All posts by Rod White

The story: What DID God see in you (and in us)?

Leadership, The Mission, ,
C. 1400 Ravanica Monastery, Serbia
C. 1400 Ravanica Monastery, Serbia

Jesus sent a man who was blind from birth to the Pool of Siloam and he came up out of the cleansing bath with his eyesight restored. We have been talking about it ever since.

When we tell the story, we usually focus on what the newly-sighted man saw in Jesus. What we don’t usually talk about is what Jesus saw in him.

We learn to see ourselves through  Jesus lens

As John tells the story, it is obvious that John admires the formerly-blind man very much. His telling gives me the idea that Jesus must have spoken about him fondly, too. Maybe the former blind man even became one of the disciples who travelled with Jesus, and John was telling his friend’s story. Someday in eternity maybe I’ll find out about all these details.

Jesus saw something in that man who later on saw something in Jesus. I wonder what he sees in you.

As I was saying last night, as the first day of the blind man’s sight wore on, his insight and boldness grew deeper and more impressive. The Pharisees were sure Jesus had done something evil to open his eyes, especially since the Lord violated Sabbath rules to do it. But the former blind man did not bend under their pressure to take their interpretation of his reality. Instead, he learned how to see and speak stronger and clearer. The man’s replies to his abusers became so profound they bear quoting:

Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
  He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
  Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
  The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
  To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out (John 9:26-34).

I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I still think that Jesus discerned what kind of sight he was going to give this blind man when he first saw him at the side of the road. We are so astounded by the tangible miracle of a man receiving his sight and so interested by Jesus spitting into the clay earth and making mud (reflecting how God made humans out of dust), that we miss the miracle of what new physical sight unleashes in this man’s heart and mouth.

On his first day of sight his parents don’t get too involved, the leaders of the synagogue attack him, and they finally throw him out of the synagogue for not denouncing Jesus. It is a big change from making a living as an invisible beggar! Through it all, the man just keeps gaining more faith and voicing it – and this is even before he meets Jesus face to face. When Jesus comes and finds him, the man sees what is in Jesus and worships him. Jesus saw something in the man and the man saw something in Jesus and life was never the same again. I think Jesus knew this was a man whose eyesight would lead to heartsight. I think he noticed a person who would hold on to the truth in the face of upheaval and opposition. I think Jesus expected him to connect with him, as the man did.

What’s your story?

The man just kept telling his story all day, and I feel like telling it too. But what I really want to get to is your story. What do you think God saw in you when you two ran into one another? Maybe you were actually sitting on some curb somewhere. Maybe you were not even looking for a Savior and were quite acclimated to your condition. What did he call out in you? What is he still calling out? Someone, maybe even one or two of your own inner voices, is probably telling you, “You’re sinful. Shut up or get out!” But what did Jesus see in you in spite of all those voices?

When we were telling our stories at the Love Feast last Saturday, I had to think, “And what did God see in us?” Not too long ago we were a semi-disabled, little group of people sitting by the side of the road. Jesus decided to stand us up, enable us and send us. I don’t think we imagined what would become of us: nearly sixty cells, four congregations, creative compassion teams, including our thrift stores and counseling center, so much community, sharing and vision! But I think Jesus saw the possibilities. We have some traits just like the blind man he restored.  Here are three:

1) We can tell stories. We do it in our meetings, face to face in our cells, through music, through acts of compassion, through writing and all the virtual processes. One of our friends was saying last week, “When I first visited you guys, I knew I needed to move here and be a part of what God is doing.” He got it.

2) We don’t give in to the irrational demands of the powers that be, either. Like the man said to the religious leaders, we say things like, “So you think that is true?” or “You think that will work?” Right now a bunch of us are on the street trying to get the powers to think straight about public education. Shalom House cancelled their potluck tonight so they can get engaged with drones! God’s miracles get discounted every day and we deal with that. We are not easy to divert from our radical ways.

3) And we are also still asking whether someone wants to be one of Jesus’ disciples, even though people seem to think evangelism is illegal! The former blind man certainly knew what he was doing when he asked the furious leaders if they also wanted to be one of Jesus’ disciples. But he did it. Why not? He was not really looking for a whole new life when he met Jesus, either. But he was glad he met him, anyway! There are no doubt a lot of other blind people hoping to see.

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Intent: Jesus Is Not Tupperware and You Don’t Sell Him.

Building community, Leadership, , , , , , ,

I was going to take a picture of our pitcher. But I found the exact one on Etsy for $8Gwen was marveling at a Tupperware pitcher the other day. Someone gave it to us for our wedding and it is still working well. Other pitchers come and go, but the sturdy little Tupperware goes on and on — which, I suppose would be a good reason to trust Tupperware. The corporation would be delighted if you formed a love relationship with your plastic pitcher and the business behind it.

A lot of people do trust Tupperware-like operations. You might know that Tupperware was among the original direct sales organizations that sprung up after World War 2 — Earl Tupper and Brownie Wise gave women something to do after the men came back from the front and told them to go back to the kitchen. Now they have about 2 million people who sell products worldwide. Individual, entrepreneurial capitalism is like the new American dream which comes complete with a post-Christian religious-like philosophy [addictive Tupperware propaganda here].

The method is so ingrained in our society that a lot of people seem to think the church is, essentially, a Tupperware party. You invite a bunch of people, show them your stuff while eating appetizers and try to parlay your relationships into a Jesus sale. People have certainly criticized Circle of Hope because their friends don’t want to come to our Jesus party and buy Jesus. They want to improve the product. That’s if they even want to be involved at all. Plenty of people would rather die than be involved in direct sales!

It is hard to describe the church outside of some economic metaphor, since our imagination for forming society in the United States is almost completely subsumed under how our economy works and what rights and laws are commensurate with making it doable and just. Half the time on the BIC Listserve the men (mostly) of our denomination are talking about politics as if the church has a big stake in the economy of the United States. I think we can do a lot better than merely debating just how crazy the recent Senate vote on watered-down gun laws was (although, Lord knows, the prophets need to turn up the volume). I think we can do better than integrating into the economy.

