Embracing the Left and the Right and Everything Else

Indulge me for a moment. You (whoever you are) are walking down a street and you encounter a group of men and women who seem to be connected with each other – arguing, laughing, talking thoughtful, playing a bit. And somewhat towards the front is a man who for all appearances looks about like any local walking that street.

Except for his eyes when he looks at you. In the movies, when they portray Jesus, his eyes tend to have this ghostly, other-worldly appearance as if an alien creature had possessed that Jewish body. Which is not at all how I picture Jesus. What I think of when I encounter him walking that dusty street is someone who, with very human eyes, has the ability to peer right inside you in a way that is both full of love and acceptance and full of anticipation that you will rise above whatever you are not now rising above, if only as he enables you to do so.

I heard it again somewhere today: "Hate the sin and love the sinner" – and in that order. Not what I read of Jesus in the Gospels. Can't even proof text that one. What I see in Jesus' eyes is just "love you, son" (I happen to be male). And as I experience that amazing and unprecedented love, I so much want to shed all that is not right and become as much like him as I humanly can. And when I find I can't, I beg him to help, heal, forgive, transform me, whatever it takes. And he does, bit by careful bit, while all along he hugs me like there is no letting go.

Indulge me a little more. Watch Jesus walk past you now. See how he encounters others on that street – a bent-over elderly woman, a rough-looking Roman soldier, a lonely prostitute, a conniving businessman, a crying child. Does he change each time he meets someone new and different? Or do those piercing eyes convey the same message every time?

Having read through those gospels so many times I cannot even make a guess, I am confident his message is as consistent as the most predictable thing you can conceive of in our present human reality. Even more so.

Not everyone responds to Jesus the same way. Some avert their eyes. Some lock eyes for a moment and then forcibly look away or down, out of fear or shame or disdain. Some respond like a long lost puppy. But his gaze and its message doesn't change.

So why do my eyes change, dependent as they are on who they see? Why do I avoid eye contact with some, fear this one or write off that one? Why do I look for the ones I think deserve my attention or who will be most receptive or who are most like me? Or who will most like
me? Why do I preface loving the sinner with "hating the sin" as if it were a clarifying clause?

Because I want to make sure everyone understands that God hates sin? Of course God does. But is that what defines God? Nope. Otherwise we'd all be charcoal briquettes. So, is "hate the sin" even a close second clause to "love the sinner"? Nope, again (with apologies to Miss Miller, my ninth grade English teacher).

What I see in Jesus' eyes is simply "Follow me". That is not a command as in "you're in trouble now." That is an invitation as in "follow me and wait and see how you change and how you will transform others around you!"

So I am sitting at a table in China with a Communist official, a businessman, a teacher and a car driver. (Not a joke) And I'm thinking, how is Jesus looking at them?

So I am sitting at a table in the USA with a Democrat/government official, a Tea Party businessman, a teacher and a truck driver. (Again, not a joke) And I'm thinking, how is Jesus looking at them?

I think about my friend who pastored a church in Central America where pro-government loyalists and revolutionary Communists attended side by side. And I wonder if that is possible here in Portland? Can they do it if they avoid talk of politics? Or is politics included along with everything else in what Jesus wants them to discuss and grow together in?

I wonder about all that. Can a church survive with Communists and Tea Partiers sitting side by side in the worship service? Oh sure, as long as one of them goes to the altar – you pick which one J Or maybe they've already been (to the altar, that is) and in fact they remain a Communist and a Tea Partier even as they've met Jesus and are trying to follow him. Only they're each still working out their salvation with fear and trembling, and so haven't quite wound up seeing eye to eye on everything.

I think about all this and wonder and hope that next time I go to a worship service or encounter someone on the street, it is the eyes of Jesus which embrace me and not another. For I know another upon seeing me – despicable as I am – is inclined to shudder and chant, "I hate your sin, though of course I love you nonetheless." And somehow it would feel like anything but love gazing out at me from such eyes.

And I pray, May I have the eyes of Jesus next time I look at another.

