The miracle of ‘God finally makes sense’ after disaster’s struck

It’s a human default to get the cart before the horse, and though it’s never God’s way to make such an error, for us it’s a matter of course.  The only saving grace is that it’s common to humanity.

Here’s a stereotypical situation: you evangelise people ‘into the kingdom’, only for them, at times, to realise that it is nothing like what was promised.  It’s not all upside!  (More of human effort of bright lights and smoke machines than of the transforming Spirit of God revealed in a real time set of experiences.)  Suddenly life gets tougher than they ever imagined, and this person who was recently converted begins to think that God and our faith is fake.  “It doesn’t work!” is their response.

Little do they realise that, at this moment,
when life becomes insanely hard,
is where the tyres of our faith really hit the road.

If we live long enough and are open-minded enough, we will find that everything about life comes back to God.  Though many people despise this idea, there are just too many big issues in life that cannot be explained otherwise.  So it is a great thing to accept.  We, in our bodies, are here for only a little time and then we are gone.  Now is the time to discover that God is the answer; but we reach out curiously only when every other scaffold-of-reliance is ripped away from us.

I think God only makes sense in the more complete way when we face problems and issues that are far too big for us to rationalise, accept, or even process.  It is counterintuitive to contemplate that life must break us before most of us are ready to say, “Okay, God, enough of me; whatever you want from now on — that’s got to be infinitely better!”

It’s when we are confounded for response, and we lurch from one bad reaction to another, that we finally find we have no other way through but through the ways of God.

God is ever patient through this process, allowing our bumbling half-efforts of obedience.  We never feel judged by God in this process, and never are we condemned, even though we will judge and condemn ourselves, and if we aren’t watchful, we may be deceived to think our judging and condemning ourselves is God — it is not!

Just at the point in our lives when we cannot make sense of anything is when God begins to make the most sense to us.

We may read these words not having experienced any such a calamitous situation; perhaps we’ve never had that circumstance that we could not extract ourselves from.

Realising that this possibility is true, that calamity is possible for us too, yet in not having experienced it, we may fear the very idea of being crushed beyond our own strength to recover from.

But the fact is God is the safety net, if only we don’t despise God because of it, or run in any manner of denial away from God into the clutches of a million worldly distractions.

We must engage in the third way which is to make peace with ourselves and God knowing that God endeavours to make peace with us.  Indeed, finally we realise the depth and gravity that, in Jesus, God has made peace with us, and we’re just a little late getting to the party.

Hardly ever do we realise when our world has caved in and our hope has disappeared and all the purpose from our life has been sucked out of us, that this is the way to life, that God’s mercy has opened the narrow gateway to us, even though it feels like everything has closed down.

Never would we have ever considered that the worst thing that could happen to us in life could actually become the catalyst for the best thing ever — truer knowledge of the operational power of God in our suffering.  If only we respond the right way, which is faith, and time and time again, which is faithfulness.

The right response is actually easier than we could ever imagine, but it does require an enormous amount of humility, which is possible for any of us, one day at a time, to not endeavour to fight our way out of things, and to resist the temptation to flee.

The truer knowledge of the power of God — the experience of it as a real phenomenon working in our lives — comes only when all our own resources become futile and our strength has failed.  But it’s not just that; out of a required paucity of spirit, when we finally debunked our wilfulness, comes the wisdom to deploy the resources we had inside us all along, with power, through God.

Of course, there’s a process of time involved in all this, because God won’t/can’t lift us out of our circumstances, but God will certainly refine us through our calamities, as we learn new ways of responding through a dependence that is easier — for God is all we have left.

None of this is saying it’s easy to do.  It will be the hardest thing you ever do.  But not only is it possible, you will come to realise, you were born and made for a time like this.

Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz on Unsplash

Prayer for the deep reach of God’s hand in a most desperate struggle

A prayer you pray
for when you don’t sense God
but know by faith
He’s not far away...

O God at my depths, when and as I fall still in descent to the caverns of a most desperate spiritual plight, sensing You have abandoned me, show me more so, that You trust me to work my way back to You.

Even as my flesh battles with the Spirit in me, and I am tempted to run in the opposite direction away from You, make me to see that in seeing my flesh, I am seeing with the eyes of the Spirit.  Help me to dispel the condemning voice of the enemy and embrace the quietude of soul that can come only from You.