Intent holds us together

At least I don’t think we have much to say about society until we have a church. The church is how God does his work and demonstrates the life we have received. Here is a great teaching from the Bible that briefly sums up what the church is all about:

[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Ephesians 3:10).

If you want to sell something, sell that!

Better yet, swear off economic metaphors for describing God’s people altogether, for a while. Because the church is not an economy in the popular, “consumer/free-market capitalism” sense. We are a people who God rules and through whom God reveals the character and purpose that creates us. We ARE a people in which someone can be included. We DO God’s purpose of revelation by which we include ourselves in the destiny of the world, whether it invites us to the party or not.

We don’t need an organization to work out Ephesians 3:10-11. And if the organization we adopt is modeled on consumer capitalism or American political theory, we’d be better off without one! We live out God’s purpose as individuals and in the course of daily life. We should organize our time to do that. The Spirit of God is in us and God is expressing life and love through each of Christ’s followers. But if we want to make ourselves known to the powers and provide a place for people to be included, it is pretty arrogant to think we can do that on our own. And since God’s intent is to work through the church, not just you or me, we should see ourselves as agents of the church, not as a church of me, myself and I. Because God has built each of us into the church, Circle of Hope is organized into cells and into teams. Our cells organize into congregations. Our congregations organize into a network. Our network is part of a denomination and is connected worldwide in creative ways.

What holds it all together? I focus on the word INTENT in Ephesians 3:10. God’s intention is the creative spark that again and again forms the body of Christ and animates it. And God’s intent is met with our similar intent, sparked by God’s Spirit in us making all things new. We hold together by the covenant that makes us a people and the agreements that make us doers of the word in so many ways. Our covenant, in particular, is what makes us more than a Tupperware party. We don’t hold weekly meetings to convince our members to buy another piece of the collection. We are all the “owners” ourselves and we present to others the person of Jesus, not a product; we call for relationship, not self-actualization through endless “freedom of choice.”

The leaders of the men’s retreat were working out our presumption of covenant love throughout the weekend. They took an audacious risk by making their small groups painstakingly diverse, crossing all congregations. Then they went even further by making dyads that were randomly selected by the small group leaders. Then they had these pairs doing intimate, spiritual things. They demonstrated a huge trust in God’s presence in the body. The had a huge faith that individuals would experience God’s truth and love and intentionally follow God’s lead. They assumed they could trust the small groups to include everyone. They trusted the dyads to do spiritual things. They presumed a covenant life and didn’t even allow for too much individual anonymity. I’m sure a few people were blown away, so far out of their comfort zone and over their capability that they are still reeling from it. But I did not hear anything about that yet. What I have heard is story after story of being moved, connected and inspired — and formed into a people as God intended.

Our destiny is to make God’s heart and God’s ways known to the world, to live out the eternal purpose of God made known in Jesus. Our destiny is not merely to keep deciding what we want to do. It is not to keep inviting people into sales events that presume they are merely meant for deciding what they want to do. We share God’s purpose. We are each someone valuable to God, and what we do has meaning beyond our capacity to choose. We are a people through whom God intends to work out his life and purpose, and what we accomplish has eternal ramifications. We have a God-intended destiny, and it defines how we take our steps together.

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Hezekiah and His Tunnel, Beartraps and Not Being a Loser

A life in the Spirit, Music, , , , , , ,

hezekiah's tunnelWhen I was in Jerusalem not long ago I made a conscious decision not to go visit Hezekiah’s tunnel. To be honest, he was too obscure for me. I was too busy visiting Jesus. My engineer friends would never have missed his amazing engineering feat: five football fields long, chiseled out of solid rock 2700 years ago. It was dug to provide underground access to the waters of the Gihon Spring, which lay outside the city. The Assyrians were coming! (See 2 Chronicles 32).

I wish I had visited it. I like to get into the dirt of crisis and experience the vestiges of miracle. Hezekiah’s tunnel is a real “thin place.” I also like to witness the spot where some community did something together that proves that people can work together.

I think the tunnel is even more than those things, however. It is such a great metaphor for the story of Hezekiah’s life and of ours. It is a metaphor for digging down and finding what we need — finding the water of life that supplies us and protecting our access to the source as huge forces bear down on us. Hezekiah’s story burrows into the depths of us just like his tunnel burrows into the hard rock under Jerusalem — if our hearts are soft enough to listen, or we apply enough chisel.

Set upon by huge forces

The monster of the Assyrian war machine is bearing down on Judah. The huge forces convince them that they are losers. They’ve got to do something or be consumed. We felt that a bit when we had lunch in Love Park the other day. The huge Comcast Center peered down at us over the nearby buildings. Stacey said it was constructed so that the Death Star could dock on top of it. So we might relate to what the people of Judah felt. In the face of Sennacherib’s attack, the people in Jerusalem had to find a source of water that was beyond their normal sources.

We are set upon by huge forces, too. Most of them are internal as well as external. We have to get to sources of life that are beyond the problems we have. Hezekiah tries to be a great king and he succeeds. But he still gets sick and he still faces monsters. Isaiah tries to get him to trust God completely. He kind of does and he kind of doesn’t. Mostly he does, like most of us. In the middle of his big mess, God touches him and convinces him that He is with him. He is not a loser.

beckWhen I was speaking about all this, I used Beck as the poster child for the internal forces that ail us. In 1994 Beck dashed off a song that has been haunting us ever since. I think you’ll remember the hook, like almost everyone in the meeting did: “Soy un perdedor/I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?” The columnists interpreted the song as a parody of Generation X’s “slacker” culture. But Beck has always denied that, instead saying that the chorus is simply about his lack of skill as a rapper — Whatever. The media dubbed Beck the center of the new so-called “slacker” movement. Beck refuted this characterization of himself, saying, “Slacker my ass. I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything.” – Chill out.

