The Poison Ivy Gospel.

First of all, I need to start by saying that I HATE POISON IVY!!!!

Seriously, it may be one of the most miserable things in the world.  It makes you just miserable enough to where you want to scream and/or punch out a window, but because it’s only a rash, it doesn’t constitute being “sick,” so you’re still obligated to do all of your normal daily activities.  Instead of getting to sit home and feel sorry for yourself, you still have to go about your day, acutely aware of every spot the rash has shown up.  On top of all that, nobody else knows that you’re suffering from a furious case of poison ivy, and most of the time, even when you tell people about it, they don’t ever seem to have that much sympathy for you – they just look at you like you just told them you stubbed your pinky toe.

But let’s be honest, poison ivy is the worst.  If you’ve ever had it really bad you DEFINITELY know what I mean, and are probably doing a combination right now of nodding in agreement and shuddering in painful remembrance.

The terrible thing about it is that the more you scratch it the more it itches.  It feels like the right thing to do, but scratching it ALWAYS makes it itch worse and releases oils that allow it to spread faster.  You know how it is, though – you keep scratching and it keeps itching, so you scratch harder and it itches more – and so the cycle continues.

Typically, it starts out in a fairly small, in an isolated manageable patch.  You don’t make too much of it, because you think it’s just a mosquito bite or some of the sort – the sort of thing that’s not a big deal.  But before long, that “mosquito bite” declares war on the rest of your skin in a coordinated, bodily blitzkrieg.  Soon enough, you look in the mirror and find random pink spots on the total opposite side of your body – places that couldn’t have possibly come in contact with the original area.  You wave the white flag, but get steamrolled as the army of pink spots marches across your chest and around your appendages.  Even if, once spotting the first signs of the rash, you go all-out OCD, washing and applying lotion every hour, it always finds a way to escape the quarantine zone.

After about a week, it affects every aspect of your life.  You’re so miserable from the itching and the spreading that you have the patience of a pea and the emotional brevity of Eeyore.  You just want the stupid lotion to do its job and be rid of the whole mess, but nothing seems to be working and you’re fed up with the whole mess.  You just want it to be gone, but you’ve tried everything you know how to do – every over-the-counter and home-remedy solution, but the poison ivy just sits there and laughs at you.

Finally you resolve to pursue drastic mesures.  The lady at CVS sees your misery and suggests you ask for a steroid prescription to help you be rid of the rash once and for all (something you should have done from the beginning, were you not in denial of the severity of the issue.)  You get the steroids, however, and they immediately begin to fight back the encroaching armies.  When it’s all said and done you realize how stupid it was not to have called the doctor in the first place.  Sure, it didn’t seem necessary at first, but how much misery would you have been able to avoid had you gone to the expert to begin with.  The rash may have gone away on it’s own, but why make yourself live through that misery and stupidity when you can easily ask the doctor to give you something that will bring healing?

(If you’ve read my blog more than a couple times I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.)

What a brilliant analogy for the struggle with sin.  

It’s as if we all have this spiritual rash called Sin that we can’t get rid of no matter what measures we go to.  Typically it starts out small in a fairly manageable, isolated patch.  We don’t pay all that much attention to it, save perhaps the occasional scratch, thinking it’s something that it’s not – the kind of thing that’s not a big deal.  However, before long, that thing that’s, “not a big deal,” declares war on the rest of your spirituality in a coordinated blitzkrieg.   Soon enough, you take a step back to look at your life and find evidences of it on the totally unrelated corners of your day-to-day – places that couldn’t have possibly come in contact with the original area.  You wave the white flag, but get steamrolled as the army of sinful thoughts and motives march across over your good intentions and slice down your attempts at surrender.  You then begin to realize that this really is, “a big deal,” and that something definitely needs to be done (if, indeed, you weren’t aware of that from the beginning, but too lazy to do anything about it.)  So you go all-out OCD, praying, reading your Bible/various books by Christian authors, maybe even getting breakfast with a few good Christian friends to raise awareness to the issue.  You make a concentrated effort to clean up your act and do everything you can to clean up the problematic areas, but even then it seems to always find a way to escape the quarantine zone.

Struggling with Sin sucks.  It’s itchy and miserable and sometimes even downright painful.  It feels right to give in to the temptation to scratch it, but doing so only causes it to itch worse, which then causes a heightened temptation to scratch more – a never ending cycle.  Different people handle it differently – some scratch and scratch until they’re bleeding all over; some do their best to ignore it completely, hoping it will simply go away on its own; while others realize that it won’t go away unless something is done, but go falsely try to “clean” or “fix” the problem by their own means.

The truth is, none of it works.  Nothing that you’re doing, or plan to do, is going to cure your disease.  It wouldn’t have gone away on its own.  Why live through the misery and stupidity of fighting with it when Jesus has so offered you a chance to be rid of the itch once and for all?  Of course, just like the physical rash, the effects of sin take time to heal and stop itching, but Jesus is faithful to keep offering you grace (spiritual steroids) until the day you get to Heaven.  He’s not mad at you for scratching, but loves you deeply and hates to see you in such misery.  He gave up his life to produce a cure for you, asking you to trust him to lead you out of your affliction.  Why not quit the frustrations of both scratching and ignoring, and ask Jesus to bring you healing?

