Foundational Ideas: Flawed Saints

I wrote about being flawed saints just a few days ago, and I do not need to repeat my words. However, because the idea is so central to my thinking, I wanted to mention it again.

If you are a Christian, you are washed clean in the sight of God. You are called a saint and yet, this side of heaven, you will not reach perfection.  Simul iustus et peccator.  You are flawed saint. 

Larry Crabb also helped me to see that I live in the middle of this apparent contrast. However, I really appreciated Richard Pratt’s book Designedfor Dignity.

Foundational Ideas: Relationality

As I continue to explore what I consider ideas foundational to my thinking, the second is relationality. The importance of relationship is a cardinal belief in my worldview. As a Christian, I believe that God exists as a trinity.  Three persons, one God. From eternity past, God has existed in perfect, Trinitarian relationship. The three of them have engaged in a beautiful dance forever—what some have called perichoresis. They are mutually serving and other focused, always joyful and always loving.

Humans were also created to relate. I think one big part of bearing the image of God is that we are relational beings. We exist to function in relationship.  It is in our DNA.  In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived together harmoniously with one another and with God, who walked with them in the garden. There was no shame, no hiddenness. But at the fall in Genesis 3, man hid himself from God and he covered himself up.  Shame had entered the picture which carried with it a drawing back in relationship, an isolation. 

Nevertheless, the need for relational connection continues. As humans, we require accepting, loving, gracious relationships with other people. Unfortunately, those are often broken. Some of the psychological literature on the importance of early attachment and how it can become broken is profound in its implications and it is supported by the Bible, which reminds us that we were made to relate.

Perhaps the person who helped me to see this best was Larry Crabb. Essentially all of Dr Crabb’s books deal with the importance of relating with one another, though I would happily recommend Becoming a True Spiritual Community and Connecting.  Furthermore, through Dr Crabb, I heard about the works of Darryl Johnson (Experiencing theTrinity) and Michael Reeves (Delighting in the Trinity).  Yet the most important thing you can do is begin to live in relationship with one another. Practice moving toward people in the middle of their mess, a concept I learned from Ed Welch.  Failure to address our poor relating will be detrimental to Christ’s church.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are to love one another. By this all people will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."-John 13:34-35 

The Invisibility Cloak

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going down another steps down before me." Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.-John 5:2-9

Hopelessness is a terrible thing. It is dark. Oppressive. Under the heavy cloak of hopelessness, there is no apparent relief. Just pain. The news of Robin Williams' apparent suicide yesterday was just one more story of many lives affected by depression.  Mr Williams, one of the funniest men who ever lived, struggled with depression. When most of us think of his career, we remember Mrs Doubtfire, Mork from Ork, or the Genie from Aladdin, but I wonder if the opening scene from Patch Adams better captured his reality.  If you cannot recall the scene, he admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital in the midst of a significant depression.  He "acted" depressed really well, perhaps because he understood.  

But it is not just Robin Williams who struggled with hopelessness and depression. The world is full of people who deal with dark thoughts every day. Some may describe feeling blue or down in the dumps, but for many, the darkness is much more oppressive.  Those battling hopelessness really see no way out. Death would be a relief. 

Unfortunately, hopeless people often feel invisible. They look around them and see other people living life, apparently happy, and they struggle to understand. They may ask, what is wrong with me? Why can't I feel happy like everyone else? Why is it that nothing will ever get better for me? 

I began this post with what is becoming one of my favorite Bible stories. It tells of a man at the sheep gate who I think struggled with hopelessness. He had been an invalid for 38 years and he had no one to help him get into the pool for healing. Bodies stirred all around him, but he had no one and no hope of getting any better. He was invisible. 

And then Jesus took notice. He asked him if he wanted to be healed. The man did not simply respond, "yes." His response reflected his hopelessness. He essentially said, "I don't have anyone to help me and I can't do it on my own." He felt lonely, invisible, and hopeless.  

Jesus did heal him, but do not skip past the relational aspect. Yes, Jesus was God and could heal miraculously. But he didn't need to speak to the man to provide the healing. He could have done it from afar, yet he approached and relationally engaged with him.  Jesus peeled back the invisibility cloak and connected with a hopeless man.  

Each of us can do that as well.  You are surrounded by more hurt, anguish, depression, anxiety, fearfulness, shame, and hopelessness than you can possibly imagine. Get into the habit of slowing down, looking around, and listening to people. Resist the temptation to offer a solution. Instead, offer an ear, a hand, or a touch. Practice moving toward people, seeing beyond their invisibility.  Help people to understand that they matter.

Foundational Ideas: Worldview Matters

Since returning from the School of Spiritual Direction and on the heels of the Centurions program, I have been pondering my framework of belief. In other words, what is my worldview. Over the next few days, I hope to share what I consider to be several ideas that are currently foundational to how I think about the world.

 Perhaps the most important place to start a multipart discussion like is with a review of worldview and how it matters to what we do. I like to think of worldview as our operating system. It often runs in the background and colors, or informs, how we see the world and what assumptions we make about the world.