Part of me feels like a loser

But the fact is, Beck’s picture still became an icon in the church of VH1. And the huge forces continue to tell us we are losers in one way or another: “You are not part of the 1%. You have flabby abs. Your resume is skimpy. You work retail. You came in second place. You think you are entitled. Nobody’s perfect, especially you.”  If they don’t get us to think we are losers, they are making sure we think we’d better never become one: “You can do it if you just believe in yourself and get a good education. If you put your mind to it, you can achieve the American dream.”

There are good reasons that parts of us feel like we are losers. Those are the parts we avoid the most. We dread them. They make us desperate for redemption.  We get obsessed with the person who gave us the message that we are worthless and we either avoid them or avoid the thought of them like the plague. Or we work desperately to try to get the person who gave us the message that we are a loser to reverse the judgment. We get addicted to fleeting moments of approval and we will put up with mountains of denigration and exploitation just to get it. When we get the love, we feel good, when we don’t get it we crash. We walk around with a psychological bear trap on our leg searching for the person with a key to unlock it.

I have often talked to people who are doing this with us, the people of God formed as Circle of Hope. They come from abusive places and get connected to Jesus with the appropriate hope that they are going to be saved. The process begins. They begin to work out their stuff with us, often moving around the congregation finding people they hope will unlock their bear trap and release them from being such a loser. And they find a lot of people who give them the love, along with a lot of people who are an awful lot like the people who put the traps on their legs in the first place.

This process is one of the reasons our family-like atmosphere often feels so messy. It is messy. People are messed up and they need a Savior. We have cells and public meetings devoted to including messed up people. Not everyone likes or even approves of messy churches. That messiness is a reason many Christians keep faith a matter of what they think and not how they love. They prefer the church to be a place to get happy; they like to keep it superficial and not get “real” in some cell group or compassion team or, God help them, therapy.

People get out of their traps

So these dear people I am talking about who are walking around with their bear traps getting loosened and re-clamped, loosened and re-clamped — they go through their process and some of them get to the end of it. They come to know they are OK in Christ. And then some of them move on from the church. And some of us feel bad about this. We feel bad because they went through all their stuff, found out they are not a loser, then they seem to judge us for having made them feel all these difficult things and they leave us feeling like we are losers.  Very few people respond this way, but some do. We’re so competitive for souls that that we often believe, “Soy un perdedor” if our statistics look too bad in comparison to our ambitions. People get healed, get launched into a better adulthood, and we end up feeling like losers because they moved on. That’s ironic.

Hezekiah is not a typical American success story, nor is the kingdom of Judah. Neither end up world dominators. Hezekiah gets sick and must be healed. He invests all the country’s money in a scheme that does not work out. He is a rebel without a lot of power to back up his rebellion. His chief prophet seems to think he is kind of a loser. Other kings think he is a pipsqueak who can be used as a pawn. But God is moved by his prayer. With God, he is not a loser.

I rejoice in that. I can be a Hezekiah at the end of my rope, forced to rely on God and to see what God does. I know that can seem like a less-than-perfect approach to being a Jesus follower, but it seems realistic — and it is in the Bible. I hope you will burrow wherever you need to burrow with me until you get convinced that even when the circumstances and the powers that control them tell you that you are a loser, that’s just a lie. Listen to your prophets, dare what you need to dare, get yourself in trouble trying to lead or serve in the best way you can so you can be convinced that you are not a loser. Try to let a different hook burrow into your heart other than the already-present, “I’m a loser, baby.” How about, “I am not a loser. I am God’s child.”

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Endless Love Chooses Limits

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My sister made a good point last Wednesday after we stopped playing Wii bowling and watched a few minutes of the news. She said, “I like it when the TiVo’s got nothing and I need to watch the commercials. They are educational.” It will be part of her book “$%!# People in the Last Years of the Baby Boomer Demographic Say.”

I am unlimitedBecause she said that, I listened to the Sprint commercial for their I-Phone 5 deal while I was looking for news about the Phillies (which was not good news). While I was reaching for a Rolo, my ears perked up, because the Sprint commercial actually said, “I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.” I looked at Gwen and asked, “Did you hear that?” She verified that it happened. Then YouTube confirmed it.

I think the commercial is supposed to be a little ironic. But since truth is not a goal for most advertisers, one cannot be too sure — and ads rarely say something which isn’t supposed to resonate in thirty seconds. So I think being unlimited is exactly what the advertiser meant to promise. And even though it is absurd, I think they meant to tap into the innate, entitled feeling (that is becoming more prevalent all the time) that we have a right to be unlimited. Maybe that sense of entitlement is a legacy of those baby boomers I mentioned. YouTube also verifies they promised fame would make their children live forever (who all sing and dance), all while enjoying endless love. Now those well-educated boomers are working on how they will make it literally possible not to die.

Endless love

As a missionary, that thirty seconds was very educational. I also promise people can have eternal life, which is unlimited. I don’t think one has an innate right to it, but once it is given by the Giver I could say, “I need, no, I have a right to be unlimited.” My fame won’t make me live forever (or my children, as our brothers and sisters at Saddleback are pondering), but God’s fame will live forever. But what about endless love? The Bible records this teaching:

Romans 8:37-39: But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 4:9-12: By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

What about endless love? God has loved us from the beginning and will love us until the end. Nothing will ever separate us from God’s love. But what kind of love is this unlimited love? It is not like Sprint’s sense of being unlimited, which you can pay for and buy a right to. It is not something I can work hard enough to deserve, like people think of fame or scientific progress.

I suppose it could seem ironic that God’s unlimited love is the kind that limits itself. Nothing can separate us from the love of God because it is in Jesus our Lord; the love is expressed by God who became a limited human to serve humans. Nothing can separate us from the love of God because the one and only Son limited himself to life like ours, killed death, went beyond angels, undermined the powers that be, invested our present with hope and guaranteed our future. God-with-us, who knows the heights and depths and every possibility of our creation, put endless love in limited flesh and made limited flesh full of endless love.