———–

On a side note:  It has honestly blown my mind to see how consistently God speaks Truth to me through these idiosyncratic channels that he’s created my brain to understand.  He knows how he hardwired my personality, and knew the ways which my heart would need him, search for him, and find him.  It’s rather overwhelming when you think about all of the sovereignty involved – that God would choose my misery over getting poison ivy to teach me about the nature of struggling with sin.  Even more overwhelming is the realization of how loving/patient/gracious He remains in the whole sanctification process.  I mean, this is the God of the universe we’re talking about, yet He has chosen to father me and push me toward what He knows to be best for me.  Even if it’s through poison ivy.

Fringe: Learning God’s Heart.

For those of you that haven’t guessed by now, I love analogies.  I’m not really sure where it came from, but it’s given me all sorts of weird insights into life, allowing me to make connections between things that often blow my mind.  It’s one of God’s most personal languages with which to speak to me.  He knows I’m always strangely in tune with the allegorical aspects of everyday life, and so he plants little concepts of beauty in certain situations, fully knowing the Truth I’ll need to understand in that moment.  It’s one of the most comforting and reassuring feelings to, while deeply wrestling with an issue, encounter a situation that speaks so directly to your doubt that you want to laugh and cry at the same time.  You don’t see it coming, but the second it hits you, you know beyond doubt that God’s been waiting for you to hear it.

Tuesday was one of those moments.

I was watching an episode of the FOX TV show Fringe.  I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the show, but the basic premise is the story of a special division of the FBI (Fringe Division) that handles all of the paranormal, weird, sci-fi type cases.  The lead agent, Olivia Dunham, works along with a small, eclectic team that operates loosely as a sort of family, including Walter Bishop – an unbelievably intelligent scientist type who is slightly off his rocker, but completely harmless.  I won’t go into great depth of the show’s several seasons, but without any knowledge of the situation it’s good to have a few basics.  But why do you care about Olivia, Walter, and Fringe, and what does it have to do with analogies and God?

Well, whether it’s right or wrong, I’ve been struggling lately with exactly how God feels about us and our tendencies to run back to our sinful comfort zones.  We know full well that things aren’t right, but our insecurities push us toward something we’re used to – something we’ve grown accustomed to.  Often times you hear people say things like, “You’ve just got to kill that sin!,” or, “Jesus is better, stop running to that to fulfill the need only He can meet!”  But the thing is, that unless you’ve experienced first hand how and/or why Jesus is more satisfying than those things, then those types of statements seem don’t really make a whole lot of sense.  Sure, it makes sense in theory, but it doesn’t deeply speak to the arthritis of your soul that you doubt will ever go away.  Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been around “Christian positivists” for too long, and I’ve stopped listening to people who just throw out empty, pre-rehearsed phrases of encouragement that they may or may not even believe themselves.  Not that these statements don’t actually hold truth, but I feel as though it can be like shooting a case of first-aid supplies into a primitive jungle village – yes there is great potential for healing there, but not a single person in the village has ever seen any of these medical supplies before, let alone know how to use them.

That all being said, Tuesday night I was watching an episode of Fringe, trying to get away from all of the stresses of life.  Toward the end of the episode, at the culminating moment, a very direct exchange takes place between Walter Bishop and a little boy involved in their current case.  At the point of that exchange I lost it.  I realized how much the whole episode was a picture of the story of us and strong grips on our sin.  I pictured God sitting in Heave, wracking his brain on how he could help us without having to kill us – having him begging us to let go of our sin, that we’re not alone and He cares about us.

Here’s the episode, go watch it:

“Win Anyway”: How Lattimore can break the ‘Chicken Curse.’

There is no question that Marcus Lattimore’s season-ending knee injury in South Carolina’s defeat of Mississippi State two weeks ago was the shot heard ‘round Gamecock nation.

Although it occurred on a somewhat lackluster rushing attempt by Bruce Ellington, Lattimore’s fourth quarter injury against the Mississippi State Bulldogs seemed to be almost the “perfect” way to end the Gamecock’s multi-week stint in the Twilight Zone.  All in the span of a couple weeks the lid was blown off Gamecock football: Gamecocks’s fifth-year senior and long-time starting quarterback Stephen Garcia was benched in favor of sophomore Connor shaw; Steve Spurrier refused his weekly press conference, confronting a media member for reporting misinformation; Stephen Garcia, following Shaw’s stellar showing against Kentucky, is dismissed from the team for a violation of his terms of reinstatement; and finally with the season-ending injury of star running back and Heisman candidate Marcus Lattimore.

If Gamecock fans are beginning to grow uneasy, I don’t know that there is really anyone that would blame them.  What had started out as one of the most highly anticipated seasons in recent Gamecock football history now appears to be slowly but surely turning out to be just another trademark season, front-heavy with excitement.  If you’ve followed Carolina football at all in the past decade or two, you know the drill.  The season starts out well, the players begin finding a rhythm, and the team’s biggest questions begin to look as though they’ll soon find answers.  Then, somewhere in the middle of the season – usually on the week of a “lesser” opponent – the team comes out flat and remains out of sync for the rest of the season, crushing all the illustrious hopes of postseason grandeur.  It’s the age-old story of the Chicken Curse.

So what about this year?  Will another football season be overcome in the chokehold of the ‘Chicken Curse?’  Will the team fold under this sudden blow to team morale, or will the Gamecock football team be able to follow of their back-to-back National Champion baseball brethren and, “Win Anyway?”  Only time will truly tell, but I would argue that the fate of Gamecock fan-hood rests in the hands of the injured sophomore running back out of Duncan, South Carolina.