O unchanging and unfathomable God, remind me of the portent of your grace, that in not rescuing me from my most desperate circumstance, I could know that You trust me to rely on this truth: “For My grace is sufficient for you, and My power is made perfect in your weakness.”  That grace that was made right for the circumstances that threaten to overwhelm me, that only as I trust it, do I overcome.

How is it, O Lord, that you hem me in, and hold me, safe and protected it seems, within the painful truth, so much so that as I endure it, I grow?  Protect me from my flesh, Father of the heavenly lights, that I might both see the works of your Spirit as they endeavour to work deep within me to transform my licentiousness into purity that pleases You and not come to despise this process of becoming disciplined.

God of my creation and redemption, Author and Perfecter of the faith I have given my allegiance to, help me to see the deep and faithful reach of Your hand, as you work in me, and make me to not resist You.  Even if I languish, let it be known to me that my languishing is serving my present and future good, even as I look forward to entering the promised land You have provided for me.

As You hold me close to Yourself, even in situations that I in my flesh find diabolical, help me to continue to trust You, that in being humble in my weakness I can exemplify Your strength.  Help me to see this is the epitome of trust: to resist fighting and fleeing when the going gets tough, and to hold to Your goodness, even as the enemy tries to deceive me that it is darkness.  Hold me deep in this truth, that You mean me no harm and only good, all the days of my life.

I ask these things in the gracious and loving name of Jesus.

AMEN.

This prayer was written to channel a most dear but not so near client.  Of course, the travail expressed in this prayer is quite a common one and one I’ve regularly faced.  Just not what I’m experiencing now.  It is provided for the reader who needs it most today.

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash

COVID’s long tail and the unfolding mental health tsunami

I have read several articles recently that talk about the infamous COVID-19 long tail.  There are various accounts of people, having contracted the virus, who have had extended spells of convalescence — many aren’t out of the woods yet.  Prolonged fatigue is a common feature, a very heavy and felt achy body, as well as fever that can go on for weeks if not months.  Perhaps the scariest thing about COVID-19 is how little we still know about it — none of us had any idea really even six months ago.  With vaccines a year away at least, and with little confidence in their efficacious deployment (e.g. anti-vaxxers, non-availability in non-democratic regimes, among myriads of other issues) it can feel like a pretty hopeless situation.  More than ever, our global society desperately needs leadership.

There are many factors in this present season that are identifiable as tips of the iceberg, which just goes to suggest that there must be a plethora of issues that don’t see the light of day, including some of those things we’ll read about in years and decades to come.  We know how much of a concern mental health is in any day, and yet in this new day of COVID-19, we really do stare at the wall of water heading our way, which is the cusp of the unfolding mental health tsunami.  The frightening thing is none of us knows who and how we’ll be enveloped within it as it approaches with light speed — us, deer in headlights — to carry us with it away on a torrent that will continue rushing (as tsunamis do) seemingly indefinitely.  And it may be terrifying to not know where we will end up.  And the tsunami won’t discriminate to only those who are infected — that’s merely a tip of the iceberg issue.

This unfolding mental health tsunami is frighteningly obvious, and it is a calamitous warning for all who would hear.  I think of the words of wisdom in Proverbs 1:20–33.  Now is not the time to be complacent.  Now is not the time to deny the present health emergency that is nestled within the overall triple-whammy economic, social and medical emergency.  Now is the time to prepare to be armed with the knowledge of care that may be deployed for the self in the first instance, and then to our neighbour because they will need us.  If we have not first looked after ourselves, we will be useless, indeed a burden, in looking after others.

More true pastors will be needed than ever before.  Pastors not simply by name or title, but pastors by character to the sinews of their being.  Pastors, women and men, willing to serve their Lord in providing the safest pasture for anyone in the sheepfold that would call past for the sanctuary of care.  Pastors of an authentic Jesus ministry who will unequivocally commit themselves to the safety of every last one.  Pastors who will diligently give themselves over to God in the fashion of a care that covets self-health, as much as they can reasonably afford to procure it, much so they as Christian soldiers may be ready for action at the shortest notice.

