Less is more

Why are we always unsatisfied? We, well maybe just me, are always unhappy with our lives. We want a better girlfriend/boyfriend, we want better pay, a better car, a better relationship with God, a better house, and the list goes on. I blame this on our culture. Our culture, and this is the understatement of the century, is quite materialistic. When did the American dream turn from work hard and you can have a good life to make as much money as possible so you can buy everything you want thus ensuring happiness? This attitude has spread into religion as well. People say things like, " I want to have a deeper relationship with God. I want more out of my spiritual life. I want more of Jesus and less of me." Now these statements sound awesome, very spiritual, but are actually as vapid and superficial as a Rob Schneider movie. It sounds good to say I want more of God, but is it even possible? How much of God is enough? How can you tell if you need more God? I heard some one say the other day that a relationship should come to an end if the relationship doesn’t have the relationship with God as the primary focus. These sort of statements are thrown around all the time and sounds Christiany but are devoid of serious meaning. It’s a Christian catch phrase that you'd expect to hear at youth group when they’re talking about the "dangers" of premarital sex.

We are supposed to strive after God, to pursue God, but shouldn't contentment with where we are in our relationship with God also be a good thing? Isn’t there such thing as contentment with godliness? I understand we need to pursue God, but we should also be happy where we are with him. I'm not talking about complacency in our spiritual journey, but when we are constantly talking about pursuing God and wanting more it creates in us a profound dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is dangerous because we may never get to the levels of spirituality that we struggle to attain, and if we do not arrive at the destination we pursued disappointment can set in. Being disappointed is equally dangerous because disappointment comes from unmet expectations, and if that disappointment becomes rooted in our hearts it can grow into a cancerous bitterness and cynicism which, like cancer, is difficult and painful to treat and remove. We hear stories of saints and giants of our faith who met with God in powerful ways and we aspire to that. The problem is that’s the reason why they are saints or giants of our faith because they met with God in powerful way that most of us will never experience. Most of those people gave up everything and devoted their lives completely to God. For example St. Francis gave up wealth and comfort to embrace a life of poverty and ministry to the sick and the poor. Because of that complete devotion he had powerful experiences with God. Most of us will never get to that place because most of us cannot give up our lives to that degree. Many of us are too selfish to take an extra step that may remove us from where we are comfortable even though taking that step may mean we might have powerful life changing encounters with God.

Unmet expectations is also a major reason why many Christians are dissatisfied with their spiritual journey. Many have heard all their lives to pursue God, to want more of God, to keep pushing in their spiritual walk, but they are rarely taught to enjoy where they are at the moment. People may hear wonderful stories or powerful testimonies of God coming through in the clutch with blessings or healings or encounters. Some of us yearn and hope and expect these things to happen, and if they don’t happen we begin to wonder if there was something wrong with us and may even get to the place where we question God’s love for us. I'm not saying that we should be devoid of spiritual passion or desire-less, we should yearn for more because like Ecclesiaties says God has placed eternity on our hearts. What I'm trying to get across is that we need to stop sometimes, look around, smell the flowers, and be content where we are because God may hold us at certain places in our lives so he can develop something in us, and if we are always trying to keep pushing we may miss good opportunities that are divinely appointed.

Bumper-sticker faith

The bumper sticker read, "Try Jesus." The sticker was on the back of a minivan, a Grand Voyager to be specific. Looking at that bumper sticker got me thinking about just that, trying Jesus.

When I was a kid, Pepsico started the Pepsi Challenge. Booths would be set up all over America and people would be allowed to choose their favorite beverage, Coke or Pepsi. The twist was people were blindfolded while sipping their Pepsi and Coke samples. I guess Pepsico thought if people were blindfolded they would use their taste buds and realize how much better Pepsi was than Coke. I choose Coke, unfortunately for Pepsi so did 200 million other Americans because Coke is the superior beverage. The point is the people could try Coke and Pepsi and decide which one they preferred. In America today we have the unparalleled ability to choose anything. Need a fridge? Go to an appliance warehouse. Need a car? Choose from dozens of makes and models at the nearest local dealership. Want a Coke? Choose from 8 different kinds. We can choose anything based on our preferences. The problem is out preferences are always changing daily. One day I want cool ranch Doritos. The next day I may want nacho cheese Doritos. This attitude makes the slogan, "Try Jesus" a very dangerous one.