It is by no means a secret that Marcus Lattimore means a great deal the University of South Carolina and the city of Columbia.  Ever since his arrival on the team, Marcus has been the embodiment of the ideal football player: fast, strong, hard-working, humble, and sacrificial.  He has quickly earned the respect of teammates and fans alike in his first two years, running over and around seasoned SEC defenses, gaining 30 touchdowns and over 2000 yards rushing in only 21-games with USC.  Although not necessarily a big vocal leader, Lattimore’s strength and consistency have bolstered team morale, often anchoring an inconsistent-at-best offensive unit.  His influence is such that the coaches have even asked him to travel to Tennessee for the Gamecocks‘ game against the Volunteers, crutches and all – that even having him on the sidelines brings an extra boost. Watching the Columbia headlines these past few months, it seems that this inspiration and “extra boost” is contagious, extending to the rest of the Columbia and the whole of South Carolina.

Marcus has made no secret about his Christian faith and the role that is relationship with God plays in who he is both as a man and a football player.  He continually attends church with a handful of fellow teammates and has spoken alongside team chaplain Adrian Despres at various events, including a “Real Men, Real Talk” event attended by several thousand men and boys of all ages.  He’s not afraid to be frank about his beliefs, and often speaks on the importance of cultivating discipline and good character – notions that are, in today’s world, increasingly more elusive.  Of course, I don’t mean to hoist up Marcus Lattimore as some sort of perfect “saving grace” for the city of Columbia and Gamecock fans abroad, but I do think that his impact on Gamecock culture – both now and in years to come – is something worth exploring.

If you really look at continuation of the idea of the Chicken Curse over years past, you have to admit that the fan-created culture has played the primary role.  Sure, the players are ultimately responsible for both their performances and outcome of the game, but the collective fan base certainly plays a predominant role.  It’s as if Carolina fans hope for the best, but always expect the worst.  Sure, the team may be having a good season so far, but as soon as something goes remotely wrong fans are quick to throw in the towel, victimize themselves, and grumble their laments over the Chicken Curse.  Fans get fed up and leave the game early, leaving their beloved Gamecocks to fend for themselves.  They distance themselves with “they’s” and “their’s” on radio call-in shows, and passively wait to restore their fanhood until something begins to go right again – regardless of how many weeks/seasons it takes.

So what does Marcus Lattimore have to do with all of this?  Everything, I would argue.  Because he has won over the hearts of Gamecock fans everywhere, I think he has the unique opportunity to set in motion a shift in this ridiculous, long-standing “cursed” culture.  Fans of all ages respect and/or look up to Marcus, and I believe his personal reaction to this season-ending knee injury could very well deal the fatal blow to the security blanket that fans always seem to fall back on.  Getting news of a season-ending injury is a terribly bitter pill for anyone to have to swallow, but Marcus has mentioned several times that although he is heavy-hearted over the matter, his life isn’t over, because he trusts that God has a reason for allowing it to happen.

In the face of some of the worst news an athlete can receive, Marcus Lattimore has responded with faith, trusting that his tragic injury was a tool that God could use to accomplish His purpose.  He could have felt sorry for himself and given up, and I guarantee you that Gamecock fans wouldn’t have blamed him a bit, but he didn’t.  He chose to have faith – both in God’s purposes and in his fellow teammates to continue to fight and get the job done without him – to “win anyway.”  He chose to travel to Knoxville Tennessee and crutch around for three hours to support and encourage the team, despite the pain of not being able to participate.

I think it’s time for us Carolina fans to follow in Lattimore’s footsteps.  Maybe we should begin working to create a new culture of responding to adversity with faith, trusting both in the larger purpose and our team’s ability to pull through, despite whatever daunting circumstances may have arisen.  Maybe it’s time to let go of this “cursed,” victim mentality and take responsibility, choosing to support and encourage that which we claim to represent, regardless of what happens.  It’s easy to encourage and support when things are going well, but it takes character to keep encouraging and keep supporting, even when things go horribly wrong.  Will we be forever known as a blame-shifting fan base who feels sorry for ourselves, or a community who rallies around the rough spots and supports no matter what?

Brennan Manning – “Good News”

As I said, I’m going to work on a series of posts from Brennan Manning’s book, The Ragamuffin Gospel.  I can’t explain how much encouragement I’ve found from this book and while I’d like to tell you about it, I think it would be better to just show you.

…I believe the Reformation actually began the day Martin Luther was praying over the meaning of Paul’s words in Romans 1:17.  ”In the gospel this is what reveals the righteousness of God to us…it shows how faith leads to faith, or as Scripture says: the righteous shall find life through faith..”  Like many Christians today, Luther wrestled through the night with the core question: how could the gospel of Christ truly be called “Good News” if God is a righteous judge rewarding the good and punishing the evil?  Did Jesus really have to come to reveal that terrifying message?  How could the revelation of God in Christ Jesus be accurately called “news” since the Old Testament carried the same theme, or “good” with the threat of punishment hanging like a dark cloud over the valley of history?

