“I know you”… Because I read about you in People.

We  have to know about a person before we actually get to know a person.  Knowing about is different than knowing.  People magazine probably provides good examples of this: through People magazine, we get to know about all kinds of people.  Clearly, though, we don’t know these people.

This post, over at Micah Tillman’s excellent blog got me thinking about this issue.  Micah was thinking about the idea that Christians today are expected to hold many more beliefs than the apostles did.  People who came after the apostles were the ones who put words to, and worked out the ramifications of, many things believed by the people who knew Jesus first hand.  He made that distinction with reference to God: there is a difference between knowing about God and knowing God.

The thing I’m thinking about is that God isn’t really a special case in this regard.  Any relationship we choose to engage in is one where first we knew about the person, and then we actually got to know the person.

Most of us would not be satisfied in our personal lives if we merely knew about our friends.   But so many people settle for merely knowing about God, rather than engaging in relationship with Him.

On the other hand, if we didn’t know anything about our friends, it’d be wierd to call them friends.  If exchanging a list of facts about ourselves was forbidden, we wouldn’t have much to build on.

Yet it’s also so tempting to merely try to relate to God without knowing anything about him.  This other extreme, I guess, is equally dangerous.

 

Suffering

Jesus took on the suffering that I deserved.

That’s Christianity in eight words.

Jesus took on the suffering that I deserved.  He wants me to be like him.

That’s Christianity in fifteen words.

If Jesus took on the suffering that I deserved, and if Jesus wants me to be like him, then Jesus wants me to take on the suffering that others deserve.

That’s so easy in the abstract.  But in the concrete?  In the here and now?

It’s so easy to run away from it.

There is this person who has caused me pain.   He has set out to hurt me and he has succeeded.   A lot.

And I tried to run away from it.  I didn’t want to suffer.

I thought about these really clever books I read.  I thought about this understanding they brought in me.  They described how Jesus found this third way: not a path of a victim, not a path of a conqueror.

There’s probably something to do all that.  But if there is, I managed to pervert it.  Because maybe it’s true, that Jesus found some third way.  But what it is undeniable is that Jesus suffered.  Jesus suffered even though others deserved to suffer.  He took it on himself.

And he’s calling me to do the same: to suffer.

This doesn’t mean I have to be stupid about it.  It doesn’t mean I have to be a masochist.  But it does mean I have to let go of some idols I’ve been worshipping.  Earthly comfort.  Wordly security.

I won’t be doing this all at once.  I won’t make this proclamation and be changed all the sudden.

But it’s a path I’m beginning now: a path of suffering.  A path with Jesus.

I asked myself “What would Jesus third way be?” As I thought about this person who hurt me.

What I wanted was a balm.  What I wanted was some clever and easy solution that would minimize my pain and maximize the impression that I’m deep and spiritual.

And so here I am: repenting of all that.   Walking down a path that is absurd and beautiful, a path that is equal parts liberating and terrifying.  I know that I will cower away from it.  But I know that He’ll be waiting on it for me, calling me back to it.

Wrong turns

I went left once.  When I was meant to turn right.

I was lost.

Lost and free.

Because, really,

None of us ever truly know where we are.

And I was liberated in my awareness of my state.

 

I made my way home again.

Maybe.

And now, some timeless time later.

Things are back to normal.

Maybe.  And I watch you go down the steps

and round a bend,

and I know suddenly

that when I catch up

to where you should be

I know that you will be

gone.

 

I realize it suddenly.

There is something bigger

than taking a wrong turn left

or a wrong turn right.

 

Call it a True Wrong Turn, a Deep Wrong Turn.

It results in a stepping away.

A slip-falling away.

A lostness.

Irrevocably elsewhere and elsewhen.

 

I realized it as I walked in your steps

catching up with where you should be

That maybe it’s not you but me

Lost, lost, and lost.  A Wrong Turn.

 

As I began to round that corner

(to that place where I was sure you would not be)

I feared.

What if we all

always

fell, slipped in, slipped out,

Turned Wrong.

We might live together, sometimes, but then,

we all round a bend, and it is somehow a different bend we all round,

and what lives on the other side of the corner

is different for me then it is for you…

 

How could we ever even know if this was the constant way of things?

 

Finally, now, I’m around the bend.

And you, inexplicably, are still there.

I think.

 

Satan and Job

I was reading the book of Job tonight, and something caught my eye.  I’d always been curious about what the following means, “One day the angels ^[a] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan ^[b] also came with them. ⁷ The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
      Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.”

 ⁸ Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

 ⁹ “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. ¹⁰ “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. ¹¹ But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

 ¹² The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
      Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.”

What occured to me tonight is that God was really up in Satan’s face in all this.

It sounds almost like Satan tried to sneak back into heaven.  He just wanders back in through the pearly gates.  He seems to be hoping nobody noticed he was gone.  But God’s question cuts right to the heart of the matter: Where have you been?

Satan’s reply could be motivated from lots of different directions.  Perhaps it’s meant to be vague.  Perhaps it’s meant to point out that he has been in God’s creation (as if he could have gone outside of it.)  Perhaps it’s a smug reminder of the chaos that he’d been causing.

But God doesn’t rise to the bait.  Instead, he seems to be saying, “Remember those humans you hate so much?  Remember how you think your so much better than them?  Remember how you think you have all this dominion over them?  Well, there’s one down there who is bigger than you.”

 Satan’s reply is really an excuse.  And a sad one.  It’s as if he’s saying, “If only Job had experienced what I’ve experienced, then he’d respond as I have.” 

The whole book is really about putting that claim to the the test.  And the very last lines of this chapter are so significant, such a marked contrast to Satan’s ways of doing things.