Just as COVID-19 can have a long tail, in that it afflicts us only to linger for much longer than a normal flu would, this time of struggle in the first and second waves of the virus is merely a foretaste of what is to come in terms of whole society’s mental health burden.  Many people’s mental health is being shaped right now (especially those health and other frontline workers who are working to exhaustion), and there will be a latent lagging affect with spin-offs into addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, trauma, abuses, etc.  Cause can be indissoluble from effect.  Pastoral care in the heat of battle, and well beyond it, is essential.

Historically, certain seasonal aberrations have gone on to affect whole cohorts of people — for years and even decades.  What we have right now is a global aberration that will make an entire season look like a moment.  The proportions are absolutely incredible and were frighteningly unanticipated.  None of us would’ve picked this war, and yet this invisible enemy has picked us out.  And yet, as believers we must hold to the ideal that we’ve been brought to this situation for such a time as this.  Perhaps we even have a prophetic sense that this is our time to actually be the church.

I know the church globally is desperately seeking the Kingdom purpose in this hour.  What truly does Jesus desire from us or have for us to do in this present diabolical situation?  How are we to be the church when the rug of the church is being pulled from under us?  With this mental health tsunami looming, every pastor I know senses an opportunity to minister, and yet the opportunities seem too nebulous and too large to contemplate.  We are human capacitors ready to serve, fully charged and ready to go, and yet we don’t know how to tap into the opportunities right in front of us.  We may pray, “God use me/us in this situation, for Your glory, according to Your will,” but we may be more than a little confounded in not hearing the direction of the divine leading.

That is okay.  Our job right now is to prepare and to be ready for the unique calling God has for us as individual people, pastors and carers, willing to serve the struggling, to sit with the mourning, to hold the weary, to give practical assistance to those in need.

It’s okay if we feel out of our depth.  If we don’t feel out of our depth, we will be robbing those we serve by thinking we’re the power of Jesus ourselves.  No, it would be better to lead through bearing about in our bodies the lament that Jesus would have in ministering to the distressed, by relying on the Holy Spirit, not imagining we have the inside running on the will of God.  We cannot pretend that we know what is happening, but we can serve the best we can right now, and God blesses that very work of our hands.

Photo by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash

When battling for the strength to go on

Suffering and silence seem to go hand-in-hand.  Chances are if you are suffering right now, you are doing so in such silence of isolation there is little hope of help.  We often feel hamstrung to reach out, because we don’t want to be a burden, or we don’t feel we can, or there isn’t the help available, or thought of any interaction is just the most lamentable thought.  There are so many reasons why we suffer in silence.  At least as we suffer in silence, we have permission to suffer as we would like to suffer.  Strange is that might seem to read.

When we are battling for the strength to go on, somehow we need the voice of inner wisdom to kick in and tell us things like, “It’s okay, this too shall pass,” and, “Be gentle with yourself... remember, you can get through this one day at a time.”

But we are likelier to be hard on ourselves and to think that what we’re experiencing will either never end or feel that the present moment is untenable.  These are incredibly real feelings that can only be overcome through a mind that calms the heart; that causes us to sit and be with oneself.  But I have to say, this can feel impossible to do.

As we attempt to do that, as we attend to ourselves, because frankly we have little or no energy left to do anything else, we might notice what’s going on not only in our minds, and what we are feeling, and very importantly what is going on in our bodies.  Of course, it can be very disconcerting, especially as we realise what we are feeling.  But being present with and for ourselves is what can genuinely get us through such a dark time.

There is probably no substitute for support at times when we are battling for the strength to go on, but I’m not presuming here that you’re in the place to reach out.  Reaching out in these circumstances, however, really is a step of faith, and rarely do such steps backfire if we can find a trusted, safe friend to sit with us, who will listen and kindly not try and fix us.

Please know that whatever you’re feeling is not something you should feel guilty or ashamed about.  To desperately want to be relieved of the pain is normal.  To want to be done with the pain is normal.  To you want to escape is also normal.  What is also normal is the inner desire to get to a place where life and hope and joy and peace can begin again.  If you keep stepping, one day at a time, one moment at a time, and stay safe, this grief, too, shall pass.

If you feel you need to reach out, here are international helplines: https://checkpointorg.com/global/

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

A COVID-19 prayer for such a time as this

Dear Heavenly Father

We come before You and acknowledge our need of You more now than ever, because of the changes that have come so rapidly into our lives, changes that have swept through, and continue to, for such an indefinite time as is.