Neighboring

The path was muddy and steep, buildings nowhere in sight, as I climbed toward what I assumed was a residence. I hesitated at the gate, eyeing barbed wire and warning signs, but only for a minute, resolute was I to fulfill my constitutional responsibility to enumerate the population. ("How noble of you," was one noncompliant nonresponder's sarcastic reply.) 

When I found the house, amid thick undergrowth and perched on the hill like a hawk seeking prey, it felt dark and empty. The door was to the back, meeting the path and the ground at the same place. Like homes in Asia, shoes neatly lined up to the side. My, how big they are, I thought, and images of "Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum" sprung to mind. 

I knocked tentatively on the door. As I waited, it dawned on me that the door was fairly new and substantial, a stock purchase from Home Depot. How on earth did they get this door up that path? A sneeze could blow the whole building down, all but this door and its frame. 

This house, remote as if in the Canadian Tundra, sits less than half a mile from a tired, squat apartment building crouching on the edge of one of Portland's busiest streets. Like the house in the woods, the apartments are fortressed, only with bars instead of briers. 

I wonder about community in all this, these people cut off from neighbors who have no idea who each other are. In a nearby apartment building, a tenant doesn't even know the last name of her roommate. I've discovered that age, gender, ethnicity, marital or economic status, even population density do not determine connectivity. And I wonder why two neighborhoods identical in all the externals can be either so neighborly or so reclusive. 

Community is an essential characteristic of what it means to be human. The defining sign of the fall of Adam and Eve was separation – from God, from each other, with divisiveness even creeping into the relationship between humanity and the rest of the created order. Moreover, the hallmark characteristic of the new community of faith, the people of God, as portrayed in the New Testament, is a community based on love. "This is how they will know you are my disciples," Jesus said, "that you have love one for another." (John 13:35)

We sat in a hotel lounge, this provincial government official and I, drinking tea and talking like the old friends we were. He, a member of the Communist Party, and I had worked on many projects together, but never had I been able to share my faith with him. He, mentioning some foreigners kicked out for doing "religious activity," was passing on a caution without saying as much.

I took a chance. "You know I am a Christian and so are the people in my team." 

"We know that," he replied. We talked in soft tones, feebly attempting a private conversation.

"How do you know that?" I ventured.

"By how you relate to and treat each other," he said. "And that is why we like working with you."

We'd been found out without saying a word to "them" about our faith. 

I love the story of the Good Samaritan, particularly how Jesus uses it to transform the noun "neighbor" into a verb. We do right when we neighbor other people, when we love them as we love ourselves, the way we want to be loved.

And I think about the next time I trek up that winding path. I won't say it, but I will demonstrate it by my effort. I come here to enumerate you today, not because the Founding Fathers ordained it, but because my God calls me to treat you as I wish to be treated. 

Maybe the way he wants to be loved is to be left alone. Not really. "To be left alone" really means I don't want to be bothered, troubled, be given new pain. 

I am bothered when someone treats me poorly, doesn't protect my sense of boundary, of personhood, of space. I am not bothered when someone truly loves me. Love has no barriers. At least that is what Jesus teaches me.

Now, taking someone's census isn't like taking their temperature when they are sick, but it is a sign of community, just as much as gathering the whole family for the annual picture. 

I don't think we are any more or less communal as a society than we were a generation or two or five ago. Every age has its problems with building true, biblical community. I just think that we have to learn at every turn how to build community anew and in ways that demonstrate God's love to each other.

The census will come and go. The need for neighboring each other, like serving the poor, remains with us.

Nine Minutes More

"It is true that there are certain things that libertarians believe that will seem just shocking and scandalous to most people unless we're given 10 minutes to explain ourselves." At least.

Tim Woods, a scholar at the libertarian Ludwig Von Mises Institute, is being quoted in the latest issue of Time magazine ("Rand and Ron," 7 June 2010). In response, journalist Michael Crowley writes "that's about nine minutes more than anyone in modern politics gets."

Actually, Misters Woods and Crowley, it's more than anyone gets these days. Decades ago, preachers, politicians and professors could wax and wane for an hour or two and the sermon or speech was socially acceptable. That was before TV and radio even, certainly long before sound bites and 24/7 cycles and instant messaging.