See faith is supposed to be something that affects the way we live. I heard someone say, If what we believe doesn’t change who we are and what we do, then what good is it what we believe?" It is something that requires our attention and our energy. One cannot just try Jesus. There is no Jesus taste test challenge. He isn’t a free sample at Costco or Wegmans. We who name ourselves his followers have done us and the world a disservice. We say that if one just tries Jesus then they will gain immediate, eternal, sunshiney, feel good happiness. All your problems will just go away. Unfortunately this isn’t true and we are guilty of peddling this instead of teaching people how to be his disciples.

Jesus is not Prozac. He is not a drug we take when we are depressed to make us feel better. He came to reconcile fallen humanity to God, not reduce his life to bite sized sermon bits. He came to teach us a revolutionary way of life. He taught us that the kingdom of God is present here and now, and that if we believe in him we can be a part of this kingdom. Not only can we live in his kingdom but we can share it with others. Jesus never said, " Try me." He didn’t say to dabble in his teachings and pull out ones that will make a nice secular philosophy. He said things like, "The kingdom of God is within you." and "Take up your cross and follow me." That means work. That means putting forth an effort. That means we are to be devoted to his teachings, follow them, and show others how to do the same. That means a lifetime of practice and discipleship.

Presently we have relationships without commitment, intimacy without love, and a faith devoid of power to change our world if we continue to take the life and teachings of how to be his disciple and advance the kingdom of God into snack portioned, sugar coated pills which read, "Try Jesus." He died to show us the way to God, he lives to help us get there. We need to take it a bit more seriously.

Heart surgery

I have heard several ministers talk about having a head change or having a heart change. When I think about my life I have probably had a few million head changes but very few heart changes. Sometimes I even wonder if I ever have had a genuine heart change. Often I've come to the place where I realize a change is necessary and decide to do something to make the change stick. Usually I'll get through a couple of weeks, after that I lapse right back into whatever I was doing, feeling, or experiencing previously. A perfect definition of a head change if there ever was one. Head changes are easy. They can be brought on by a fiery sermon, contemplative music, or solid advice from a trusted friend. Heart changes are much more difficult to live out. The difference is head changes can be affected by us and by external stimuli, heart changes can be brought on only by God through the Holy Spirit working in us.

Well then what can we do make it happen? How can we get it done? What can I do to get this change started and working in my heart? Nothing. Nada. Zero. There is nothing we can do to make a true heart change happen for ourselves, it is something we have to completely rely on God to perform. I like to see it as surgery in a sense. God has to constantly remove our hearts and replace it with one that is closer to his own. To do this he must re-open our wounds. This is another major reason why a heart change is so difficult, we try to hold on to the heart we have, with all its faults and deformities, and hide it. But why do we try and hide what God longs to heal? If we try to re-open our wounds on our own it causes more damage to our heart and soul then when the injury first occurred. Our operating theatre resembles those from the Middle Ages: crude surgical instruments, dull blades covered in dried blood, unsterilized so when we make an incision we infect ourselves further. Many times we don't even anesthetize ourselves when we try to operate. No wonder the pain is so intense, no wonder we have hardened hearts and why so few of us survive our own procedure thus ensuring we never heal properly.

God's operating theatre is a stark contrast to ours: The room is spotless and clean, the instruments are new and sterile, the blades sharp, the procedures are all state of the art, and like some procedures there may be some pain after we are groggy after waking up but we do not feel the actual surgery being performed. When we re-open our wounds it is usually to dwell on those wounds and how they were given to us. When God re-opens our wounds it's to heal them. His spirit is the salve that heals our souls. It is the only thing known to cure the ails of our hearts. You may be reading this wondering, "Well great Mike that's wonderful. Only God can, I can't. That still doesn't help me though. when will he do it? How will I know?"

