After a busy day

Adam named them all.

that done, he lounged.

Naked and unashamed.

In the Garden.

He contemplated his help-mate.

Considered locating her.

He realized that she was nowhere to be seen.

He realized there were these rules.

He’d never told her of.

By the time

he worked up the enthusiasm

to go find her.

She

was already mid-conversation

with a thing

he’d recently named serpent.

(He was especially proud of that one, serpent.

It starts soft and ends hard.)

One wedge had been chewed out of the fruit in her hand.

Its juices ran down her chin.

Adam took it from her with a shrug.

But also a feeling of wonder and horror.

He contemplated that he’d mastered all the nouns on that warm afternoon.

He reckoned that he was ready

for the knowledge of good

and the knowledge of evil.

Like God

There are upper limits on nearly everything about us.

There is an upper limit to how much we can lift.  There is an upper limit to how much pain we can withstand before fainting.  There is an upper limit to how much we can remember.  There is an upper limit to how fast we can react.  To how wise our decisions can be.  This list could go on and on.

But there is no upper limit to how much we can love.

Perhaps this is the way in which we are made in the image of God.   People talk about God’s perfect love as a divine attribute: something far beyond us.  But it’s only beyond us because we don’t live up to our potential.  It’s quite different from the other things that we say about God.

A person who studied his whole life could never, even in theory, be as wise as God.  Omniscience is utterly impossible for us.

A person who spent his whole life working out would be nowhere near as strong as God.   A person who spent his whole life accumulating power would be nowehre as powerful as God.  Omnipotence is utterly impossible for us.

A person always arises from prior circumstances.  Self-existence (asiety) will never belong to us.

But God’s perfect love?  In practice, we of course fall short.  But in theory?  In theory we could be as loving as God.

I start contemplating all this tonight, while watching the film Legion with my lovely wife.  The film was fair (at best.)  It embodied a goofy theology, an incoherent plot and flirted with stereotype.   But it lead me to recognizing– not for the first time– that it’s rather surprising.  We humans are so very precious to our Creator.  We’re quite unlikely candidates to stand in the center of the cosmic drama that we find ourselves in.

Not just God, but even angels and demons seem to have so much more going on.  They are clearly smarter than us, faster than us, stronger than us…

I don’t know if my conclusion came from my own puny little brain or from something bigger than me.  But there’s something that rings true to me in this little dialogue.

I imagined somebody complaining to God, about this.  How tiny we are, how insignificant we seem.  If we’re so central, why do we end up so impotent?

(Part of the answer to this is, of course, that in and through Christ we’re not impotent.  But that’s not where my brain went in this imagined conversation.)

God’s answer (at least in my imagination) “Child… in power and even wisdom you are insiginificant before me, and the angels, and the demons… But power and wisdom matter so little.  In the way that matters most, in the capacity for love, you are made in my imagine; you have the capacity to love on a scale the very same scale that I love on.”

The Day they Repossessed my College Education.

Night.  And silence.

Silence made bigger by the exceptions which prove its rule,

the cat snoring, and the refridgerator droning to the wall.

Night and silence.

And the telephone doesn’t ring at 3 Am,

it shrieks in the silence.

I fumble for it before I am awake.

And a calm voice, almost bored.  Announces.

I am here to repossess your college education.

I am sorry.  I knew I was behind on repaying my loans.

I am here to repossess your college education.

There must be some mistake.  I will do better.

There are these burly little men.

Small enough to squeeze out of the holes in the listening part of the telephone.

They pop out and plod their way up my ear.

They wear tiny work boots.

and they have tiny picky axes.

They’d be cute

if they weren’t

busying themselves

at hacking away at my brains.

They fill up these burlap bags.

With memories of the best pot I ever smoked.

And apple fritters and air hockey at the student union.

And some classes, and a few things I learned.

They march out.

Ladened with bags that are full.

I have hung up the phone but they do not fret.

They walk underneath the closed front door.

They do not have to duck.

The little burly men

who came to repossess my college education.

Will turn it over to their bosses.

Who will sell my education off.

To pay back the loans I had fallen behind on.

It will make a dent.

In the sum that I owed.

A few months later.

I recieve a bill in the mail.

For the balance outstanding.

I can’t pay it off.

I’m not college educated anymore.

I’m making minimum wage.

Because I never bothered to learn any skills.

Either.

God’s purpose for my life.

What’s God’s plan for my life?

It can seem like the most important question we might ask.

But I’m starting to think that the question is, at best, a non-starter, a smoke screen, and a distraction.

Because the thing is, it’s almost inevitable that our answers to this question is a list of things to do.  Goals to accomplish.  Titles to earn.  Recognitions to recieve.

These might be great things.   Feeding the hungry.  Clothing the naked.  Visiting the improsoned.  Curing cancer.  Saving a life.  Saving a soul.

No matter how good these things are on the surface, they are not enough.