I tend to be what is called a biblical theologian rather than a systematic theologian – it would take more than 10 minutes to explain the difference. I like my theology as well as my politics anchored in a Scriptural context several thousand years long and Church Universal wide, and I don't like said Word reconstructed to fit my (or anyone's) system du jour. So I tend to bristle at what my friend George Paul Wood calls taxonomy when it comes to sorting out political (or religious) classifications. I much prefer a thorough analysis of where a person stands than a sound bite that conveniently stuffs said person in a hole for safekeeping, because people rarely stuff so conveniently.

George does have a point – to a point. But labels are not the end-all of understanding. And on this I think he would agree with me because he is a thinking Labelist. (As I wrote another thinking Facebook friend, Jack Niewold, the other day, there are two kinds of people in this world, those who categorize people and those who don't.) Don't get me wrong. Labels can be useful – and certainly Jesus did use labels, as Jack reminded me in a Facebook thread that lasted at least 10 minutes. But labels no more define a person than skin does. Which is to say, labels do work – but only to a point.

When life is going at the speed of light as it tends to do in our own day and age, who has time to think, to process, to analyze, to look at all sides of any one issue? Maybe it is better to boil it all down to two simplistic poles and let them go at each other for five minutes on Fox or MSNBC – far more entertaining than listening to a Libertarian or a Communitarian, Calvinist or Arminian or Sacramentalist actually talk out his or her ideas ad nauseum.

But this is where we miss it. Talking something out is not just for supposedly thinking people. Talking something out is a part of relating, of hanging together, of coming to understand another as more than just the sum of a few short conclusions. And some of the best relaters are those who, while they cannot put two words together, do know how to hang together.

One of the headlines in today's news cycle is that Tipper and Al Gore are calling it quits after 40 years, hardly newsworthy in my book. Except that one sound biter is saying that is an accomplishment because people live longer these days and 40 years of commitment is a long time.

Well, it sure is. And I'm barely over halfway there with my bride of 23 years. But 40 years is not all that long to really, truly understand another. I won't comment on the Gores' predicament. I only say, generally speaking, that 40 years is only when you get to the end of the beginning stage of understanding another, be it your spouse or someone on the other side of your religious or political spectrum.

If I did wear labels more easily, I might call myself a Libertarian or a Communitarian or a Calvinist or an Arminian or a Sacramentalist or an anti-Sacramentalist. But I don't wear labels very easily and it mostly has to do with not wanting someone to stop listening after one minute. Even if they don't have ten minutes, I don't want to give them the satisfaction of thinking they can move on simply because they have found a useful label for me. They are free to move on. They are not free to think they so easily understand me.

Kids’ Songs

I like essentials. They help me unload excess baggage.

I used to teach the nursery class in Vacation Bible School and Children's Church. Way back when I could bend down or sit low with those little guys. Two classics I loved to lead those kids in singing. Two of my favorite songs from when I was a kid. "Jesus loves me, this I know" and "Jesus loves the little children of the world."

You can't get more basic than that. This is the Gospel – that Jesus loves me (personal) and that Jesus loves everyone, regardless of human classification (universal).

I've blogged about this before, but it comes to mind again and again. As, for example, I read about this priest, Henry Nouwen, who encourages a father to bless his own bio son in case he dies. The son has suffered some horrible accident and is not expected to live.

Bless him, Nouwen says, by which he means, "Say good things to him. Tell him that you love him and speak to him about God." The son eventually recovers, though I've no doubt the blessing is not wasted. [Michael Ford, Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri J. M. Nouwen, 151]

What does it mean to bless someone? It means to speak of or to demonstrate God's great love to that person.

We classify and clarify and cull each other's faith. We, who think we understand yet have hardly begun to fathom God's love, what do we know? We barely understand it for ourselves.

A friend challenges our small group discussion with the question of whether some sins are greater than others. I squirm. Okay, I get angry. But since I am only starting to learn how to get angry instead of stuffing it (apparently this is a skill to be learned), I merely squirm loudly to the pain (no doubt) of my friends.

Why do I not like the idea that some sins are greater than others? Perhaps there are variations and degrees of sin. Not a problem if God is judge. Besides being impartial, who can argue with the Almighty? God is going to do what God is going to do.