We pray for those who are ill and vulnerable,
for the dying and those who grieve,
merciful God, be with each one we plead.

Even though we may feel out of control,
we know that You are in control,
so, please, remind us of this fact.

Even though we may battle with fear,
we know that in You, faith is the way,
give us strength enough to keep running our race.

Even though we may feel we can’t keep up with the changes,
changes that make us nauseous and unsettled and anxious, 
we know peace is in You, even as You invite us to be still
(Ex. 14:14; Ps. 46:10).

Even though our livelihoods are threatened or shattered,
we know You are our security, so please, make for provision,
show us how You never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5-6).

For those stuck at home, we ask Your presence in their lives,
and even though we see others struggle when we may not
we ask that You relieve violence in homes where some have had enough.

Some are busier than ever, especially our health care workers
in all sectors, our police, and so many others;
we ask that You sustain and protect them.

Lord, we especially pray in the uncertainty of this virus,
not knowing truly how far vaccines are away,
not knowing how bad the lingering effects of the virus are,
that You would give us an extra portion of faith and peace,
and that You would cause us to pray for scientists everywhere.

We pray for our government, leaders and their advisors; give them energy, their hourly sustenance, clarity of thought, compassion, wisdom; now and in the days and months ahead.

In Jesus’ powerful and merciful name we pray, AMEN.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Gravest fears are mental health impacts amid COVID-19

For the main part, Australia has fared well in terms of managing COVID-19, but the recent flareups in Melbourne highlight the gravest fears for violence within homes amid those 3,000 who will be locked down, effectively under police guard, for five full days.  It’s easy for someone to say, it’s not like any concentration camp, but comparing contexts nearly a century apart is hardly helpful.

For starters, many of the mental health ills we face today are an echo of the trauma faced in those earlier and later 20th century times.  Think about it.  Those who were traumatised in Vietnam, the Second World War and the First World War brought back trauma that would go on to affect 30 innocent lives per traumatised life on average (Source: Dr. Bessel van der Kolk cites this statistic in this talk on trauma).

War traumatises people.  Trauma begets trauma, and these days, everywhere you go, there are traumatised individuals (or individuals brought up by the traumatised) — sons, grandsons and great grandsons, daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters — who are either potential powder kegs needing only pressurisation to completely come undone or deer in headlights primed to freeze or flight.  Trauma is not the traumatised person’s fault.  But unremitted trauma does have the spin-off affect into others’ lives.  And so few people who are genuinely traumatised become authentically recovered.  It should make us so much more compassionate toward all humanity for the unspeakable atrocities that any of us may have experienced that might explain the trauma and the mental ill-health.

We live in a time where there is very much more trauma carried about in people’s bodies than we care to understand or recognise.  It has a massive impact on mental health.  And the traumatised bleed their trauma over those who are about to be traumatised.  We are living in a time where much trauma is occurring right now.  It’s happening in the homes that are locked down.  It’s happening in communities everywhere, and one of its most poignant evidences is the visibility of aggression in conflict which is occurring everywhere in much more complicated scenarios than usual — it is wartime after all.  The presence of cataclysmically unsafe environments where these are played out akin to Hunger Games level violence provides fodder for trauma to re-double for trauma.  Small people and young people, men and women, alike, are at risk, of being harmed and of causing harm.  This is both the cause and effect of serious, long-lasting and interminable mental health concerns.

These mental health concerns are not making the front pages because there is more acutely immediate and controversial news to report; the world is gasping right now with such unbelievable news every day.  What might compete with COVID-19, news wise, is just as sensational and anxiety invoking.  But the silent assassin of COVID-19 is the abysmal mental health of many, many people who are not getting, or reaching out for, the support they need.  Many within families are suffering silently, because there is far more noise about the coronavirus at present, and because there is so much suffering, and so many people are in the same boat.  This may seem like very depressing news, but we must face what is coming from what is here already, even if what is here already is not being widely reported.  We must not be surprised when we hear of horrors.  This is wartime, and it should not come as any surprise that few prisoners will have been taken.  So many will be affected and are now being affected.  We must also take stock of how these traumas make us feel, and how even reading about it can be traumatic.