Expressed in our limits

make it workOn the way home from my sister’s, I read a book on the plane about psychology (of course). It had a great metaphor for seeing our many inner “selves” as a family system. What the author suggested is that we get in touch with our true, inner Self with a capital “S” and learn how to let that Self relate to our many selves with honesty and understanding, just like a family therapist would help a family. That is a nice Hindu-ish idea which assumes people can find the image of God in themselves and “make it work.” I think it was another example, like the Sprint commercial, of how we are being trained to see our potential as limitless.

But true, endless love from our true selves is a gift of God, who demonstrates how it comes alive in Jesus. We don’t make it work as much as it works in us. It is endless, but it limits itself to be expressed in us. Our sin gets us condemned to being in charge of forever. But God’s love demonstrates the alternative that saves the world.

For instance, tonight we are going to have a meeting about making a covenant with the other members of Circle of Hope. We would need an alternative commercial for our alternative kind of life: “I need, no, I have a right to be limited.”  I make a covenant with a visible group of Jesus-followers because I need to love in this time and place as one of these people — Christ in me, Christ as us. The meeting answers crucial questions:

  • How am I going to be a visible part of an actual body?
  • How can I not end up like some kind of imaginary god whose love is endless, a god outside an actual body, an aspiration I need to make work?”

God’s love is in us and is something that works in our limited condition; it is a life into which I can enter and from which I can live.

This is a big deal. The love of God is Jesus entering into our world and our lives. Expressing love like God’s is living fully in our world, entering the experiences of others, and living with Jesus in his body, the church. It is a love that serves within the limits of creation. It is limited by the need to be a receiver who gives as a real person to other real people. It is love that is not looking beyond what is to what isn’t, and so love that honors the person in front of them and doesn’t expect what has not matured to fruit yet, much less the impossible.

When we meet in our cells or public meetings we are not there to experience wonderful people whose fame should live forever (or to lament the undesirables we are stuck with!). When we meet, we are humbly emptying ourselves of self-aspirations to endlessness and entering into the smallness of knowing someone and being  known, of discovering the goodness created in us and the new life given to us by Jesus. I am not going to “make the cell work” or bring all my endless demands for what I deserve to it. I am going to give of myself as love is given to me by God. I am going to honor the limited person and context and be used to fill them with whatever fullness of love they can contain.

That’s a lot of meditation on a thirty-second commercial! But I needed to do it. We are longing to be the body of Christ – not the only representation, of course, but a real one. I love the limitations of a love that empties itself of rights and gives out of God’s endless supply. Within those limitations is where the love of God saves us. It sounds reasonable, I suppose. But then my wife wipes me out at Wii bowling and I have to love her. Someone  messes with my I-phone and I have to make a choice. Someone invites me into a covenant of love like God’s and I have to reorient who I think I am!

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Lent Did It’s Job: Three levels of awareness

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

risen sunIt has been a wonderful Lent.

At times, I felt a little guilty, because my self-imposed suffering was bearing delectable fruit: some of it tasted new and some of it tasted of well-loved flavors I had been missing. Meanwhile, some people were blowing off the discipline…for what? At times I felt like I was having a feast while strangely invisible to starving people.

I hope you find it acceptable for me to tell you a little about my Lent. One thing I experienced during the season is this reality: any number of my comrades feel that saying anything about ourselves is proud or self-referencing or coercive, so they never give a testimony of God’s work and , as a result, no one gets to know Jesus. Waking up to that shocked me and reformed me, so I am giving my testimony. Lent helped me realize how they had somewhat squeezed me into their tiny, dishonorable mold. They made me afraid.

I’ll be brief, though. I’ll organize my thoughts around the PM Plan, where it quotes Jesus calling us, in Mark 12, to “surrender to loving God with our entire beings.”  Jesus speaks of a whole being as four parts: heart, soul, mind and strength. A whole being can never actually be separated into parts, of course. But these are good categories to help us mentalize: think and feel about what we  think and feel — a basic Christian skill for which Lent was priceless.

 

We say in the PM Plan that the “heart” is: Our ordinary awareness, primarily. The center of our ego, our sense of being a person. Feelings, desires, passions, reflection, moral conviction.

During the Patrick Day Retreat I encouraged us to note our three levels of awareness: ordinary, spiritual and Holy Spirit. It helped me take note.

That retreat was symbolic of my reorientation. I’ve been discouraged, on and off, for a while. The congregation and the whole network have been missionally stalled, in some ways, and I am a missionary. Lent rekindled my fire, got me excited, helped me let go and change. Our focus on the Jesus Prayer spurred my contemplation, so I was hearing the inner voice. And, as you can probably tell, I felt convictions that I, and we, have an important outer voice.

We say that the “mind” is: Our ordinary awareness, primarily. Where we are conscious. Our understanding, ethical awareness, inclinations, attitudes.

During the Justice Conference I was stricken by what caring people can do. And I was also stricken by what Circle of Hope, as caring people, has done. We are the lost poster child church of the Justice Conference. I felt the same way when we were speaking to the Atlantic Conference of the BIC about our Compassion Teams. We demonstrate remarkable, authentic passion. I love who God has made us!

But sometimes I have felt concerned because it seems like our radicality, our incarnational mentality, and our covenant intensity, just wear people out. I get afraid that people might lazily let it all go. But when I saw “pop” church popping up in our region I got competitive for reality. What’s more, my trauma study helped me see that learned helplessness is a constant threat when people are oppressed; you might have heard about that in this blog post. The church is floundering and pandering; the world is demanding and deceiving. I feel called to be an antidote, if I can.

We say what Jesus means by “strength” is: Not only bodily strength, but primarily. Our ability, capacity, potency. The power we are given to exercise.