But I don't have to put up with people acting like God. I am not a polytheist. One God is enough for me. And I like this God who loves unconditionally. Apparently God's forgiveness is conditional – if we ask for it, if we forgive others, especially if we forgive others. But God's love is at once unconditional, eternal and universal.

I get angry because I have seen where that question of whether some sins are greater than others leads. Step 1, some sins are greater than other sins. Step 2, your sins are greater than mine. Step 3, I'm in, you're out.

Ever notice, another friend points out one day, how the fewer people who practice a certain sin the more evil it is in the eyes of others? How many people commit adultery compared with how many people feel lust? Obviously more people are guilty of lusting than of committing adultery. Which sin is looked down on by the greater number of people? The sin that fewer people commit. The sin that fewer people want to excuse. Which sin does Jesus say is greater? Hmmm, if you lust after someone, he says in Matthew 5:28, you've already committed adultery. About the same, apparently.

At times I have fellowshipped with a particular group of people not readily accepted by church or society. They are misfits in our world. I've noticed something about them. They are some of the most accepting people you will ever meet. They who have been forgiven much, love much. And they are deeply in love with Jesus, even as they struggle to realize Jesus really does love them.

He does, he really does. The Bible tells me so. And it also tells me that he really, truly does love all the children of the world – red, yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight. Grab that double truth about God's love, let it sink deep into your gut, let it transform your life. Let it shake up the way you relate to others. All the rest is excess baggage.

Taking Census

Above my house are the West Hills of Portland, a tumbling jumble of streets and homes defying gravity, symmetry, and social classification. One thing is certain: those who live in these homes will all someday die.

I thought about that yesterday as I knocked on a string of houses that turned out to be vacant. They were filled with things and memories, but the residents had all moved out one, three or five years ago and been placed in nursing homes, their houses remaining empty until their owners die and someone holds an estate sale to sell off all their unclaimed treasures, the cash being more desirable than the goods to whoever can lay claim to the remains.

We've been to numerous estate sales in these hills, my wife and I. Crowds line up for the 9 AM opening and enter a few at a time to peruse, select and cart off whatever seems of value. If you wait till the second day, the selection is much slimmer, but the prices are cut by half.

Many of these neighborhoods were built in the late 50s through late 70s and the original buyers have never moved on. Until now, when death comes knocking at the door. And so, ever slowly and surely, the ownership of these houses has been turning over as the old generation passes and strangers move in to stake their claim.

As an official U.S. Census Enumerator, I am sworn to confidentiality over the information I gather – names, genders, ages, and ethnicity – said data having a 72-year hold before being released. Someday some odd descendent will scour the records for the facts of their long-forgotten great-grandparent, but until then only a corporate image of the area will be revealed. Demographically the West Hills are white, with a high percentage of elderly, interspersed with young families and middling singles, all of whom appear stereotypical, but must surely each be harboring unique and fascinating tales of life.

A few warmly invite me in for tea or offer me something to eat. Occasionally someone, generally age 80 or older, wants me to linger long and talk – or just listen. Most have a formally polite, business-like, get-it-over approach to the census, aware that the Founding Fathers mandated the enumeration so that our nation could function as a representative democracy. Then there are a few who seem keen on exercising their Second Amendment rights and, with real or imaginary weapon, chase me off of their tiny kingdom, intent to remain anonymous to the world beyond.

But even with these, there are generally ways to get at the rudiments of information. Neighbors who care about their neighborhoods and those who live in them. Real estate offices. Apartment complex managers. The nosy neighbors remind me of the little old ladies in China with the official red armbands, a political token identifying a cultural tradition of maternal care far more ancient than the political system itself. The managers, I sometimes have to remind them, are under law to help me in my mission of enumerating the people of the land.

In all this sleuthing, there is a consistent pattern of humanity as steady as the rain on my window this afternoon. People are born, they live, and they die. When our kids were younger, my wife and I used to take turns reading a story to them at bedtime. Sometimes, when they were extra tired or time was especially pressing, and it was my turn, I'd give them my classic three-liner of a story:

"He was born.

"He lived.

"He died."