Every person on the planet has a worldview. Each of us holds viewpoints about where we came from, what is wrong in the world, what can be done to fix it, and where we should go from here. For people who hold to a more secular worldview, they may believe that the universe began with an explosion from nothing to what we now know of as the existing universe. For a communist, what is wrong in the world may be related to an unequal distribution of wealth and that the rich oppress the poor. For the Christian believer, Christ’s death and resurrection is what was done to address the problem. 

In essence, we all hold to basic assumptions about the way the world works. I have found great benefit in seeking to understand my worldview and the worldview of those I come into contact with.  I also hope that you will see that my worldview, which I would consider to be an orthodox Christian worldview, informs the rest of my ideas that matter.

If you want to learn more about worldview, the people that have most influenced my thinking include Francis Schaeffer, Greg Koukl, and Chuck Colson. Each of these men were very much committed to the idea that Christianity was not just for individual salvation, but Christianity was for all of life and culture. 

Recommended Resources: 
Stand To Reason
Breakpoint
The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy 
Total Truth by Nancy Pearcy  
How Now Shall We Live by Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey

Book Review: Blue Like Jazz

I didn't want to like Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz (2003). As a conservative, evangelical Christian, I had implicitly and explicitly heard over the last 10 years that this was a dangerous book and that it was probably best if I just avoided it. A few months ago, I finally gave in and picked up a copy at a thrift store in town. I left it on my shelf for a while, but last week, I decided to wade in.

Blue Like Jazz is a memoir of sorts, Miller's wrestlings with the fundamentalist tradition in which he was raised and the Christian Spirituality to which he was drawn. His focus was primarily upon the years of early adulthood, which are formative for all of us.  With paper and ink, he poignantly described his journey.

There were many things I liked about this book.  Miller appears to write with transparency, authenticity, and honesty.  He puts into print questions that many Christians ask of themselves and others. And then he wades through them. 

His commitment to the Gospel message and to following Jesus come through on nearly every page, yet he willingly admits his stumbling on the journey.  For example, on page 111, he wrote "Tony asked me one time if there was anything I would die for. I had to think about it for a long time, even after thinking about it for a couple of days, I had a short list. In the end there weren't very many principles I would die for. I would die for the gospel because I think it is the only revolutionary idea known to man." However, he also admits that it is difficult for him to evangelize. He is a man of apparent contrasts.

He also wrote a lot about spending time with sinners. Sinners! As a student at Reed College in Portland, apparently one of the most liberal colleges in the the United States, and afterwords living in the woods, he had friends who were pot-smoking, promiscuous hippies. And yet, he still hung around with them. What would Jesus say about someone who hung around with non-religious sinners?

I also appreciated his stance on the importance of community. He admits that he can be somewhat of a recluse, describing himself as a battery for a power tool that needs 20 hours to recharge for 10 minutes of use. And yet, he was intentional about community. (If I recall, he has more recently gone on record saying he doesn't really need church and I would like to ask him how this new stance fits with his previous thoughts).

I can also see where people have had concerns. For one thing, it appears that he is comfortable with faith being based upon feeling and downplaying the importance of cognition/logic. I am someone who believes that Christian theism is intellectually defensible, yet I agree with him that rarely will an intellectual defense get someone to the cross. Ravi Zacharias, a speaker Miller really appears to like, has described an intellectual defense of the faith as "brush clearing", getting arguments out of the way so that people can see the cross. For me personally, I do think feeling is important, but so is cognition and volition.

There also seemed to be glimpses of intellectual superiority. Miller would write about Republicans or fundamentalists with some veiled derision. I found myself wondering if he was aware of this tendency in himself. I suspect he is, and if I were to point it out to him, I suspect he would look at me and say, "Jason, you are right on."

In sum, I liked this book.  As Tim Challies wrote on his review 9 years ago, "Despite my misgivings, I found that I enjoyed this book more than I thought I might." For me, this book is a good reminder of why it is often beneficial for us to grapple with other people's works for ourselves rather than simply rely exclusively upon the insights of those who think like us. Despite some points of disagreement, Miller appears to love the Jesus of the Bible and shows him to us through this book. 

Book Review: Encouragement

Encouragement: The Unexpected Power of Building Others Up (1984/2013) by Larry Crabb and Dan Allender is an excellent book on how to speak into one another's lives. In this book, Crabb calls the reader to move beyond surface conversations to those that are 1) prompted by love and 2) directed toward fear.  I suspect that many of us resonate with the first part.  At least on some level, we know that what we do must come from a place of love, whatever that means.  However, when Crabb talks about encouragement being directed toward fear, that may be confusing for many of us.  Essentially, he makes the point that many of us hide behind layers that serve to protect us from exposure and abandonment.  I have heard Dr Crabb say in the past "looking bad in the presence of love releases our true self" and I think he gets at that here.

If you want to learn how to have godly, meaningful conversations, may this book be an encouragement to you.  I would like to loan my copy to all of my friends, but I will likely want to read my own again first.