But as Jaroslav Pelikan notes, “Luther suddenly broke through to the insight that the ‘righteousness of God’ that Paul spoke of in this passage was not the righteouness by by which God was righteous in himself (that would be passive righteousness,) but the righteousness by which, for the sake of Jesus Christ, God made sinners righteous (that is, active righteousness) through the forgiveness of sins in justification.  When he discovered that, Luther said it was as though the very gates of Paradise had been opened to him.”

What a stunning truth!

“Justification by grace through faith” is the theologian’s learned phrase for what Chesterton once called “the furious love of God.”  He is not moody or capricious; He knows no season of change.  He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us.  He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners.  False gods – the gods of human manufacturing – despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do.  But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept.  Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands:  through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son.  This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.

With his characteristic joie de vivre, Robert Capon puts it this way:  ”The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace -of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.  The word of the Gospel – after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps – suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…. Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

Matthew 9:9-13 captures a lovely glimpse of the gospel of grace:  ”As he moved on, Jesus saw a man named Matthew at his post where the taxes were collected.  He said to him, ‘Follow me.’  Matthew got up and followed him.  Now it happened that, while Jesus was at the table in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and those known as sinners came to join Jesus and his disciples at dinner.  The Pharisees saw this and complained to his disciples, ‘What reason can the Teacher have for eating with tax collectors and those who disregard the law?’  Overhearing their remark, he said, ‘People who are in good health do not need a doctor; sick people do.  God and learn the meaning of the words, “It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice.”  I have come not to call the self-righteous but sinners.’ “

Here is revelation bright as the evening star:  Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams.  He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, and even used car salesmen.  Jesus not only talks with these people but dines with them – fully aware that His table fellowship with sinners will raise the eyebrows of religious bureaucrats who hold up the robes and insignia of their authority to justify their condemnation of the truth and their rejection of the gospel of grace.

This passage should be read, reread, and memorized.  Every Christian generation tries to dim the blinding brightness of its meaning because the gospel seems too good to be true.  We think salvation belongs to the proper and pious, to those who stand at a safe distance from the back alleys of existence, clucking their judgements at those who have been soiled by life…

…Jesus, who forgave the sins of the paralytic (thereby claiming divine power), proclaims that He has invited sinners and not the self-righteous to His table.  The Greek verb used here, Kalein, has the sense of inviting an honored guest to dinner.

In effect, Jesus says the Kingdom of His Father is not a subdivision for the self-righteous nor for those who feel they possess the state secret of their salvation.  The Kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there.  No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious cast of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle…

…The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves.  The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception.  It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.  As a sinner who has been redeemed, I can acknowledge that I am often unloving, irritable, angry, and resentful with those closest to me.  When I go to church I can leave my white hat at home and admit I have failed.  God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am.  Because of this I don’t need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him.  I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.

Brennan Manning – Something is Radically Wrong

I haven’t been writing much lately, mainly because I haven’t had much to say, but also because I’ve been somewhat overwhelmed with the looming stresses of major life transitions.  Either way, I apologize to the five of you that continue to visit, wondering when I’ll ever post new material.

The real thing that brought me out of hibernation this morning, however, was Brennan Manning.  I’m not sure if you’ve read his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, but if not I would highly recommend it.  I’ve been slowly making my way through it in spare time between classes and before bed – every time seeing the false perceptions of grace being ripped down.  In light of that, I’m going to start a new blog-series of sorts, including excerpts from the book that I simply can’t read enough.  I have deeply benefitted from some of the things I’ve read, and would like to offer you that same opportunity.  So, for the next few weeks I’ll be posting excerpts and/or quotes from the book and I’ll be praying that Manning’s words penetrate your heart as much as they have mine.

- – -

On a blustery October night in a church outside Minneapolis, several hundred believers had gathered for a three-day seminar.  I began with a one hour presentation on the gospel of grace and the reality of salvation.  Using Scripture, story, symbolism and personal experience, I focused on the total sufficiency of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ on Calvary.  The service ended with a song and a prayer.  Leaving the church by a side door, the pastor turned to his associate and fumed.  ”Humph, that airhead didn’t say one thing about what we have to do to earn our salvation!”

Something is radically wrong.

The bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded book keeper.  The Christian community resembles a Wall Street exchange of works wherein the elite are honored and the ordinary ignored.  Love is stifled, freedom shackled, and self-righteousness fastened.  The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.

Put bluntly: the American Church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice.  We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works — but our lives refute our faith.  By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived.  Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love…

…Though the scriptures insist on God’s initiative in the work of salvation – that by grace we are saved, that the Tremendous Lover has taken to the chase – our spirituality often starts with self, not God.  Personal responsibility has replaced personal response.  We talk about acquiring virtue as if it were a skill that can be attained like good handwriting or a well-grooved golf swing.  In the penitential season we focus on overcoming our weaknesses, getting rid of our hang-ups, and reaching Christian maturity.  We sweat through various spiritual exercises as if they were designed to produce a Christian Charles Atlas…

…Sooner or later we are confronted with the painful truth of our inadequacy and insufficiency.  Our security is shattered and our bootstraps are cut.  Once the fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear.  We discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual stature.  There begins a long winter of discontent that eventually flowers into gloom, pessimism, and a subtle despair:  subtle because it goes unrecognized, unnoticed, and therefore unchallenged.  It takes the form of boredom, drudgery.  We are overcome by the ordinariness of life, by daily duties done over and over again.  We secretly admit that the call of Jesus is too demanding, that surrender to the Spirit is beyond our reach.  We start acting like everyone else.  Life takes on a joyless, empty quality.  We begin to resemble the leading character in Eugene O’Neill’s play The Great God Brown: “Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter?  Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of the flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea:  Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?”