I feel better when my Lenten fast has the corollary benefit of reducing my weight and making me aware of my body. When I am feeding myself in a healthy way and requiring my body to match my morals, I feel better and act with more freedom, I am more open.

I forced a personal retreat into my busy schedule at one point during Lent just because it needed to be done. I damned the consequences. The fact that I did that made me stronger. And the consequences weren’t that big a deal anyway. I also regularly force spiritual direction into my schedule and it makes me a stronger counselor and director myself. My doctoral studies are also way too much to do, but have also proven to be too strengthening not to do.

We say that the “soul” is: Our spiritual awareness. Where we most deeply connect with God. The life in us that transcends time. The place of accountability. The seat of sorrow, joy, suffering.

This is where Lent was most valuable, as you might expect. I am desperate for hours in “Holy Spirit awareness.” And although my heart, mind and strength propel me there, it is in my soul that I am most allured. During Lent, I felt remarkably, consciously relieved of lazy habits of self-protection and self-soothing. I think a lot of that was due to my study in trauma and revisiting my psychological character style. For instance, at one of the Holy Week observances I described my childhood home as “unsafe” — an admission I don’t usually allow. My friend’s response was so kind that a flood of emotions surged up. I was getting healed some more. During the Way of the Cross walk and during the vigil I realized the erosive benefits of Lent. I might long for something to knock me “off my horse” all the time, but the regular disciplines of exercising my spiritual awareness form me as they save me. The fact that I went on the walk helped me become aware of Jesus and walk with Him.

As I decided what to put into this testimony it was such a joy to realize that there is so much more to tell! It was a rich season in a rich life. God was with me and I was with God. I was in a body that is a real church and God was with us. I had put my hand to the plow and the way forward was challenging, but exciting — and I did not want to look back or elsewhere. One the main convictions I received was that I needed to talk about all that. So I have begun. Thanks for walking with me.

I’m sure you have a lot to tell, yourself. Right now at Circle of Hope Daily Prayer we are having the first of our quarterly times to talk back, reveal ourselves, and tell each other what God has been doing from January through March. That is hardly the only place you could give witness to God’s work in your life through Jesus, but it is a good one.

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Stop the Repression

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, The Mission, , , , , ,

Sometimes it looks like the only “safe place” we can understand is the self-protected heart-space we keep free of outside influence.

Sometimes we extend the idea of “having good boundaries” so far we can no longer get out of ourselves and express the love of Jesus.

Meanwhile, God has violated the boundaries of space and time to come to us in Jesus. Today in the liturgical calendar, he is in the heart of Jerusalem teaching us how to live. Nevertheless, self-protection, self-discovery and self-protection seem reasonable to us. But those reasons rarely lead to strength, tenderness or faithfulness, just more self-ness. Stop the repression!

Your poor child

barbed-wireA woman who was abused as a child finally felt like she needed to cut off her mother. She was an evil woman who would rather destroy her daughter than admit her husband had abused her.* For years the daughter “set appropriate boundaries” and “took care of herself.” These are such basic recommendations from psychotherapists that they have become cliches.

She applied their teaching and definitely experienced more peace and less anxiety as a result of keeping her mother at a distance. But she did not become more gentle or experience much joy. She was supposedly loving herself, but the way she did it cost her the thrill of giving herself to another. To maintain her new defense system she had to continuously reaffirm the necessity of protecting herself. She was like North Korea, expending costly efforts to maintain big weapons while the heart of her country starved. Hardening her heart to her mother’s horrible life did transform her from a passive, frightened pawn. But the hardness also moved her toward being an angry, tough woman who, ironically, was willing to destroy her love rather than let down her defenses – a lot like her mother.

Our abusers have no qualms about remaking us in their image. Evil has no reticence about expressing itself through us. Jesus wants to stop their repression. Love requires we lose the ways we have been saving ourselves in the face of what threatens us and find our true selves in relationship with our Savior. Then we might even gain the strength to undo the evil done to us.

Love feels so risky to the abused

Our network talked a lot about this risky love last week, here and there. We are trying to figure out how to love and it hurts sometimes. We are especially afraid of abusers and evil people who don’t mind telling us we are fools to follow Jesus, who ignore us, or who aggressively impose their Christ-less ways as if they were moral, even while they tell us to not be so aggressive. We are tempted to be passive in order to not be a nuisance or to cut them off contemptuously, or become like them in other ways.

When I see Jesus in the center of Jerusalem today, teaching in the Temple courts in full view of people who are plotting to kill him, people who can’t see the peace he would bring to them, I take heart and keep learning the lessons of love. His objective is obviously to bless people, not just make sure he is not abused. He refuses to live in fear. He is not so dominated he maintains some semblance of peace instead of being his true self. To love is to be more committed to the other person than we are to the relationship, to be more concerned about their soul than with whatever comfort not rocking the relational boat might bring to us.

We need to honor the dignity and admit the depravity of the ones we love in order to truly love them. We cannot love if we distance ourselves or overlook the damage of another’s sin; neither can we love if we fail to move into another’s world to offer a taste of life. Like Oscar Romero, we might have to sacrifice personal comfort for the sake of helping another experience their own longings and need for grace. The risk to love like Jesus is worth it. We need to stop the repression dominating us and stop the repression of others to experience the freedom and fullness of self-giving love.

Yesterday was Oscar Romero’s martyr’s day. Let me leave you with a quote from him, since he inspires me to risk love like the Lord’s, even though I have been abused, even though I am afraid, even though others might be evil and I might prefer evil in some ways, too.

 romero    I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.
      The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity’s common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength (Last Homily).

* freely adapted from The Wounded Heart

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Drones are the lesser of two evils? Really?

The Mission,

My friend and member of Shalom House, Candace McKinley, wrote a brilliant response on a list serve we mutually read. Someone was defending drones as the lesser of two evils and being sympathehetic about the imagined plight of the president who was making hard decisions. I thought her reply was so great I asked her if I could repost it. She said yes.