Asking the question, “What does God want me to do with my life?” and expecting the answer is a laundry list of things to do, no matter how noble… this is a dangerous, and ungodly path.

I don’t worship a God who wants me to spend my life contemplating my navel.  I don’t believe God wants me to disengage from the world.

But I believe that engagement in the world ought to flow out of what’s going on in my heart, my connection to Him.

And maybe this is part of why we get distracted.  Part of why we answer in the wrong way.

All those outward things are easy to identify, share, and quantify.  Perhaps equally importantly, they make me feel different, special, and unique.

I think the best and deepest answer to the question, “What is God’s goals for me” are universal ones.  God wants all of us to live in close relation with Him.

All the rest is just a means to an end.

Who are we really hurting?

I’m watching a good friend start to make some really tough decision and really turn their life around.   Some of the people around this person have disapointed me.  Many of them have not been as supportive as they should have.

Some have made vieled cracks about my friends liklihood of sticking with the changes.   Others have made public complaints about how “the system” makes it easier for some people and “punishes” others to make these changes.  (In effect, making excuses for why they can’t make these positive life changes, too.)    Others have decided it’s a good time to publicly criticize and focus on the negatives of this person.   Still others have made snap judgements about situations they don’t fully understand; they’ve set ultimatums, limits, and expectations that aren’t rooted in the reality of what’s happening and don’t help the person who’s trying to change.

I’m not wanting to complain about those people now.   I’ve spent enough time praying and meditating over these mistakes to see  myself in all this.  In this particular case,  it’s a temptation to be all self-righteous, because, in this particular case, I’ve avoided the pitfalls.

But if I’m really honest with myself, I’ve done similiar things with other people: they are making hard decisions, they are doing the right thing, and I feel threatened by this.  I find it necessary to minimize what they are doing, to predict failure for them.  Right now,  I’m feeling ashamed of myself, for the times I’ve done these things.

This is one of the reasons my disapointment with others, in this case, was so sharp: beneath the surface, it’s really a disapointment in myself, for my sins, for the times I’ve been “that” person, bring others down, getting in the way of positive life change.  I can be pretty subtle.  I can be great on self-delusion.  Some of these times, it didn’t actually even impact the person…

But that’s almost missing the point!  One of the truths that is really so obvious to me now is this: the condition of my heart impacts me.  When I think things and feel things that aren’t good, even if I don’t do anything on the outside, I’m impacted on the inside.

Every time I’ve tried to protect myself from disapointment by assuming the worst of others, I’ve hurt myself by doing this.

Every time I’ve felt threatned by others doing well because I’m not doing well, I’ve hurt myself by doing this.

Every time I’ve claimed that I’m just being a realist, when in fact I was being a pessimist, I’ve hurt myself by doing this.

Every time I’ve called someone’s courage an act of fool hardy-ness, I’ve hurt myself by doing this.

So that’s what I’m thinking about this morning.  I’m watching these people try to tear down my friend.  Most of them don’t realize that’s what they are doing.  But it’s so clear to me that they are hurting themselves as much as they are hurting their target… most of them don’t even realize that they are doing either, but I am so clear that they are.

Kidney Stones and babies.

I’ve just had this realization that it all begins with trusting in God’s extraordinary love.

If we truly believe that God is love, that he possesses this tremendous love for us, then so many other things fall into place.

And if we can’t grasp hold of this great Truth then there are so many other things that we can’t possibly believe.

If God loves us then we can believe– we have no choice but to believe– that everything that happens to us will be redeemed; we believe that the pain, hurt, and betrayal that happen to us are not the final end.  We believe that they will be dwarfed by the destiny in store for us.   (Perhaps we even go so far as to believe that all things happen to us for a reason.)

The identical experiences– or even less painful ones– have an entirely different context if God’s love is a lie.  And this context means everything to us.

I have heard well-intentioned but knuckleheaded Christ followers say to people “Look, God didn’t owe you anything.  The mere fact of your existence is a bonus.”

But the thing that this misses is that if life is just a series of painful events, it is far from a bonus.  There are people who can say, in honesty, that they wish they’d never been born.  This is not so much because the actual pain they feel runs deeper than that of the Christ follower.  It is because there is no reason to think the pain is anything but gratitious.

For a Christian, pain is like child birth.  We have this awareness that there must be some amazing result (like a child) that the whole thing is worth.  As babies are born, people cry in joy.

For somebody who doesn’t know God’s love, pain is like passing a kidney stone.  A little rock that made it’s way through the urinary tract is not much worth the whole process.

Some musings

A topic for contemplation:

We are made in the image of God.

Yet Adam and Eve were thrown out of Garden because they tried to be like God.

We are the inheritors of their sin.

And yet the spirit of God can dwell within us.

These propositions aren’t contradictory, of course.  But some tension arises between them…

And so the thing I find myself wondering:

In what ways are we made in the image of God?

In what ways should we strive to be God-like?

In what ways is being God-like impossibly beyond our grasp and even evil?