Something is radically wrong.

Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.  Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber’s license and was taken to see Niagara Falls.  He studied it for a minute and then said, “I think I can fix this.”

Waiting [for humility].

For those of you that don’t know, I work at Ruby Tuesday as a waiter.  It’s been about two years now, and while it’s the only restraunt in which I’ve worked, I feel as though waiting tables is pretty much the same in every restraunt – in principle at least.  The servers are quite an eclectic bunch that generally have some sort of chip on their shoulder – something that’s keeping them from getting a “big-boy” or “big-girl” job.  Some are students, working their way through college, others are single parents trying to pick up extra cash on the side, and others still are simply the type that profess to be too free-spirited to be tied down to a specified routine.  All tend to look out for each other in at least some capacity (some more than others), but the bottom line is, in fact, the bottom line and everyone must ensure that they earn the best tips from their own tables.

The thing that interests me most, as a psychology-inclined person, is to watch how differently people act and react to different situations.  The restaurant is my psychology lab.  There are a lot of days where I’m too tired to bother with all the psychoanalysis business, but other days I find myself with too much information to appropriately process whilst maintaining the capacity to be engaging and interesting with the tables that I’m taking care of.  In particular, one thing that I’ve found to be a loudly recurring theme is that of pride and humility.  Never in all of my life have I found a single place that exposes the depth of my pride more than that little restaurant in Lexington, South Carolina.

See, as general human beings, and especially as Americans, we all have certain things that we feel we are entitled to.  We feel like we are entitled to being treated respectfully, to having others treat us according to how we treat them, and more specifically for servers – to be tipped based upon a certain percentage (20%) of the total bill amount (or at least according to the quality of service that we provided for the table.)  The problem is, though, that often times people blatantly disregard these types of social understandings.  We then get our panties all in a wad about how they only tipped thirteen percent on a sixty dollar check, and then go on to ensure that everyone else knows how terrible your life is without that extra five dollars.  Even further, some servers develop a legitimate prejudiced hatred for certain people based on past experiences, and I’ve overheard several instances in which a hostess was confronted and cursed out for sitting certain guests in a server’s section – despite the fact that the hostess was simply following a structured rotation.

So where does all this animosity come from?  What is it that breeds such deep-seeded hatred towards unknown strangers, and what makes us feel that any of it is even remotely acceptable?  Pride.  Entitlement.  We feel like we deserve to be tipped.  Which is funny, on a side note, because the very notion of a tip, in it’s true essence, is considered to be a reward from the customer for exceeding the normal expectation of service.  You don’t simply earn a tip for breathing and wearing dress clothes with raggedy, slip-resistant shoes.  You earn a tip for engendering a friendly environment in which a guest can relax and enjoy not having to worry about a meal.

I’ve even seen times where a server has been so busy that they were only able to greet a table, take them drinks and ring in the food, while everything else the table required was done by other kitchen staff.  But then, heaven forbid that table not leave the server a good tip!  They were working so hard at their job and running back and forth to the kitchen to grab a bunch of different things for different tables – they deserve extra money, that twenty percent!

The thing that God has continuously taught me over my ongoing stint as a server is about what I do and don’t deserve.  More specifically that I don’t deserve, nor am I entitled to, anything.  Never once in the all of his communication with humanity did he say we deserved anything – well, other than a brutal, lonely, agonizing death.  He has never been concerned with ensuring that we get what is coming to us – in fact, he gave up on everything that he rightfully did deserve (everything he legitimately IS entitled to) so that we wouldn’t have to receive the terror that we WERE entitled to.  That’s why people go absolutely nuts about Jesus.  We deserve to be betrayed by our best friends, wrongfully arrested and thrown in prison, have several bouts where people beat the trash out of us just for fun, and then to be hung up by our appendages like modern art in the center of town so that everyone has the opportunity to spit on you as you die.  You still want what you deserve, or should I keep going?

Jesus isn’t doesn’t give a rat’s behind about ensuring that you get whatever benefits you feel that you rightfully deserve.  Why would he?  He wants you to know the richness and depth of the Father’s love – something that has never been grasped by a privileged individual as he continued to gather and enjoy more privilege.  You never quite understand that Jesus is all you need until He is all you have.  That’s the way it has always worked.  The more success, influence, skill, money, privilege, or respect that you find yourself with throughout your life, the more and more you will proportionately be tempted to cling to that for both importance and provision.  It’s no wonder that Jesus lived the way he did, and continued to say things like, Truthfully guys, it would be easier for a camel to be threaded through a needle than for a rich man to grasp the Gospel and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

So all of that to say, I suppose, that there isn’t a day that goes by that I am not clearly reminded of the Gospel of grace.  If I receive a bigger tip from a table than I had expected, I feel the warmth of the Father’s love invading my heart.  If I receive a lesser tip than I had expected (or no tip at all), then I feel the warmth of the Father’s love as he reminds me of what I really did deserve, and what I no longer have to fear, thanks to Jesus.  What a blessing it is to work on commission!

“But if you don’t make any money and you can’t pay you bills!?”