I do not think that is accurate to describe drone warfare as the lesser of two evils as if there are only two choices for action. What about relying on traditional intelligence gathering? What about trials? Or even working on rectifying the causes of terrorism–reversing US policies that have propped up dictators, destabilized legitimate governments, built military bases all over the world, and harmed local economies? Perhaps instead of striking out blindly in fear and in hate after 9-11, our government could have instead acted rationally: gathered intelligence on who perpetrated 9-11 and why; changed our policies; gone to the international community; answered the question of “Why do ‘they’ hate us?” honestly and not with the pointless lie of “Because they hate our freedom.”

Targeted killings using drones are problematic for many reasons. Legally, there is the issue of violating another country’s sovereignty, attacking other countries without a formal declaration of war, assassinating individuals without trial, killing US citizens without due process. But there is also a deep moral issue.

[Our friend] makes a good point. Imagine if we were on the receiving end of another country’s drone program. What if Venezuela decided to make targeted strikes against American citizens who they believed were actively involved in terrorist acts against their country that endangered the lives of its citizens and aimed to destabilize and overthrow their government? Their “accurate” drone strikes result in massive harm to personal property of civilians and collateral damage–the loss of life to civilians, including many women and children. Imagine attending a wedding to celebrate the union of two of your family members along with 150 friends and family members. It a celebration on Lemon Hill in Fairmount Park. The wedding reception is cut short when a drone opens fire on the crowd, killing most of the 150 guests. Seeing the explosion, bystanders and ambulances race to the scene to aid the victims. Another round of bombing greets the rescuers.

Venezuela thought the gathering was suspicious and had some intelligence that an American agent known to be involved in the planning of anti-Venezuelan government attacks might be in attendance. Soon, people no longer attend block parties, outdoor concerts, dragon boat races on the river, street fairs or large farmers markets for fear of drone attacks. You don’t want to look suspicious.

You go out to the grocery store to pick up some milk and eggs for breakfast the one day. You return home a half hour later to find your house in flames. Your home destroyed by a drone attack. Pieces of your spouse and children scattered among the burning wreckage. Your home happened to be next door to the home of a man suspected of donating to an anti-Venezuelan cell.

The above two scenarios may seem overly dramatic, but they are the reality for too many people living in Pakistan and other countries where the US engages in drone warfare. Over 4,700 people have been killed by US drones. Also, the idea that other nations could use drones–armed or unarmed–against the US is not so farfetched. The US no longer has the monopoly on drones. Israel is the largest drone exporter and China is into the business of drones as well. Again we reap the whirlwind.

This Saturday, Shalom House members attended a talk by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODE Pink in Bethlehem, PA. She spoke about drone warfare and CODE Pink’s efforts. Around the room was a string of names and ages written in careful black script noting over 100 Pakistani children killed by drone strikes. Listening to her tell us about CODE Pink’s recent delegation to Pakistan and the stories told by those living under drone warfare, I couldn’t help but imagine myself in their shoes. What would it be like to live in constant terror? To have your community torn asunder? To feel powerless to stop the killings or to even have your story heard? To be on the receiving end of the capricious vengeance and violence of a country thousands of miles away who feels that it has the right to bomb you and your family? To be given no justification or explanation for the attack beyond lip service?

I think the moral question of drone warfare, in deed of all warfare, can be answered in one line: Do to others as you would have them do to you. And for us who are Christ followers: Love one another. Even more so, love your enemies.

I don’t think it is too much to ask our governments to do the same or to hold them to the same standard. Governments are going to act in what they perceive is their best interest without us making excuses for their actions. Especially since we live in a democracy where our votes and voices are supposed to have meaning, why not demand that our government not kill in our name?

During the month of April, there are going to be a number of protests, forums and actions around drones. On April 13 there will be a big rally and march in DC organized by ANSWER and on April 26-28, there will be a forum, protest and rally in Syracuse, NY at a drone base. I’ll share a calendar of local and regional forums and actions later this week.

Below are some links to some resources about drones. Check them out for more information about the US drone program.
Drones Watch: A Coalition Campaign to Monitor and Regulate Drone Use
Infographic: Drone Strikes under Obama
Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Covert Drone War

I add an article about drone support in our own back yard.
Horsham command center for drones wins support.

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Hope for Us and the Church Beyond Learned Helplessness

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, The Mission, , , ,

The other night we began our public meeting at Circle of Hope Broad and Washington with Eminem’s and Rihanna’s squalid ballad Love the Way You Lie. We were trying to acknowledge that we are entangled in the ways of the world. And now I continue to be tangled up with Rihanna’s haunting chorus. That is, I am entangled with 547,269,483 (and counting) youtube viewers since the song premiered in 2010.

learned helplessnessRihanna said she joined the collaboration with Eminem because she could relate to the theme of the song, as she and Eminem had experienced domestic violence on “different ends of the table.” Eminem and his ex-wife Kimberly Scott had been in a difficult relationship, having divorced in 2001 and again in 2006 after a remarriage. In February 2009, Rihanna’s notorious relationship with Chris Brown ended following his felony assault on her. She described Love the Way You Lie as unique, realistic and deep, saying it “broke down the cycle of domestic violence because few people had insight on the topic” [MTV]. She tried to exploit the popularity of the original with a Part II that celebrates death and masochism with even less subtlety, if that is possible.

Learned helplessness should not be normalized

I admit I am an admirer of these artists because they are talented and clever survivors. If your song deserves a Wikipedia page, the least we can do is tip our hats.  There is a lot to say about a song that influences hundreds of millions of people. But I just want to say one thing: the learned helplessness being normalized in the song should not be normalized.

Rihanna: Just gonna stand there and watch me burn?
Well, that’s alright because I like the way it hurts.
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry?
Well, that’s alright because I love the way you lie.
I love the way you lie.
I love the way you lie.