Those who are under imminent attack, who survive on a wing and a prayer, who don’t know how safe they will be in five minutes let alone tomorrow, need our prayers and our preparedness.  They need our awareness, and they need our empathy.  There are the poor in many regions of the world who are not only going without food, shelter and clothing, but they are crammed without any masks or other protections against the coronavirus in place.  The majority of these are numbered among the most vulnerable.  And they are dying at astounding rates.  Family members and others who watch on, as in wartime, are witnessing the trauma unfold in real time.  It may not be that dissimilar to atrocities like the Rwandan genocides, because all people deserve the protections that many Westerners take for granted.

As a church we wonder what our mission is right now, and there are so many Christians trying to press into what God might be convicting them in their hearts to do.  If ever there was a cause for social justice, it is right now; where children, women, and men are under immense attack, and where the least of these are rising to the surface of need, if only we could notice them.  Their screams may be silent, but they are also deafening.

Sometimes we seem so far away from the real harm, but the mental ill-health deluge is happening before our eyes, in every place on earth.  And then there are our own lives.  How many of us if we were truthful can say we have come through this unscathed?  Almost no one can, because we are still so far from the end of it.  We would hardly want to contemplate a massive natural disaster like a huge tsunami, inferno, flood or hurricane occurring right now, but the odds are just the same as at any time in history.  Added to the hundreds of thousands who are ill or who have died, there could easily be the same number through a sizeable natural disaster if it should strike right now.  And yet, in Australia at least, the January/February 2020 fires — enormous in scale of loss — are not that far back from memory!

The flow on effect of all of this, of the chronic descent of the world right now, is inevitably the catastrophic effects on mental health to every corner of the world.  We are living in such times of emergency that we must be diligent to pray and to seek to do all we can to assist and take care of ourselves and our loved ones.

What can be done Christian soldier, but to face the fact that we were born for times as these.  To pray. To act if and when we can.  To give refuge.  To give drinks of water, listening ears, mouthfuls of food, a coat for backs, smiles of kindness, and any other good deed that might make a shred of difference.

It’s times like these, times where we may read, “break glass in times of war,” that we may emerge.  And if we are battling with our mental health, it is incumbent on us to get the support we need, to recover as quickly as we can, because there is a fight for the Kingdom at hand.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

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The wisdom of spiritual progress VS the folly of spiritual perfection

The sages of AA say, “We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection,” knowing that the former leads to a sustainable and achievable spirituality, while the latter leads to a path of inward destruction because it demands a masquerade.  The former has indelible beneficence; the latter always produces harm.

Recently I had someone confess that they were truly afraid that they could never achieve perfection, feeling that the authentic Christian life would be unattainable, and that people would be able to see straight through them.  I responded by saying that I’m incredibly sad when I hear non-Christians say that they can’t be Christian until they are good enough.  Then I said, “I have to tell you that I’m not good enough.  But can I also say that accepting I’m not good enough has been central to living free in Christ.  This is the authentic Christian life.”

The irony is that only when we accept
that we aren’t good enough — that we’ll NEVER be perfect
can we ever be ‘good’ Christians.

THE FOLLY OF STRIVING FOR SPIRITUAL PERFECTION

Spiritual perfection is unattainable, and anyone who believes that it is attainable has been deceived by the enemy of God.  Only the devil wants us to believe that we can become as perfect as Jesus was and is.  Christian faith is nothing about this kind of achievement.  Indeed, Christian faith is quite the opposite; it is believing upon the only perfect Lamb of God as the One who saves us.  If we could be perfect, we’d not need saving.  And no matter how long we are Christian we continue to need saving.  It’s called surrendering to God.

We are saved from perfection; we are saved because we are sinners.  We don’t stop being sinners the moment we become Christian.  The moment we become Christian is the moment we accept we are sinners needing saving.  We spend the rest of our lives striving to live more like Jesus through the very act of being honest when we sin.

Whenever we pretend to be spiritually perfect (because it is not an endpoint any of us reach even for a moment) God’s Spirit departs, and instantly we find yet again — if only we’re honest — we are working in our own strength, which is spiritual futility.  If ever we want an exercise in frustration, we only need to work in our own strength for a relatively prolonged period.