Well, let’s talk about that.  If I can’t live on the money God provides for me, maybe I’m using it for something that He’s not wanting me to.  He promised that he would provide for whatever needs we have, so maybe by Him only providing a certain amount of money He’s making a statement, suggesting that I cut out something that isn’t healthy for me in the first place.  See, that’s the beauty of an infinitely loving Father – whether we actually believe him or not, God is always orchestrating things in such a way that if we choose to listen to his voice and follow where he wants to lead us, it will always work out for our ultimate joy and deep fulfillment.  The dilemma then lies with whether we’re brave enough to trust him and allow Him (who has been around literally forever, possessing literally every amount of wisdom, common sense and knowledge that exists) to guide us toward the depths of the Love He has for us.

Understanding an Underused Weapon.

Something I’ve been learning a lot about lately is the extent of freedom that comes from confession and repentance.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I understand much about the full weightiness of the whole operation, but I feel like God is patiently pointing out to me how confession and repentance don’t have to be a scary thing.  Because of God’s perfect, unending love for us, and his brilliant display of that in giving himself in our place – sacrificing every right that he deserved – we don’t have to be afraid of all of our faults.  As long as we have seen Jesus for who he is, understanding how deeply he wants us, and accept his proposal, then we then no longer have to be gripped with the fear of failure.  We have been completely cured from the bitter disease that had so ravaged our minds and bodies before, and are now free to be enveloped by the mischievous, pure love that God has been waiting to show us since the day he dreamed up human existence.

We are so deceived to think that pleasure is the ultimate good thing.  Not to say that it is a bad thing, but the full depth of God’s love, adoption, and desire for our whole-hearted comprehension of his full acceptance of every part of us simply makes our tendency to worship physical pleasure seem ridiculous.  The overwhelming relief and flood of joyful giddiness that freely flows out of a heart that realizes God’s personality will never compare to the taste of the finest chocolate cake or even the winning of the biggest event in the world.  Once you begin to understand more about what God is truly like, you start to realize how terribly shallow your understanding of love really is.  And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I have been able to grasp any of this – I feel as though I’ve just been granted a thirty second trailer to a seven-season tv series dedicated solely to the explanation of God’s personality and extent of his rich love for us.  But nonetheless it’s as if God has just branded my mind with the culture of paradise – a culture driven solely by a currency of deep love and joy.  I don’t fully understand it, but I know that it’s everything we are longing for as humans.  The words of Frederick M. Lehman in one of my absolute favorite songs in the world (The Love of God) do it more justice than I ever could:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

It’s something that everyone longs for and something for Christians to eagerly look forward to.  In the meantime, though, we’re all here on this planet.  Even the very best things that we have to offer each other are still just a shell of the true beauty and pleasure from which they were once derived.  For now we live in a place where we’re all either afflicted or affected with this gripping disease that causes us to lose our wits and lose sight of the paradise that abounds from the creativity of God’s imagination.  The minute we lose sight of who God is we then fall, depressed and deceived, to the lie that things here on Earth are as good as things will ever be.  What a better way to keep your Enemy’s children cowering than to convince them that their Father, a good man, is a liar with an ulterior motive?

I’ve always understood open confession and repentance to be practices of shame – something you’d do when you’d found yourself either caught red-handed, or so bogged down with guilt that you could hardly breathe.  But that’s just not true.  What God’s been showing me is that confession/repentance isn’t a form of surrender for the weak, but it’s a potent weapon of TRUTH, boldly defying the effects of the deadly, mind-numbing disease that used to ravage the days before we were cured from it.  What better way to keep your enemy cowering than to openly defy the disease with which he once so masterfully manipulated us all away from our Father – the same sickness that Christ has given his life to cure?

Summer Goals.

In my last post I said that I’d be posting up my goals for the summer whenever I had them hammered out.  Since then I’ve been hammering away, learning a lot of things about myself.  It’s funny how you never notice some of your flaws until you go to do something that directly goes against them, no matter how obvious they may be.  For instance, I always think that I can achieve more than I actually end up getting done.  Although I’m really good at making illustrious plans for success, I’m not so great at being practical about it all.  However, I’ve chosen a few main aspects of my life in which I think I most need discipline/think disciplining myself would improve my enjoyment of life.  Otherwise, as more and more of my life depends on my ability to stay focused and take of repsonsibility, I feel that I may easily allow a lackadaisical mindset to creep in and keep my from doing things that would benefit both me and those I’m around.

So, here’s what I’ve got.  I broke them down into categories, more for myself than for you, but it just made for better organization.  (Ironically one of the things in which I’m hoping to pursue better discipline.)

Spiritual

-Work through the Spiritual Disciplines book in the mornings.

-Complete “REMEMBER” project – (a project I’m working on in selecting and memorizing scripture.  I’ll probably write more on that another time, but for now just think of it as memorizing scripture.)

-Take one day a week to legitimately Sabbath and pray – in the woods if possible.

Fitness

-Build a Pull-up bar in the back yard (also doubles as a 2nd hammock post to the nearby tree)

-Work out 5 days a week

-Whether that’s: Going to the gym, Biking, Running, Hiking, etc.

-[Diet]

-No snacking.  Rather, go back to eating six small, definitive meals throughout the day

-Don’t eat after 8pm. Period. Even if it’s healthy.

Music

-Learn a few select guitar scales that I’ve been neglecting.

-Write/Record a few songs with my brother.

Overall Life Health

-Revise/Organize my posts.