I don't know why it was always a "he", except that perhaps the male pronoun shortened the story by three characters. The kids learned to anticipate that tale and came to understand that in these seven words was the briefest essence of life. We are born. We live. We die.

I've had this fantasy of an idea for some time now, that I could accumulate some wealth of my own and buy one of the old estates in the area, fix it up and turn it into a museum. I'd preserve the ancient trees on the tract, cultivate a diversity of flowers and fauna, and fashion benches and chairs of wood and stone. And, permit willing, I'd turn the place into a land where the poor masses who live in the valley below could bring the ashes of their departed loved ones and spread them under their favorite shrub or flower, a place to come and linger, treasuring the only thing that carries beyond the grave – memories of a life worthily lived, or not.

In the jumble of miniature kingdoms known as Portland's West Hills, mansions rise next to crumbling cottages and vie for million dollar views with gravity-defying stilted palaces. Elderly widows land-rich and cash-poor live next to young professionals debt-rich and sense-poor and share the same street with aging managers cash-rich and relationally-poor. They are Jewish and Gentile, wealthy and broke, educated and ignorant, sophisticated and common. But they are one and all headed for the grave. And their Maker, acknowledged nor not.

And to the grave, they will take nothing, absolutely nothing that can be sold in those estate sales. They spend their whole lives amassing things to separate them from their neighbors and in the end they are no different than anyone else. They cannot stop the tide of life.

These thoughts that follow me as I knock on yet another door are not depressing. They are simply a meditation, a reminder that we are not the sum of our possessions, but we are the sum of what treasures we manage to store up in heaven, where moth and rust cannot corrupt and thieves cannot break in and steal.

 

Putting “cross-cultural” back into the Gospel

I'm working feverishly (sounds good, anyway) with my editor to get my manuscript [Night Shift: Crossing the Cultural Line for the Kingdom] publish-ready. Dave Green is great to work with, even when I don't like his assignments! Right now we are rewriting chapter 1. The beginnings of books tend to be the most difficult to flesh out. We're shifting things around and adding and subtracting great lines I've written. All part of what Dave calls the Macro editing or revision process. Anyway, here is the beginning as it looks at this moment, raw and all.

***

How essential to the Gospel is cross-cultural work? Consider this. The central message of the Good News is that God in Jesus became flesh, Immanuel, "God with us." Another way to say that is that Jesus' method was incarnational, meaning he left his own culture and became a part of ours in order to communicate God's culture of love to us. Cross-cultural ministry therefore is at the heart of the message and the method of Jesus, what we call "the Good News" or the Gospel.

What is the Good News? It is the culture of light engaging the culture of night. If darkness is merely the absence of light, the culture of light has nothing to fear the encounter.

If light is metaphor for God's reign, and darkness is the absence of or that which resists the light of God, why then do Believers abandon the night? Why do they avoid or flee people groups, nations, governments, political parties, schools, businesses, neighborhoods and neighbors for the safety and security of the light, thus sealing off these parts of humanity and those human institutions in the darkest of tombs?

There are Believers who do not fear the night, for they understand that He who sends them also empowers and shields them with His Spirit. They know their mission in this life is to cross borders into territories and cultures alienated by darkness and to penetrate the curse of the night with blessing. They do so not necessarily as known superheroes, but as heroes nonetheless, often masking their daring deeds of greatness with harmless acts of goodness. They do not give in to fear, for they know that ultimately in the Kingdom of Yahweh their God, goodness will triumph over evil, blessing will push back curse, and light will surely dispel the darkness of night.

What does it take to get it done where it is not now being done? The second two "its" in this question, referring to victorious and overcoming goodness, blessing and light, is what Stephanie Ahn Mathis calls the "2GC Mandate," the Great Commission and the Two Greatest Commandments. So to put the question more directly, What does it take to fulfill the Great Commission and the Two Greatest Commandments where they are not now being fulfilled?

For thousands of years, we as Believers have been commanded to love God with all our whole beings and to love our neighbors as ourselves, by going and making disciples of all nations. We, like Jesus, are called to bring Good News to the poor, to heal people and set them free, to proclaim what the Ancients called "the Year of Jubilee." Or to put it yet another way, we are to reach the unreached, free the oppressed, and embrace this world's misfits.