Whilst there are definitely periods of enormous spiritual contentment for those genuinely committed to Christ, imperfection is our default characterisation.  Only when we accept this do we thrive.  Only when we accept this can we be real with other people, and even as we are real with them, we give them permission to be real with us.  Do you realise how precious this authenticity between human beings is?  It’s what the church is called to be. 

SPIRITUAL PROGRESS IS THE WISE GOAL

One of the hardest things to do in the human life is to live honestly before others and God.  But if we live honestly, every single one of us will feel like we are falling short.  Yet, to fall short, and to be honest before God and others about it, is as close to spiritual perfection as we’ll ever get.  See the paradox in that?

In Christian terms, we get closer to God when we are most abundantly aware of the massive chasm between a holy God and the mortal, fallible creatures we are.  And yet, God has reached down in and through Jesus to pluck us out of eternal obscurity, to give us a home, and to reconnect us with the God of our creation.

Spiritual progress is about routinely coming to the end of ourselves in order that the power of God can work in us on a process that will not be complete until we make the journey into eternity.  God cannot work in a vessel that is filled or even half-full of itself.  God only works in an empty vessel.  Spiritual progress, therefore, can only begin when we stop working in our own strength and admit we can’t do this life without God.

The best news about spiritual progress is that we don’t need to pretend to be better than who we are.  We don’t need to be another (or better) version of someone else.  We don’t need to masquerade.  Indeed, to masquerade or to try and be another version of someone else or to pretend to be better than who we are is to completely miss the point of what God intends to do in and through us.

Our journey with God has much less to do with what we contribute than we often think.

Actually, the more we get out of our own way, the more we will find that God will do works in us that we never could by ourselves.  This is spiritual progress and, all credit to God, it is beautiful to watch.

Photo by Liane Metzler on Unsplash

5 shapes of wrong Christian faith

Occasionally I’m reminded of the mythic attitudes of draconian Christians who make outrageous statements like, “You don’t pray enough,” or “women can’t preach,” or “You can’t wear those clothes here,” or “Some people are ‘more equal’ than others,” and “antidepressants are of the devil.”  I mean, where do such relationally divisive attitudes come from?  And when I say “mythic,” I really mean, we hear of these attitudes, but rarely do I personally encounter them.  But very many covet these attitudes deeper down, which is why these attitudes don’t always appear so prevalently.

1.             “You don’t pray enough” – who does?  Genuine faith is not about how much we pray, but prayer is still a great indicator of how healthy our faith is.  When someone says, “You don’t pray enough,” they are boiling down your problem to something you have caused, when realistically there are always a myriad of potential reasons our faith may be struggling.  Grief is just one tremendously valid reason.  Surely when we hone in on one thing to the exclusion of all the others we miss the others; we miss the greater portion of truth; we miss the mark, and yes, we sin.

2.             “Women can’t preach,” a person says.  What, not even the woman who preaches like Rachel Held Evans  (1981–2019) or Barbara Brown Taylor or Dr Brenda Salter McNeil?  What does different anatomy have to do with the doing of a particular task?  It just seems so nonsensical when there are many voices, male and female, who God made to be heard.  Surely we set ourselves up to miss out when we exclude 50% of the population, cart blanche.  We should’ve learned long ago that blanket rules really don’t work in every situation (or even most situations).

3.             “You can’t wear those clothes here.”  Of course, we are not talking about someone walking into church wearing only lingerie or a thong.  It’s like me toying with the idea of going shopping in my pyjamas — (which I would love to do one day).  That’s not what we’re talking about.  We are talking about the finer points of special even unspoken rules that are made to exclude people based purely out of what they wear or don’t wear or how they wear it.  Nit-picking like this is unbecoming.  But it’s the same issue if you insist people wear a particular thing to make them look more cool.  Skinny jeans and Converse shoes.  The latest hairstyle.  Hats.  “Put a little make up on...” or, “No you don’t!”  There are so many extraneous things that aren’t worth talking about.  They take the focus off the more important things.  The more important things are about spiritual life and death, releasing people from oppression of spirit, social justice, the least of these.