Those are good questions but if you are asking those questions he has probably just performed a procedure on you already. You are just feeling the after pains of surgery. When you are having surgery you are unconscious so you do not feel anything, but when you wake up it hurts. Sure it hurts, but it hurts far less then the actual surgery itself. This is our road to understanding what has just happened in us. I'm not sure what the next step is because I feel like God has already done something in me but I don't know what it exactly is and what it is for, but as I walk and trust him I will begin to understand. Perhaps the second step is hope, but real hope not manufactured presidential hope; a hope that God is faithful, and that he will continue the work he started in us. One of my teachers, Dr. Bekker, once said that sometimes the Holy Spirit has changed us and we haven't yet become aware of it, but we will as we continue our walk and trust in him.

Open books with dirty pages

Introspection is a loaded word. We mock people who are too introspective and want them to be more outgoing. Some aren't introspective enough and we ask them to take some time and think about what they may be doing to their lives. For some that would be like asking Bill Clinton to not cheat on Hillary with trashy women but for others it may be as difficult as figuring out the physics of the unifying theory of everything. Introspection is necessary and I think too few people take time for themselves to think about what they feeling and doing and how it makes them feel and what they could do to feel better if they weren't doing well. Introspection though can also be dangerous. Really? Dangerous? I can hear you asking that question aloud in your mind as you read this blog. Yes dangerous.

The reason introspection is dangerous is because if done too often for too long it can begin to some across as a self-serving ego trip. People who are too introspective pour out their deepest darkest feelings on their blogs, Facebook pages, or journals replete with the complete inner and outer goings on of their lives leaving nothing to the readers imagination. It can become a sort of twisted status symbol: look how broken, hurt, and troubled I am and as you read look at my questions and thoughts and marvel at my ability to put into moving prose the deepest thoughts of my heart and mind. It turns into a focused spotlight, illuminating a self serving cliche that leads people to form opinions about you that you yourself want them to think. It is shaping what you want people's ideas of you to be, and that my friends is pride, and as C.S. Lewis reminded us, pride is the chief of sins because all sin stems from it.

Well what am I doing then sharing what I think about a topic like this? Am I being prideful since I am assuming there are people who are curious about what I have to say on matters pertaining to spirituality and Christian spirituality in particular? Possibly, but I think that intent plays a great deal of weight. If someone is giving their opinion on something whether it be a blog or forum it isn't prideful to share that opinion. When a person is going through a difficult time and posts thing on blogs and Facebook about some struggles is that prideful? No. If someone is open about their shortcomings is that prideful? No. Pride steps in when you intend to elicit certain responses from your peers. Pride rears its ugly head when you intend for others to pity you or to talk about you when you're not around, to try and make yourself the center of attention. Is that pride? Yup. So beware of people who are willing to share everything too quickly and who spare no detail; introspection is good and sharing with others is good and healthy.. but not always. C.S. Lewis (again) said, "The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this (pride) does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly."

Reformation

In the 1500s the Catholic church was rocked by an event that changed the course of Western civilization: the Reformation. A monk named Martin Luther in response to the practice of selling plenary indulgences, which is paying to have a persons soul removed from purgatory, posted the 95 theses to the doors of the church at Wittenberg. This act sparked a revolution in theology whose aftershocks still reverberate down through the ages to our own time. Luther did not intend for the Catholic church to splinter like it did but when the splintering began he saw no other choice but to continue shedding the light of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. The official Catholic position was that good works ensure salvation because good works show faith and paying the church money to free souls was a way to do good works to save a soul. Luther wisely pointed out the error in this and in doing so changed the political and religious landscape of Europe.

Today there are many people who draw on the legacy of the Reformation, usually because it's to lend an aura of legitimacy to a movement they are involved with or are promoting. It's easy to refer to a movement as a continuation of the Reformation or as a new Reformation, but just because they claim such a thing doesn't make it so. I do not believe that a new Reformation is possible due to a wide variety of social and cultural factors and referring to a movement that broke the dominance of Catholicism and using that paradigm to break away from doctrinal Christianity is dubious at best. You cannot call people involved in Emergent,Word of Faith, or any other group that claim to be enacting another Reformation reformers because the Reformation was primarily against a corrupt and oppressive religious institution, medieval Catholicism, that when it hit swept across Europe like an out of control wildfire. At the time everyone was Catholic, you were Catholic because they did not allow other denominations like we have today. You were Catholic or else you'd probably be killed as a heretic. The Reformation changed that. What it won for us wasn't another a system of belief but it caused the church to constantly revise and reevaluate its theology and relationship to culture. We already had a cultural revolution, sure it was in 1500s but it paved the way for us and how we see things today. It took a static institutional dinosaur and changed it into a constantly evolving and shifting church . The Reformation brought back into focus doctrine that had been de-emphasized for so long that it seemed to have been forgotten. We are not at that point now because there is no one institutional church controlling and ruling on all things theological. Scripture ever since the Reformation has been constantly reviewed and interpreted so the primary doctrines of our faith are no longer hidden from view, no longer dependent on specific people to share it because scripture is available to all.