Eminem: Now I know we said things, did things that we didn’t mean
And we fall back into the same patterns, same routine.
But your temper’s just as bad as mine is, you’re the same as me.
But when it comes to love, you’re just as blinded.

Baby, please come back, it wasn’t you, baby, it was me.
Maybe our relationship isn’t as crazy as it seems.
Maybe that’s what happens when a tornado meets a volcano.
All I know is I love you too much to walk away though.

Abuse, especially sexual abuse, presents the victim with a terrible choice. If she (or he) wants to live free of the pain, they must choose not to be alive in some way. She might come to say with Rihanna, “I like the way it hurts. I love the way you lie.” Or he might try to normalize it by saying, with Eminem, “Maybe our relationship isn’t as crazy as it seems.”

No, it is, and you know you are not getting the love you desire. Even though you might choose to kill the part of the soul that feels the pain, the grace of God renders you unable to destroy your own or someone else’s sense of being. But the powerlessness we may have experienced in our family, from an abuser and from our pain has terrible consequences to confront.

One consequence I want to highlight is the self-doubt that results in learned helplessness. Eminem doubts he can change and Rihanna has given up. They are helpless and hopeless. They expect to burn. The goal – a happy family, the end to the abuse, relief from the pain – is out of reach. Their perpetual question is, “Why can’t I make this work?”

I think 500 million people probably resonated with that question. The result of continued, frustrated labor that fails to reach the carrot of love at the end of the stick of an abusive relationship is learned helplessness. We learn to give up before we try because we have learned there is no hope. We are locked in a cell and no one will rescue us. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). We may leave the porch light on, feigning involvement, but no one is home; we never invite someone into our empty soul. We can’t do this completely, of course, the soul keeps popping up to be slain again. But when we try to keep it dead so we can’t experience the pain, we unleash terrible consequences.

What to do when you don’t get what you need from those who should provide it

This happens at a corporate level, too, in whole families and in the church. I want to talk about it as a church. We are a circle of hope that does not always get what we hope for. Lately we have been talking a lot about having a missional culture. I think we have been pushing some pained people to move beyond their learned helplessness. Maybe they have been “on the mission field” a long time and they have not been as successful in meeting their goals as they expected. Maybe they feel, like an abused child usually does, that if they just do better they will make it all right. But the increasingly vocal forces against Jesus have wounded them and the contempt for their powerlessness has made them feel ashamed. They have come to feel that they should not try to influence people at all; if they try, the giant forces against them will be too strong to stand against. They try to tamp down the soul of the church lest they experience it dying. Paul’s words sound like damnation, not inspiration, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Ephesians 6:13).

The solution to the personal powerlessness that deadens one’s soul and the learned helplessness of the disappointed missionary is the same. Jesus and Paul both demonstrate this, if that helps convince you. We need to trade death for life, lose the life in which we are caged in order to find the life outside the cage which Jesus has provided. It will take turning off our fake porch light and walking through the darkness with Jesus until we emerge in abiding hope. We’ll have to forfeit our controlling, self-protective and mistrusting ways and turn to humble dependence on God and passionate involvement with others, which is what I think everyone wants, down in that indomitable soul.

Rihanna and Eminem exploit their pain for profit and unwittingly (I hope) teach their young fans to accept the despair of the powerless as if destruction were just what tornados and volcanos do. Connecting our powerless, pained souls with God is what enables us to stand in an evil day. When we keep connecting, as a church, we don’t end up submitting to the contemptuous forces of the world who teach us we are helpless and tell us we should just shut up and love the way they lie

[Check out Dan Allender’s book The Wounded Heart. It inspired some of what I wrote]

Overcoming the fear of getting out there

The Mission, , ,

Do YOU have something to say? You could be a guest contributor, too. Here is a piece from Howard Pinder struggling with how to make connections when his Christian friends have strict rules of engagement.

I remember the first time I got thrown out of Starbucks for trying to post a “religious” flyer. I was devastated. I thought I was a bold person, but being rejected like that got to me. The employee wasn’t particularly rude but all sorts of feelings rushed to the surface as I awkwardly left, until I was practically in tears on the sidewalk. I was suddenly awash in doubts and thought I might just be too afraid to put myself out there again. I took heart though. My mentor reminded me that evangelism is about looking for people who are looking for Jesus. And they are out there. I had been out there once too.

Lately I have been working on an events team. Hosting events is another way I am trying to put myself “out there.”  Our team has had some good ideas. I loved advertising the “unorthodox art” show we had last Saturday. It’s fun. There are a lot of reasons we’re doing it, but the main reason is because we want people to find out about Circle of Hope and we want them to know Jesus. We’re not screening them at the door for receptivity, but we’re making friends and we’re friends with Jesus. It is a simple connection. At least I think it is obvious. Recently someone questioned my wisdom because I wanted to promote Jesus and Circle of Hope in our own events. They were afraid we’d offend somebody. Their questions offended ME! They’d promote any unorthodox artist in the neighborhood, but don’t let Jesus get in there because promoting him would be offensive.

I explained why I thought we should promote Circle of Hope and Jesus in all of our events in one way or another. My main argument was: “Knowing Jesus and helping others to know Him is the most important thing about life.” My friend told me that my thinking puts me in the minority. (Is that true?) Their main argument was that bringing out Jesus was not being sensitive. They said if I was really conscious of others I would see that dropping Jesus on unsuspecting people was not the best way to express my faith.

Well, I can imagine having a problem between Jesus and people. But why would I predict that? Besides, sometimes when we claim we are being sensitive we are actually being fearful – fearful of being labeled, fearful of rejection, fearful of turning someone away from faith because we are fearful we are just that bad! It’s not like I was suggesting I get on a soapbox and preach condemnation and promise people hell (I’m not even sure where one gets a soapbox, these days!). What’s the problem with being who I am?