4.             “Some people are ‘more equal’ than others,” is said beneath the veneer of a lot of humanity, and it is birthed in dangerous ignorance and paucity of empathy.  You get a lot of this in racial discrimination where white privilege really is a thing.  When any human being sees itself as superior to another human being that human being is its own god.  He or she is blind, entrapped in the most heinous disability — the inability to love their neighbour.  There are many who say they are followers of Jesus who think like this, and perhaps this is one example where Jesus might say in the end, “Get away from me you evildoers” (see Matthew 7:15-20).  Of course, the same may be said about those who reject people on account of their same-sex attraction, bi-sexuality, transgenderism, and their lifestyles to these ends, etc.  The bigoted are captive to their own spiritual self-elevation.

5.             “Antidepressants are of the devil.”  Like the above statements, these are not only silly statements, they are downright dangerous.  You mean to say that your spiritual opinion is more important than a medical practitioner’s — one who has given 7-10 years of their life to the study of objective medical science?  Who owns more truth on this particular stage?  I’m going with the physician, the doctor who has the greater portion of society’s trust.  Here, we can attest that God owns all the truth, all the wisdom, even the secular wisdom.  God owns the science.  The science vindicates the truth that we’re biochemical machines who very easily go out of balance.  To say such a broad sweeping statement, that certain pharmaceutical preparations are evil, is tantamount to absurdity.  Such beliefs are fit for conspiracy theorists, not doctors of the church.  I praise the Lord for the many pastors and leaders in the church who have partaken of these pharmaceutical preparations and are advocates for the therapy they give.

A misshapen, sincere faith is infinitely better than a slick BS gospel

The church can often feel uncomfortable about its own reputation.  In our craven desire to be contemporary, we can easily give up the eternal gift we have to give in the name of the Lord for a pot of lentil soup.

Controversial Lutheran minister, Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “You have to be really deeply rooted in tradition in order to innovate with integrity.”  Did you hear Bolz-Weber there?  

Two things in tension: tradition with innovation.  Tradition without innovation seems tired, and we know that not all church traditions are healthy traditions.  So traditions need to be challenged.  And innovation without tradition seems tacky and plastic.  People see right through it.  Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) herself said, when talking about how inauthentic consumerism is in the church, and how much of a turn-off it really is, “... we have very finely tuned BS meters, right? ... We are not looking for a hipper Christianity; we are looking for a truer Christianity.”

Our faith must lead us to what Barbara Brown Taylor would say, “a certainty with great big cracks in it.”  The ignorance must continue to fall away in all of us.  The only viable certainty is truth, and that quest is inevitably elusive unless, by intention, we look relentlessly for where we’re wrong.  Only when we are open to the lies we covet ourselves, within the cloak of pride that keeps us insulated from the coldness of the truth, will Jesus open our mind’s eye to the truth.  Anything less is not good enough for Jesus.  Gee, doesn’t that sound like legalism?  But note this: it is not legalism if it’s about moral doing versus just doing.  Jesus seeks to transform us morally; to make us vessels where the living God inhabits, purging us from being mere activity creatures.  There is no piety in activity, but only in asceticism — quite literally activity’s opposite.  And yet we cannot build God’s kingdom without some highly focused activity.  We will find we are doing the work of building God’s kingdom through the very things that Jesus transforms us through.

We will meet and encounter the authentic Jesus where two or three are gathered in his name, where we serve the least of these, where we congregate with the maimed and depressed, with those who genuinely comprise the ripe fields for the plucking; those who know they need Jesus.  They are out there!  We were.

Let us trust Jesus as we embark on a journey into our world that suffers for the lack of Jesus, who, would only prosper for the gentle touch of his Spirit through those of us who would embody him within our skin.  All we need to remember is that we touch lives in Jesus name one life at a time.  Let us reject every thought that we need to build massive churches.  To be part of one miracle in one’s lifetime is enough, and yet do we think that God will stop at just one miracle?  No, God will give us many more opportunities, if only it isn’t a massive church or Twitter following we’re seeking to build, or books to author, or doctorates achieved, or litany of speaking engagements and other accomplishments that we have done.  We must all learn to embody the life of John the Baptist, who strived to become lesser so Jesus could be greater.

Let’s become lesser together, so Jesus can be greater in our midst.  Let’s become unknown so Jesus can be famous.  And let’s not get hung up on extraneous issues that lead people away from the Kingdom and not into it.

