plenty of ways to hate and hurt others and we’re haunted by things like depression and sleeplessness. So when people talk about how good we have it here I understand what they mean and the imperative of gratitude, but I also think that our greatest blessing is never being an American or having a healthy family or a beautiful home but always and only Jesus.

Cannot

Blog post from November 2010

Cannot

Is a strong word. It kicked my tail this morning. See, for a couple weeks now I’ve been wallowing in a plague of selfish laziness. It’s been a rough fall, what with a newborn who doesn’t like to sleep, a three year old who can run circles around me and push me to my limits every day, a very busy husband and far too much travelling with far too little sleep and a lot of germs. As silly as it sounds (which sin always does once I reach the point of thinking rationally and biblically), I just wasn’t having any fun. A few days ago I told my husband that it was hard to get out of bed in the morning because all I had to look forward to was hard work every minute of every day: correcting, training, feeding, cleaning, etc. I know, poor me, with my lovely home and family, all my needs met and wonderful, loving friends. Yes, very silly but also treacherous. Both unbelieving and believing scholars talk all the time about Jesus’ ability to be both simple and harsh in his statements. So Jesus let my husband be nice to me and baby me for a day or two and then He got up in my face this morning as the Spirit brought these words to mind: Whoever doesn’t carry her cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. I tend to overcomplicate things, and I had all my excuses, but they just don’t hold water with the One who came from heaven to suffer and die for you.

It’s your privilege your life to give
Stand firm and be relentless!

Tedashii

And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his 1life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone 1serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him. Jn 12.23-26

 

 

Your Kingdom Come

–Repost from June 2011

Your Kingdom Come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.

Today I want the bright and sparkly, the deeply pure and right. I am groaning to be comforted, to hold my inheritance and to taste satisfaction. I want to see God.

What I have is friends who came and packed for me when I only felt like crying into empty boxes. And a friend who is bringing me dinner not because it is easy or she has nothing else to do, but because of Love. And a little tiny person who goes into full-body convulsions of joy upon seeing me. And a slightly bigger one who still thinks that the Bad Guy can be fought with punches. This is the kingdom coming from afar. Some days I can see it so clearly and some days my mind casts a dense fog.

For Thine is the kingdom
And the power
And the gloryForever and ever.
Amen.

The heat of obedience is that we are trying to feel, see and bring the rule of God to earth precisely because it isn’t here. This absence sends me reeling almost every day. So if we pray as Jesus taught us we will be reminded that it isn’t ours to bring, only to ask for and watch for. I once read a commentary on the book of Job that had as its subtitle the phrase, “the triumph of impotence.” Throughout the book we hear a righteous and upright man beg for an audience with God, complain that God’s had is heavy on him, chase after a glimpse of God and refuse to buy into the small but tempting explanations of those around him. Strahan said that, “It is the chief distinction between Job and his friends that he desires to meet God and they do not.” The end of this story is that he does meet God and find contentment in the dust and ashes of the human condition. He finds triumph in impotence, in quietly trusting the God he’s been busy chasing the whole time. He doesn’t get answers; he gets God.

I have so many questions for God, mostly about what He isn’t doing, about why his will and rule seem landlocked in heaven. About why nothing we’re doing seems to work, about why obedience is so hard and we feel so powerless, so impotent.

For this impotence to display the triumph of God, I must keep going to God with the questions, with both the beginning and the ending of Jesus’ prayer. Chapter 23 is one of my favorite passages in the book of Job as he puts his foot down declaring that the darkness will not silent him—only God is worthy of the response of fear. When we crumble under life’s weight, we must fall to a bow.

Today also my complaint is bitter…
            Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
                        that I might come even to his seat!
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,                        and backward, but I do not perceive him;
on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;
                        he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
                        when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
My foot has held fast to his steps;
                        I have kept his way and have not turned aside.
I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;
                        I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food.
But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back?
                        What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me,
                        and many such things are in his mind.
Therefore I am terrified at his presence;
                        when I consider, I am in dread of him.
God has made my heart faint;
                        the Almighty has terrified me;
yet I am not silenced because of the darkness,
                        nor because thick darkness covers my face.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

It’s better to know God than to know everything else.

 I say, “My endurance has perished;
                        so has my hope from the LORD.”…
            But this I call to mind,
                        and therefore I have hope:
            The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
                        his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
                        great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
                        “therefore I will hope in him.”
            The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
                        to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
                        for the salvation of the LORD.

It is good to wait for the kingdom to come because it is his and he cannot fail to bring it. I wish it was today, but as Paul would tell me (and does)… what would be the point of hope then? It is good to wait.

On why I decided to come here and write words

I spend almost all day every day with a three year old. I miss paragraphs. Especially paragraphs on topics besides trucks, why we can’t eat cookies for dinner, firefighters and their trucks, construction workers and their trucks, and trucks.