I hear a lot of fear when I talk about revealing my faith right out there in public. We have all heard about the stereotypes of Christians causing more harm than good. Maybe we don’t want to be associated with that type of expressing. But I don’t want to live my life as a reaction to misguided Evangelicals, either. I want to live through my relationship with Jesus. My fears run deep, but I want to take heart and overcome them with Jesus, not just get run around by them. I want to act out of a deep assurance that I am safe, and out of my new security in the fact that I will spend eternal life with God. What could make us afraid after knowing that?

Let me be clear here. I’m not saying, “Let’s get out there and see how many people we can  coerce into being a Christian!” I’m talking about speaking freely about the truth of Jesus as it has been revealed to us.  How does your relationship with Jesus make a difference in your life? What, exactly, are you protecting people from by never talking about that? Do you really love the people you claim you are being sensitive to if you aren’t willing to tell them the truth?

Maybe my experiences are a big anomaly; maybe they aren’t indicative of the state of your faith. But what do you think? I think we’re too afraid to get out there. I’m afraid, too. I don’t want to condemn anyone who is digging in their heels, since I suppose there are more reasons than I could imagine for that behavior. But I do feel held back when you hold back. I feel out on the limb when you tell me I shouldn’t get out there. I think we need to confront this compulsive fear in ourselves.

Jesus does not condemn us for messing up his mission. When I came to Jesus after feeling like a failure outside Starbucks, he was tender with me. I felt like He took my hand and said, “All will be well if you keep following me.” That’s the Jesus I want to show people. I feel compelled to get out there and show them. I echo Paul when he says that he must express what he’s received and express it boldly. We are all grappling with this in our own way. When, in our grappling, we tamp down someone else’s enthusiasm, we might be acting out of fear and blocking Jesus’ mission. The only way through our fears is to get out there, with Jesus right beside us.

These older posts might interest you, too:

Getting Out There in the Face of Fear http://rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/getting-out-there/

Henry Tanner Lets Jesus into PAFA: http://rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/henry-tanner-lets-jesus-into-pafa/

Winning the Right to Be Heard: http://rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/winning-the-right-to-be-heard/

David Bazan and the Dialogue about Lost Faith

Music, The Mission, , ,

About the time Circle of Hope got going, a group named Pedro the Lion started becoming popular. It was the brainchild of David Bazan, the son of a Pentecostal worship leader who brought a down-to-earth Seattle vibe to his music and didn’t mind being a Christian who talked about issues of justice and issues of doubt.

Pedro+the+LionSince nothing ever disappears from the internet (even if we can’t remember that long ago!), we can still see what Bazan was saying about faith and art back in the early days of Pedro the Lion. He said that his faith naturally permeated his music because it is an extension of who he is. “Anyone with a strong, sincere belief in something shouldn’t treat it lightly. It seems I’m always being called upon to boil down my faith for interviews. Defining it should be done with great care.” [Want to see the whole interview?]

Becoming a Christian rocker who makes a living finding ways to make holy scripture fit alongside gnarly power chords was NOT what Bazan wanted to do. He thought that ”the basic act of being creative glorifies God.” Christian rock “turns the music and the message into crap. The message is degraded when it’s made into slogans and low-level propaganda. They’re attempting to reach a certain audience just like advertisers do — and that, ultimately, degrades the art.”

A more pure model, he said, would be to try to express yourself artistically, as honestly and sincerely as possible. But  “It would be naïve to think you could steer clear of the forces of money and acceptance. To ignore it is to let it rule you. You can only control it if you openly address it.”

He was a sincere, intense twentysomething. He was leading the way into a faith that was not just a slogan or a straitjacket. Now he is leading people into his own agnosticism. Pedro the Lion broke up mainly because of Bazan’s drinking and inconsistency, it seems. But now he has  righted the ship and is writing and performing provocative songs in his own name.

david bazanBazan earned religion and philosophy credits from a Christian college and that pursuit started his journey into analyzing everything he could get his mind around. Curse Your Branches chronicled his struggle with faith, and the resulting spiral that came with uprooting his foundation. He did not claim a sudden disbelief, but he did not let any metaphysical question avoid his analysis, either. As more people heard his musical autobiography, he found out just how many others were asking the same questions he was asking.

A newer album, Strange Negotiations, shows that the religious roots are still visibly dissolving. He  addresses his current reality with brutal honesty. He has abandoned his faithful stability. But, reportedly, his wife, parents, and some of his friends still pray for him. One of the songs on the album, “Virginia,” reflects his shaky roots [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMzqRHFjcbo]. He muses about a friend who died very young:

We were worried about your personal salvation.
Was it heaven or hell that you saw when your eyes closed?
You smiled at us floating high above the question
Like you knew something we didn’t know.

He says Negotiations  is about the “frustration that comes from realizing the refusal to participate in the mass delusion while not dismissing the deluded is the only way forward… I think people are starting to take more seriously the discrepancies in their faith. I think we’ll all be better off for that.” [Want to read the whole interview?]

I find Bazan’s journey fascinating because I have travelled it with his peers since they first loved Pedro the Lion. Now they are part of the dialogue about the loss they feel about their dissolving faith. They care about their Evangelical or Catholic relatives and friends, but they can’t stand going into the church and experiencing the cognitive dissonance. They slowly take on the new religions of the day, based on Eastern thought or generated by one of the many denominations of psychotherapy. They graze for the solidity of organic food and experiment with the relevance of occupying something. Mostly they wonder about themselves and express their wondering.

It is challenging to be tagged as part of the old church they have left behind. I can safely say that I never adopted the Christianity Bazan rejected, so I think I can relate to his conviction. But I can also say that I met Jesus, whose smile I experience as much more than the smirk of a lost friend.

Other relevant posts:

What if I Don’t Feel God Anymore? Sep 2012
The Tantric Propaganda in Green Lantern and Elsewhere Sep 2011
Good Questions About Jesus Jul 2010

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