Yet after all these millennia, the task of bringing God's culture of love to the unreached, oppressed and misfits remains daunting, to say the least. I do not think our mission is more difficult than it was 100 or 500 or 1,000 years ago, but there certainly is more to it – more people to reach, more needs and kinds of needs to be met, a greater variety of challenges, and so on. Every age has its own complications, and ours definitely has its share.

We as Believers are on a mission to cross cultural lines in the night. We do so by applying biblical models to our lives and work and, in so doing, we learn how to cross cultural boundaries and creatively access out-of-the-ordinary opportunities to fulfill God's mandate that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

By "night" I mean serving where our work is not as visible as what we think of in traditional Christian life and ministry. Night work means working in tough times and hard places. Night work means working where people don't know or don't understand what you are doing. Night work means going where people don't want you, serving people who don't like you, and blessing people more likely to curse you in return.

Night work isn't fun, or at least it is not easy. But night work has its own unique rewards, the best of which is knowing that you are doing something very near and dear to God's own heart. Even if no one else notices, He does.

Coming to Terms with God and Life – mostly God

I turned 55 a couple weeks ago. I like this birthday. I call it the "Double Nickel."

Life has all kinds of milestones, though I'm not sure the real pivotal points in life are at those mile markers. Pivotal points, the spots in the road where the road makes sharp turns, occur more randomly – okay, according to God's design, but they sure feel random. The problem with the "designed by God" part is that then you have to decide what to do with how you feel about those events, especially the ones overflowing with trauma and pain. Maybe the pain, too, is part of God's design. But then what do you do with the pain itself – and the incommunicable feelings that come with it? If God intended the pain, are we just supposed to accept it? Do we even have an option?

Some people think you're supposed to just stuff it, your feelings. But as someone once said, manure poops out one way or another. (Okay, he didn't use the word "manure.") It is true, though, you can't just stuff feelings. And you don't even just hand them over – they are part of who you are. What you do is channel them in the right direction – instead of bashing in some wall plaster, you get involved with helping hurting people.

I figure I've been channeling feelings into causes and mission and action for a long time. Now I'm learning that channeling is not enough. What I have to do is consciously link the pain with that action, identify one with the other. I'm angry, I'm hurt, so therefore I'm going to apply healing to someone else's hurt and anger. It is as if the pain in me becomes balm for someone else and in the process, we both get better.

Does God feel pain? Does He even feel? Scripture paints Yahweh (one of the Judeo-Christian names for God) as a God who both feels and expresses emotions. So in the same way that I believe that we have intellect because we were designed by intellect (what some people call intelligent design, though I speak to ultimate cause more than to methodology here), I also believe we have feelings and emotions because we were designed by One who feels and emotes. God doesn't just have love, Scripture says – He is love.

It's a good thing. That God feels. I don't think I could handle a God who doesn't feel my pain, whose heart doesn't break when a child is bought for sex or a man beats up his wife or when a cop pulls someone over just for being black or brown. I can handle a God who punishes the wicked, however He deems it wise to do so. But I don't think I could handle a God who punished at whim (not that I'd have any say in it). I don't even think I could handle a God who condemned people to damnation and didn't provide a way of escape from that fate. People are far too complicated – who that is good hasn't done something very wrong and who that is evil hasn't done some very good things? God better be a good judge of character. Actually He also turns out to be a lavish dispenser of grace.

Some people make a distinction between a supposedly angry God of the Old Testament and a loving Jesus of the New. But I see a God who loves some extremely disobedient people in the Old and a Jesus who gets angry at hypocrisy and injustice in the New. And besides, the Jews who have only the Old Testament for their Scriptures also understand a God who lavishes love indiscriminately as well as a God who rains down wrath on hypocrisy and injustice. As the New Testament Jesus says, he and his Father (God in heaven) are One.

So at this milestone of a birthday, what do I do with God? That for me is the easy part. I choose all over again to love God with my whole being. There aren't any better alternatives anyway, are there? And what do I do with life? I choose to obey God, which I understand from Micah 6:8 is to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God who has called me to love my neighbor as I love myself (that's from Leviticus 19:18).