If I were Satan…

The devil doesn’t really compete with God.  It’s not like if God ran McDonalds, he’d start Burger King.    Satan doesn’t create alternatives.  He corrupts what’s already there.

If God were behind McDonalds (He’s not, but work with me here) then Satan would just busy himself ruining McDonalds, sabotaging the big macs.

And so I guess we ought to expect that Satan wouldn’t try to diminish our interest in Chistmas.  He wouldn’t create a counter-holiday, or convince the world that Christmas isn’t worth it.

Instead, he’d try to pervert our very understanding of what the whole thing means.

If I were Satan, I might begin by making it all about materialism.  And I’d put the emphasis on us, not Jesus.  Because we are so inconsistent, if I were Satan, I wouldn’t worry that it’d be a problem, if at exactly the same time, I created all these expecations of peace and joy around Christmas.  We goofy little humans would hardly notice if Christmas was simultaneously an orgy of materialism and a “promise” of divine tranquility and peace.

Instead of trying to de-emphasize Christmas, I’d try to make it  important in people’s brains for all the wrong reasons.  I’d nurture an endless parade of things that must be done before Christmas:  Shopping, decorating, special outfits, cards.  I’d laugh as the human’s scurrying increased to a frantic pace, as the space between them and their God widened because they’d be so lost in a parade of dead-end actions.

Then, in the aftermath of Christmas,  people would feel hung over by the fact that all the material goods that didn’t deliver,  they’d  feel ashamed at the human focus, they’d feel betrayed that their own lives weren’t perfect on December 25th.

If I were the devil, I’d use the fact that New Years Eve is only a week after Christmas.  I’d encourage people to drink and party to drown their sorrows.  I’d emphasize the making of empty resolutions with out plans on how to get there, so that the hopelessness increased when people tried to change and the change didn’t stick.

Man, I am so glad that Satan isn’t busy doing these exact things…

Consider the possibility of kindness

That  shortest distance,

That straight line

Between point A and point B…

It is a fiction, a mythic beast, a lie, a damned lie-statistic.

Beware of unequivocal designations.

Beware the resistency to hesitation.

Surety is the domain and dominion of the fascist.

(And the declaration

of fascists lurking about

is a boomerang claim, circling back at him who dares speaks it)

Consider the possibility of kindness.

Consider that There is a pathetic little thing

Mewling in the dark

Its innards out

Ruined.

Who will be the one to reach out and snap its neck.

If it is a soft thing

If the skull fits calm and warm in your palm.

Will you be the one to twist

Like the opening of child-proofed medicine.

Snapsnapsnap.

Consider the possibility of kindness.

We heard it together in a small kitchen.

There was a man who walked out to find it in the moonlight.

The moonlight turned those spilled fluids silver.

I do not know what color they would have been beneath the sun.

Consider the possibility of kindness.

Does it wait with me in the kitchen.

Does it stand in the open doorway and watch the silhoute.

Does it hold the dying thing in its hand and clickclickclick.

Consider the possibility of kindness.

Is it in the words of the man who declared the beast ruined.

Or in our denials of that ruination as we sit comforted around the kitchen table?

Genourosity

I realized something today: Practicing a Christ-like genourosity is harder than it looks.   I’d go so far as to suggest that we Christians have perfected a sort-of genourosity which is not very Christ-like at all.

I’m not saying that we aren’t genorous, on the whole.  I have been the recipient of incredible acts of kindness.  I am watching a sister in Christ walk through a difficult time, right now.  And there are people who want to help her.  But they aren’t helping her in a way that Jesus would, I think.  When I look back at my own acts of kindness, I realize that these, too, are not the sorts of things that Jesus would have done.

As I look at Jesus’ acts of kindness, one of the things I notice is that they are reckless.  When the women is about to get stoned, Jesus does not first establish a behavioral contract with her before he decides if he’ll intervene.  He doesn’t make her rescue dependent on her sinning no more.  He steps in, stops the killing before it starts, and sends her off with the expectation that she will sin no more.

There is something legitimate about not wanting to enable destructive behavior.  We are told be wise as serpents.  But is our only motivation wanting to do good?

Jesus heals people and tells them to keep a secret.  They don’t.  But Jesus does not un-doing the healing just because they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.  I suspect that most of us would.   We would tell everyone that this would be loving the person, helping them to learn that they should keep their word.   And maybe this would be half the truth.

But the other half is that we don’t want to recognize our powerlessness in these situations.  We buy into the world’s way of looking at things.  We think an action is only good if it has a good result.  We think our kindness is somehow canceled out if the other person doesn’t use it for maximum benefit.

If a thing comes with strings attached, we feel that we’ve legitimately purchased that thing.   There’s some sort-of paralell to grace itself in all this.  If grace was something that was we could earn, then the whole of life would be nothing but a transaction, a barter.

I don’t know how to live my life fully immersed in the vastness of this truth.  It would change many things in my place of work and my family and my life elsewhere…