Simple Living Isn’t Always

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the word ‘destiny.’ I have heard countless speakers reminding me that I have a destiny, and I need to track it, fight to get to it, seize it, and mount it on my wall. Wait, that’s deer hunting.

Seriously, we in the church talk endlessly about destiny. We put slogans about it on coffee mugs, T-shirts, and pens. We engrave it on plaques and paperweights. We hold it up like a talisman against evil. It’s funny, though, that my “destiny” always seems to involve triumphing over evil forces standing in the way of more and better stuff for me: better job, better life; better car, better wife. In that way, some say, I can be a “showcase” full of trophies that demonstrate God’s might.

Destiny as they describe it never seems to involve suffering or pain, or even discomfort. Sometimes destiny involves exactly those things. Consider the man, blind from birth, whom Jesus heals in John 9. The disciples want to know what caused his illness, and Jesus replies: “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3).

If you meditate on that statement awhile, it might go off like a time bomb in your heart. A man was born blind “so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Now, I’m not saying that God sits in heaven determining which “lucky” one of us gets “blessed” with an incurable disease so we can be healed after years of suffering. But if my destiny is to “display the works of God,” which I believe it is, suddenly everything that happens to me, good and bad, takes on deep significance. My destiny is right here, right now; I’m carrying it around in a clay jar (2 Corinthians 4:7-12). I don’t need to seize it; I need to surrender to it. When I do, I will be a showcase for God’s greatest work, a new life made possible by Jesus.
(This is a rerun from last year, but it’s been running in my head for a while. I thought I’d post it for a wider audience. [snicker])

This looks like an interesting forthcoming title from W Publishing. What do we do with suburbia? How can we avoid equating middle- to upper-middle-class lifestyles and values with Christian values?

You may know, or you may not, that Green Day has a song called “Jesus of Suburbia” on its American Idiot album. You can probably tell that it’s not a positive song, esp. since it’s also on the Bullet in a Bible CD/DVD. There are two words that should never go together, eh?

Let me preface this post by again pointing out that I am a layman, not at all ‘learned’ in the Scriptures or theology. I am, though, a fairly diligent layman who has attempted to self-educate in this area for a long while.

One astute commenter pointed out our culture’s tendency to externalize all evil in a personal Enemy. While that’s ultimately true (without him, no Fall), much of the evil in today’s world takes human form, many times our own form. I don’t think Racism, for example, is some demon’s name, though they and their master take delight in racism; but racism is planted and nurtured in human hearts, and enacted by human mouths and hands. Likewise, cocaine comes from a plant God made; yet human minds and hands (perhaps influenced by the great Enemy) determined the process of production for maximum damage and potency.

I have attended churches fascinated by the works of the devil, gleefully committing one of the errors C.S. Lewis suggested was possible. They were big fans of the ‘Pigs in the Parlor’ approach (to which I referred in my post). In other words, everything bad had its connected demon. And I’ve heard folks invoke the archangel Michael to come and evict the offending demon. To those folks I think we have to say, again and again, what the comic strip character Pogo once said, “I have met the enemy and he is us.”

Attributing all the evil in the world to Satan is a serious error, one that is alien to the New Testament, as far as I can read. Paul and John both point out our sinfulness, and our desperate need for redemption. Paul speaks in Romans of ‘another law’ at work <em>in him</em>, wrestling with the law of God, which was like an invading force. There is a cosmic war, I believe, and I think human hearts are a kind of beachhead, a landing zone to be secured as a post for further incursion into a world held hostage by sin.

But I’ve seen the other side too, the one that wallows in a kind of pseudo-secularism. Implicit in that view is the kind of mindset illustrated in the movie <em>Signs</em>, where Mel Gibson says we’re all we’ve got so we’ve got to make the best of it. It’s a modern sort of Deism, or Epicureanism, that sees God so far away as to have little real influence in our daily lives; by the same token, there’s no evil figure fighting to destroy or pervert all that God made good. We don’t need one since we’re bad enough.