 ²² In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing

Some thoughts on New Moon

It seems I’m a little behind the times.  I tried to read those books, but couldn’t.  I watched Twilight for the first time the other day.   My wife devoured them all, and given that I don’t spend my life locked in a closet, I’ve absorbed a bit more.

I’m therefore not an expert on these things.  But what I know disturbs me.

At the center of all these New Moon books are some very unhealthy messages.   Ironically, underneath the mask of hipness, Gothic cool, and un-traditional super natural themes, there is this sub text which is the very worst part of traditional views of women. 

More specifically:

Begun with a protagonist whose name is Bella… Beauty.  It’s o.k. for people to be beautiful.  But names are powerful things.  It’s not o.k. to have nothing but beauty.

And if you had to boil down all this, what it’s really about is a girl with no power except her beauty.  There is nothing to attract these super natural, powerful men, except her attractiveness.   We can dress this reality up, and talk about how she smells, or the fact that people can’t read her mind, or whatever… But what it comes down to is that we have this person whose only real quality is her attractiveness, and she is found to be appealing.

And her only real decision is which of these men she will choose.  It’s a foregone conclusion that she must choose one of them in order to be complete.    The rabid fans mostly designate themselves as “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob.”  My wife, after having seen the movie last night, shared something interesting, perhaps with out realizing it.  There is also a team Switzerland.  As one might guess, Team Switzerland is neutral on the matter.  However, my wife quoted one of them as saying “We don’t care which one she ends up with.”

Interesting that there’s not a team saying, “You don’t need either of them.”

As I reflect on that twilight movie, it occurs to me… if Edward wasn’t a vampire, the relationship would have been nothing other than abusive.   I suppose the only really new twist on the whole thing is that while their is the old fashioned “Save the bad boy from himself” thing going on, there is also this “Make me as bad as you” thing going on in Bella’s desire to be turned to a vampire…

The Saving the bad boy  from himself mentality  is not a good thing.  It goes back before James Dean, at least to the 18th century Gothic novels, filled with brooding and mysterious counts being redeemed by the innocent maidens who happen into their castles.   I wonder how many women have been encouraged to believe that it is their responsibility to change despicable men by this idealogy.  I wonder how much abuse has been tolerated.  I wonder how much inexcusable behavior has been excused, because the guy is misunderstood, or dark, or talented, or an artist, or tough, or what-ever.

However: It’s heading in the wrong direction to encourage the maidens to embrace the darkness, evil, whatever. 

There are so many problems caused by girl’s who don’t see themselves as competent and powerful.  Both men and women are ruining themselves believing that they need another person to complete themselves.   What we take into our hearts and minds does impact us… And that’s why I think that these New Moon books and movies are pretty dangerous things.

fade

I think there is a feeling

that exists with out a word describing it.

When the camera’s focus softens

When I fade into the background

 

Suddenly I am monotonous

the edges of everything grow fuzzy

I am naseous but not in my body

I am drained of depth and difference.

 

It is not a thing I know.

It is a felt reality.

Everything is the same as it was.

Except for just everything.

 

I have no name for this.

Don’t call it sadness.

Sadness is a waste product of this reaction…

I am looking for the source.

 

There is some reason for grattitude amidst this.

I see things in a way now that I never could have.

I don’t know how to tell you

That I should have cherished the time before this.

 

 

Reconisdering Lineages

I was recently working with a student on the Ellis Island website.  He was doing some work for history and was getting quite excited.  He’d found records of his ancestor’s immigration to America.  This child had been born in Russia and adopted in the U.S. as an infant.  The records were not those of his birth family but those of his adopted family.    And the child– normally a very unmotivated and hard-to reach student– was fascinated.

As I began reading Mark 1 today, this student came into my mind.  As you may know, Mark 1 begins with Jesus’ lineage.

It’s almost a stereotype: long lists of who sired who is the very definition of what some people find boring in the bible.  I’d be a liar if I claimed that I read them with same intensity that I’d bring to Jesus’ words.  But I think there’s a lesson floating around in my student’s excitement.

I didn’t ask him, but I suspect what might have been fascinating for him is the idea that he was confronted with the reality that there were people who came before.  Abstractly, we all know that we had great grandparents, and great grand parents, and great grand parents.  But it’s hard, I think, for any of us, to really recognize that this nearly endless string of people were real people with flaws and talents and dreams and fears,  until we are confronted with evidence for their existence.

The mere fact that our ancestors exist is not nearly as interesting as the realization that they made decisions which impact us today.  If we are not adopted, they even carried some of the genes which we carry today.   Their is this unbroken line, this invisible cord that links us.

I wonder if the people at Jesus time, and the generations after, I wonder if those lineages impacted them in the same way.  I wonder if the lists of names, dates, and marriages in Mathew and everywhere else in the bible were a way of not only making the figures seem real but of also connecting them to the people reading.

To the best of my knowledge, I have no Jewish ancestry.  At first blush, it might seem that the lineages are therefore irrelevant to me.

But that student I mentioned before?  He was adopted.  He had no biological ties to the records he was discovering.  Yet I don’t think he could have been more excited, even if he had been born into his adopted family.

And so it is with me: I’m adopted, too.  I’m adopted into Christ’s family.  And if you follow him, you are, too.

We may not carry the same genes as those people, listed in those lineages.  We may not be closely biologically related.  But we are family anyway.  They are interconnected with each other, and also interconnected with us.  They made decisions which impact us, they changed the world.

And maybe this isn’t motivation enough to do an exhaustive reading of every lineage in the bible.  But it gives me pause to read them a little closer than I might.  These people are my ancestors, after all.  They walked the earth, and they breathed the air, and they had hopes, and dreams, and fears…  and that’s a pretty amazing thing.