-Read 3-5 books.

-Spend time hammering out a good resume.

-Create a concrete budget and stick with it.

I realize that none of these things are exceptionally difficult, but like I said earlier, I have a tendency to think I can achieve more than I ever actually do.  Here, I decided upon the things that I really wanted to work on, fully knowing that I’ll probably add more as I go along.  As for now, though, this is what I’ll be working on.  I’ll be periodically posting updates as the summer progresses, so feel free to randomly check back to see how things are progressing.

Physical and Spiritual Fitness: Discipline.

Awhile ago I posted a multi-part blog series of sorts entitled “Physical and Spiritual Fitness.”  Maybe you’ve read it, maybe you haven’t, but it was mainly a reflection of the similarities I was finding between the two, and the heart issues that were present in each area of my life.  I haven’t gone back to read through each one to refresh my memory on exactly what I talked about in each, but I remember talking about discipline and how important it is to have goals.  Ironically, all that talk about setting goals got me absolutely nowhere (surprise, surprise), and I’ve found myself right back where I started.

Right now, the summer of my senior year of college is just beginning.  It’s the last summer I’ll have as a student and I don’t want to let it get away without squeezing every bit out of it that I possibly can.  And I don’t mean that in a, “Yeahhh! Summmerrr! Party it up bro!”  Surely if you know me, you know me better than that.  Rather, I want to harness this newfound free time to address a lot of things internally that I feel have the potential to wreck my life later down the road.  The foremost of these, as you may have guessed, is discipline.  Whether physical discipline, spiritual discipline, relational discipline (you name it) – I have a tendency to always choose the easy way out.  Maybe you’re familiar with it?

“Yeah, sure, I know that’s probably a good idea to be doing, but I’m just real tired right now…and I just want to take a nap.” [etc. x infinity.]

So this post, in short, is a declaration of sorts to all five if you read this that I’m going to grab this summer by the throat and not allow my lack of immediate obligation to lull me into thinking that my life is just peachy.  I’d rather learn about the importance of personal discipline, and hopefully build a solid foundation for the post-student era of my life as a “real person.”  In light of that, I’ve purchased a book I’ve been wanting to read for awhile now, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney.  It doesn’t sound like a very sexy book to be reading, I know, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, and I think it fits quite appropriately with what God’s been leading my toward.

(On a quick side note, I don’t think it’s one bit of an accident that God has placed me in a living situation with Jamison Combs with whom I am good friends, and who has just gone through a successful season of discipline himself.  How cool is God that He know’s what’s going on in our lives in advance, and places us in situations that are conducive to the things He wants to teach us – even before we realize it’s something we need to learn?)

I’m taking the remainder of the day to read, reflect and plan out the goals that I’ll be pursuing over the summer.  I’d appreciate if you’d be praying for me periodically throughout the next few months as you think about it.  I’ll post up my goals when I figure them out in case you’re interested.  Have an awesome day!

William Wallace Spirituality: Thoughts on Being a Man.

Sometimes, [most times] I feel as though I’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m doing.  I know that’s a weird thing to say, and though it very well may be a feeling shared by everyone, it’s not something you hear people talk about very much.  It’s one of those basic, social instincts that subconsciously tells us that we need to ensure that everyone thinks we’re entirely in control of what’s going on in our lives.  We look with such judgement at the poor, homeless, and less competent people we encounter, all the while tending to feel the most insecure around people who we perceive to be easily handling a higher level of responsibility in their own lives – whether that’s really true or not.

There’s a quote from Wild at Heart about this that’s continually stuck with me – something I’ve been thinking about all week: (I’ll paraphrase)

“Unless a man knows he is a man, he’ll spend his entire life pursuing easy things that will make him feel more like a man, while shying away from anything that he thinks will prove he is not.”

There’s so much truth in that.  It explains so much of my heart in certain things, and I honestly hate it.  I hate not knowing how to handle situations, and I hate the insecurity that comes from being around older men – men whom I perceive to be handling all of the responsibility in their own lives.  It’s hard to explain, really.  I feel like they’re just staring right through any masculine facade that I’ve thrown up on that particular day, looking at my inability to deal with the junk that’s threatening to take over my life.  They always say that women are more emotionally delicate than men, but I disagree.  I think we just each have different areas of emotion that require greater amounts of finesse.  Each gender tends to have a few questions that remain in the depths of their soul – questions searching for identity that should be brought to Jesus, but are often brought everywhere else.

For example, a few months ago I was talking to a guy friend of mine about our shared interest in sports.  More times than not, when you’re with a group of guys the topic of conversation turns to something related to sports.  But anyway, as we were talking, he made a comment about one of the sports he enjoyed playing and how rough of a sport it was.  I immediately let out a laugh, thinking he was being sarcastic about the situation because the sport mentioned was definitely not a sport I considered to be a “rough.”  The thing, though, was that he was being entirely serious, and got super defensive about it.  In a weird sense of confusion, I tried to make a “just kidding, but seriously” type of joke back about it – about how you can’t possibly expect me, as football player, to agree with that, but he continued to get more and more offended until we finally had to change the subject.  Never within the course of the conversation was I belittling the sport he liked to play or even his ability to play it, but he reacted as though I had just flat out told him that he was less of a man – that because my perception didn’t match up with his, I was insulting his masculinity.