I think my pastor’s main concern was the sort of blind ’sword-swinging’ that sometimes characterizes our lives, striking out indiscriminately against all that feels or seems bad. I believe our real need in the church is for the kind of discernment that says either “I’ve dug this hole I’m in by self-indulgence or self-worship. The way out is to allow God to romance me again, to so ravish me that I see the world around through Him” <strong>OR</strong> “This is an attack from outside, some kind of spiritual missile lobbed in my direction. The way out is to submit myself to God and resist the devil (in accordance with James).”

I think both happen, albeit at different times. Discerning which is which is the real task.

All that said (war imagery and whatnot) I think we Westerners might benefit too from the Eastern interpretation of our condition, of sin as an infection rather than an infraction. In other words, the human race is suffering from a sin disease, and like any disease, it needs not negotiation but medication and treatment. In this sense, Jesus’ atonement is the cure, working its way through the afflicted human race by ‘carriers,’ who have been transformed from the inside out by the cure. Instead of weapons in God’s hands, we are healers, a kind of spiritual antibiotic released into an infected world.

I’m getting in deep, I know. This is heady stuff. And unfortunately I’ll have to leave it at that for now. To be continued?

Great sermon series right now at our church called “The Warrior.” In addition to some fantastic Flash animation of a samurai, Pastor Tony McCollum has really hit home every week, detailing some aspect of a man’s struggle, and his calling to fight the good fight of faith.

This week he talked about the warrior’s cause: why the warrior fights at all. In short, we fight because God told us to, but more specifically, we fight for the church, our children, our spouses, and our homes. And we fight with the warrior’s weapons (from 2 weeks ago) detailed in Ephesians 6. Above all, the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, is important.

Now writing all this has made me think about how much many in the Western church dislike the ‘warrior’ or ’fighting’ imagery and language. We tend to think, along with many a hipster, “I’m a lover not a fighter.” And yet sometimes loving means fighting. For instance, someone I love has lost everything in his life because of his various addictions. Now I have another loved one fighting the same addictions. Can I love him without fighting alongside him against those demons? I don’t think so. (Btw, I’m using demons in the general sense, not in the ”You demon of cocaine/porn/pot/sinus infection…” sense.)

So there’s the rub. It can’t be that we dismiss fighting because it is valuable, even essential in the Christian life; but we must be sure of the right adversary. As Pastor Tony pointed out a few weeks ago: we don’t fight our spouse (however much it feels like it), our kids (however much we’d like to ), or our boss (however much we’d hate to). We have one enemy, the one Jesus said came has only the most malevolent mission; the one Peter said went around roaring like a lion, looking for lunch; the one John, in Revelation, promises will meet his ultimate doom at the hands of one called Faithful and True. In fact, our enemy’s name means ‘enemy’ or ‘adversary’. What better descriptor can you think of for somebody who wants you dead or as good as dead?

So I should fight, I have to fight, if I’m to fulfill my calling as a child of God, a husband, a father, and a friend. That doesn’t make it easier. In fact, I find it difficult to keep that frame of mind in my comfy chair in my comfy house, with a belly full of Mexican-type food. And yet if I lose that focus, forget to sharpen my sword by giving time to studying the Word, praying with and for my family, then I might as well be snoozing on the frontlines. That’s what I’m doing, after all.

That was a rather lengthy review/introduction to say, remembering the cause is essential. It’s too easy for me to forget the things that are worth fighting for, to take them for granted. And then, while I’m sleeping, something creeps in to make a pauper of me.

Anyway, great sermon.

Great three-(two-)parter from Fred Clark at Slacktivist.

Really starts here (though it’s headed Part II), and continues with Part III, which is a withering commentary on the state of art in contemporary evangelicalism. He’s a hardliner, for sure, and wouldn’t fit in the room with the evangelical gatekeepers these days, but man. It’s good in the way a kick in the stomach (or elsewhere) is good when you’re feeling too big for your britches.

BTW, as you’ll see, it’s a response to an Amy Sullivan article in Washington Monthly. It’s worth a read as well.