Transformation awaits even as we’re tempted to settle for a faker faith that will only set us apart from God’s work.  It’s one or the other.  We cannot have both.

Transformation awaits those of us who are open and more fully engaged in following Jesus.  There is a chasm between those who believe in Jesus and those who follow Jesus.  Those who follow Jesus are not afraid to lose what they cannot keep in order to gain what they cannot lose, to use the famed Jim Eliot (1927–1956) phrase.  We must learn to spend our lives for the sake of Jesus alone.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

The only wise way of responding to suffering

If there is any time in the history of our lives to respond as God would have us respond, it is now.  Never before in our lifetimes have we seen such universal ambiguity, financial upheaval and concern for physical welfare.  The world is changing before our eyes.  The new normal isn’t a static destination we have arrived at yet.  Indeed, the new normal is a state of constant flux.  The burgeoning, now ever-present ambiguity leaves us feeling hypervigilant in our vulnerability.  With our backs against the wall, even more than ever are we counselled to trust God.  There is no other way to succeed.

I have found myself situated in Hebrews chapter 12 for the past six months; before COVID.  Perhaps it was prophetic direction, or perhaps I just needed it anyway.  The wisdom in this chapter is the word for today, because today we are faced with a suffering that is neither directly nor indirectly caused by our own negligence.  We are exhorted in verse 7 to “endure trials as divine discipline.”

We far too easily resent being placed in situations and circumstances that are unfair.  Of course, this is our human nature, and we have all fallen into this temptation.  You may well ask, “How on earth is anything that isn’t my fault a form of ‘divine discipline’?”  It’s a good question to take up with God one day, but in the meantime, we can be comforted in the knowledge that God won’t waste the suffering we accept as a mystery, being children of God.  Accepting any suffering that we endure on account of it being the situation and circumstances we have been placed in is accepting a mystery, and it can only be done in humility.  Indeed, we can see here that God has engineered the choice: be humble or fall; be humble and find our way through the suffering; be humble and grow.

See how pride causes us to sin in response to the suffering we are called to endure, even as we didn’t cause the suffering?  If we didn’t cause our suffering, if we didn’t sin in it coming about, then why are we responding through a response that causes us to suffer more?  Of course, it is understandable to not be at peace in these times.  To experience the fullness of grief outbound of loss in faith that it won’t kill us.  Not being at peace is the invitation to work through the period of privation patiently — “accepting hardship as the pathway to peace,” as the long form of the Serenity Prayer has it — in faith that through our eventual resilient response we will grow through this divine discipline — which is training, not a beating.

Such a discipline isn’t necessarily about receiving a rod across our back as chastisement, but it is more so the discipline of training.  When we haven’t caused our suffering, we’re not being disciplined, but by responding humbly we’re becoming disciplined.  See the difference?  The suffering that we endure is a conditioning for now and the future, and what it is teaching us is and will be indispensable for now and for the times ahead.  Like Job, when we suffer innocently, we’re being refined through the hardship because humility causes growth.  You read that right: a suffering we did not cause sets up the opportunity for growth when we humbly accept the suffering as if we did cause it.  There is no surer way to entreat the Lord’s blessing.

See how we can “consider it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds” per James 1:2-4?  We can’t grow otherwise.  Of course, this is not to say we can ever glory in our hardships.  They will be hard!  Harder than we can ever contemplate.  So hard they will break us... many times.  Yet, God raises us.  Nothing can defeat us when we suffer humbly overall.

The only sensible lens through which to view suffering right now, or at any very difficult time, is through the lens of discipline.  Not through the lens of discipline for being naughty, but through the lens of discipline for training.  Suffering with endurance has the goal of teaching us faith.  It is designed to strengthen us further.

There are two temptations, below, to be wary of in responding through either pride or despair:

“Do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, [pride]
and do not lose heart by it either, [despair]
because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, [we do well to know God loves us that much!]
and God corrects everyone our Lord embraces.”  (Hebrews 12:5b-6)

If only we can keep a straight gaze and stick to the narrow way through these tremulous times — whatever cross we’re called to bear — we will avoid the slippery slope of falling away to the sides of “damn you, God!” or, “This isn’t happening,” or, “God, I’m too stunned to go on.”

Base Photo (not words) by Parsing Eye on Unsplash