I say that, but it’s all too often that I feel exactly the same way.  I hold some insignificant aspect of my life to be important, probably much more because it makes me feel like a man than the fact that I legitimate think it’s that important, and the second I feel that a man I respect is belittling it, I feel as though my masculinity is then being threatened.  I realize this now in a general sense, but it’s much harder to be completely vulnerable about it in the heat of the moment.  Further, I find it ironic that the more I feel threatened by an older, “more competent” man, the more I’ll try to avoid any contact with him.  Although the very thing I need is to be hanging out with older, more mature Godly men, I want to avoid them because I feel like they’re going to discover a lack of masculinity and then scold me for it…or something.  I know, it sounds stupid, but when do feelings ever really make sense?

I can’t even begin to explain how many awkward encounters I’ve had with older guys I respect.  In fact, just yesterday I saw one of my pastors in Starbucks and completely blanked on anything to say to him.  I wanted to go back and explain why I was so awkward, but I feel like sometimes you just need to let things go, so as to not make them even worse.  It’s not that I don’t want to be friends, I just don’t know how to be.  Besides, how do I explain that: “I really respect you as a Godly man and would like you help me understand how to better be one, but I’m also intimidated by that thought and nervous about the possibility that an opportunity for you to pour into me may actually have the exact opposite effect – that you, potentially not realizing the nature of the situation, may say something carelessly that stabs straight through my attempt at vulnerability.”

I don’t know, maybe I’m just thinking too much about nothing, but it feels like growing up into some semblance of Biblical manhood has continually rubbed my face in my own tendency toward shirking responsibility and not pursuing discipline – toward “boyhood.”  The thing is, I legitimately and genuinely want to be able to take responsibility for making things happen, but there’s a continual nagging in the back of my mind that always shoots holes in every attempt.  Every time I plan out a strategy for taking a certain aspect of my life by the horns and cultivating it into what I want to to be, it seems to suddenly turn into a much bigger issue than I had thought.  I don’t want to be that guy that makes excuses for his weaknesses, I want to face them and kill them.

I realize that sounds very romantically valiant and all now, but in truth it’s really not – especially in the heat of battle when you’re bleeding to death in a mud pit, fighting to keep from letting your self-inflicted wounds kill you.  Everyone stares starry-eyed at the William Wallace figures in Christian Spirituality (the ones we see as having a chokehold grip on their junk), but that same gaze is never offered to the scrawny man, writhing on the ground from wounds he has self-inflicted out of a lack of ability to wield a sword.  People look at that man with disgust, wondering how and why he could be so incompetent as to not be able to hold a sword without slicing himself to ribbons, or even simply have enough common sense to make use of the pile of armor sitting beside him that he has been given.

No guy wants to be that second man, I guarantee you that.  But few really understand the weight and reality of what it takes to pursue the “William Wallace Spirituality.”  I don’t think you get to be William Wallace without going through years of training and discipline.  Even in the movie Braveheart we see William’s uncle come and take him away to teach him about the disciplines of being a man.  ”Before you can learn to use this [a sword],” his uncle tells him, “You must learn to use this [your mind].”  What truth.  Almost any guy I’ve ever met has always wanted to “shoot first and ask questions later” – start playing around with the sword without having any idea in hell what he’s doing, hoping to figure it out as he goes.

Guys want to do, we don’t want to read all the instructions.  Even more so, we want to put ourselves in situations where we can flex our strengths, hoping that no one will ever notice all the atrophied aspects of our lives that we deem too exhausting and painful to ever address.  The thing is, I think we’re all kidding ourselves as men if we think this is an acceptable means of leading.  Leading isn’t about puffing up a facade of competence that you feel will impress others into following you.  It’s about being willing to be dead honest with yourself about where you’re weak and where you’re strong – offering yourself to others on both fronts as a tool to facilitate both your own growth and the growth of others.

Because let’s face it, Jesus took responsibility for every strength and weakness that every person in the history of the planet ever had – even yours (whether you accept that or not.)  Not only did he endure for you the punishment you had coming, but he offers you a spot as his kid.  Seeing a little kid try to out-do his Dad in something is funny – funny in a, “Ohh, look at that cute little kid trying to imitate his Daddy” kind of way.  It never crosses anybody’s mind that this child will actually be able to out-do his father because, at least within this social snapshot, his father is lightyears ahead of him in size, intelligence, wisdom and ability.  In the same way, puffing up in front of other people is really only you clutching onto your own attempts to prove how competent/wise/smart/skillful you are – something that is is utterly laughable in comparison to your Father.

So maybe becoming a man is a lot less about what you’re trying to prove to others you are, and a lot more about understanding what it takes to cultivate that which you already are – Taking responsibility for yourself (all the good AND the bad) and taking responsibility for those around you with whom you’ve been entrusted.  And I don’t mean, “Hey! Everyone! Look how good I am at taking responsibility!”  If that’s where you choose to go with it, then you’ve missed the whole point.  Rather, it means looking at yourself in the mirror with sober judgement, being man enough to admit the areas where you’re not that great and going to Jesus, asking for help as you begin the unpleasant process of building discipline and masculinity.

I never said it was fun an easy, but it’s pursuing who God built us to be and what he intended for us to do.  Why waste any more time running away from that?  It’s not like God has ever had the intention of making your life suck (despite what it feels like sometimes), so why distrust him in this, especially when we’ve so readily trusted him in others?