There are many things wrong with the church in America today: Hyper-prosperity, televangelism, ultra-fundamentalists who apply the letter of the law not the spirit of the law, and people who de-emphasize so much of our faith that it becomes nothing more then just a story of Jesus or a dialogue with people about where they are and why Christianity sucks and why it must change drastically. There is a lot of American culture that has become tied into Christianity. There is a lot of cultural garbage that does at time need to be filtered out but don't use the Reformation as a beacon to radically change something that has already been radically changed and tested and strengthened throughout the past 500 years. The Reformation that we should be focusing on is not one of doctrine but the reformation of the heart. David wrote in the Psalms for God to create in him a clean heart; the prophets said that God would take the law and write it not on tablets of stone, but on our hearts. The reformation we need is the one we must try and live out: our ongoing process of sanctification. We need everyday to turn our hearts to God, to hear what he is saying to us through his word and through his children and to let his spirit renew us and keep us focused on the things that matter: doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

Sola gratia, sola scriptura, solus Christus, sola fide.

Watching From the Fence

While I was working today I came across a book about South Africa. It was about how Nelson Mandela brilliantly used the national rugby team, the Springboks, to help unite the country recently mashed together by the election of the ANC government thus ending years of government sanctioned racism: apartheid. It was an incredible moment and I am glad I was in South Africa to witness it. The memory got me thinking though about something that has been gnawing on my mind for some time. I cant help but compare my life in South Africa with my life in America. Sometimes I feel like I am split in two that one part of me, a vital part of me, is still thousands of miles away separated by the vast Atlantic. I left behind a life that I built on my own. I had friends, surrogate family and a place where I felt like I belonged, and I left it all behind.. but I had to leave it all behind. It doesn't make a lot of sense and I can barely explain it myself, but I know leaving there was the right thing to do. I am convinced of that. Something in my soul was lost while I was there and I feel like I have been unable to find it.

It is a crazy disconnect. I can empathize with Abram, I mean when God tells you to go, you go but it doesn't mean it's easy. Sometimes the decision makes no sense, but deep inside you know it's right. I feel like that a part of me is gone. I don't know what it is or how it happened, I just fell it, and I've felt it for years. Like Baudolino I go from one path to the next, seemingly lying my way from one spot into another, and seeing where the path leads. Sometimes I like the person who I was in South Africa more then the person I am now here in the USA. The Michael in South Africa was cocky, somewhat abrasive, but his naivete about life and the church and spiritual matters are at times a better person then the Michael here in the USA who is less cocky, still somewhat abrasive but tempered with a better understanding of himself. The SA Michael was sure of himself, knew where he stood in his relation to others, grew and matured in the things of God and everyday life, gave himself wholeheartedly to the things he was doing because he believed in them. What a far cry USA Michael is from that person. Always thinking. Always questioning. Always wondering if things will ever turn in a direction that seems more favourable to him. I don't believe in what I do any more. That naivete is gone.

So I stand on the fence looking at the person I was and the person I am, always testing, always comparing, and always wondering what might have been, unable to focus on what is and what should be done. Don't get me wrong I learned some valuable lessons and am grateful but I can't help but wonder what it was all for and what is it worth. I know God has a plan, at least I believe he does. I may not see all of it or even know any of it, but it does not mean it does not exist. I'm just tired of the unknowing and the questions and I want to know the answer to the questions in my mind that spring up from time to time. Maybe I'm being too harsh and to hard on myself, but hey, it's a blog after all and these are the thoughts and feelings I'm having at the moment.