Even though I'm 55, I don't have to have all the answers. And I really don't like it when people smugly think they do and don't even bother to ask what the questions are. As Evangelist Tom Skinner wrote in the '70s, "If Christ is the answer, what are the questions?" I hate it when people don't take time to listen, ponder questions and savor the process of finding answers that don't always add up in our finite brains.

I figure God doesn't need me to have all the answers either as He already has them. He just wants me to love people so they can discover Him and find healing for their pain. I'm also beginning to discover that even in just asking questions, I can help people find healing – especially when I give voice to their own questions, questions others don't want them asking, but questions that open vents in their pain and allow God's Hgood stuff to flow in.

The Danger of the Myth of Exceptionalism

We all grew up dreaming we could be President one day, "we all" meaning white American males, of course. It was a harmless myth (at least for boys of northern European stock), set as a goal before the nation's (white, male) children to get them to aspire to greatness. The reality, however, was that only one in how many millions would actually become President. Much like the mythology of achieving movie stardom or becoming an NBA player, such dreams are beyond reach for all but a handful.

In my high school graduating class, the Class of '73, Brian Wheaton was voted most likely to succeed. Brian was a likeable guy, but the reason we all knew he won that vote was because his family was the richest in our small town, having dominated the industrial output of our community for generations. Brian's timing was off and by the time he came of age, the family business was losing its grip. I don't know if he even aspired to be an industrialist – he was gracious and shy about the honor and I understand his present vocation is pastor – but that particular village myth had dissipated before the century ended.

Even more harmful myths come in the form of sainthood for the cream of prior crops. We live in an increasingly cynical age with antiheroism the new norm. And yet the supposed superhuman achievements of those who have gone before only further fuels our cynicism. In a brilliant piece, "Getting Their Guns Off," in the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic, Jon Zobenica takes to task both the iconoclasm of generational exceptionalism and its opposition. A friend of mine and I, looking for a light evening in the 70s and arriving too late for Jim Henson's "The Muppets," took in "The Deer Hunter" by accident. That, in one title, is my definition of "its opposition."

Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation was not the first attempt at sainthood manufacturing and it won't be the last. We Americans do it with our Founding Fathers. The Roman Church has been doing it for centuries. And we less saintly Protestants have our own versions as well, particularly with our impossible missionary tales. I remember reading Courtney Anderson's To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson years ago and thinking it the first such biographical work that didn't place a full halo on the protagonist. Judson's efforts were remarkable, but here was a hero who was also approachable with truly human feelings.

Therein is the danger in the myth of exceptionalism. It is only useful if it inspires. Instead it places greatness beyond reach of mere mortals – what can any generation achieve after "The Greatest Generation" title has already been handed out? To be truly useful, a myth has to approach reality. The Greek pantheon of deities is a sordid bunch that occasionally aspires to greatness, but even in their humanness, they give a measure of direction to humans. Yet we don't need our gods to be so debased to inspire, only approachable, and debased gods are uninspiring as less than human.

In the Judeo-Christian pantheon, the heroes start off human but, in becoming locked up in unexamined Scripture and tradition, don halos and float above the earthly plain of humanity. In actually, the Bible does not gloss over their humanness and gives us lots of passages to stutter over when having devotions with our young children. In the end, saints of yore like Sarah and Jacob and David and Martha are just, well, folks like us. And these saints were not human only until they encountered God, they remained human ever after, even greats like Peter and Paul and Barnabas, who draw punches across the pages of the New Testament long after the power of Pentecost has descended on them all.

But what of the God of these saints of yore? Here is perfection, is it not? What then of my theory of approachability? I cannot speak for the "Judeo" part of that hyphen, but I can say that in Jesus we have the ultimate in approachability. In Jesus, God is both transcendent and immanent, soaring higher than we will ever reach and can ever dream of approaching and yet bending so low as to become, like Lewis' Aslan, a mere kitten in touchability. That bending low is less a pat on the head than a connecting side-by-side as "brother."

I see in Jesus what I can find in no one else – a human being who brings God's elevator down to my level so that I can step on and ascend with him who became like me so I could become like him. And yet we all need equally approachable human saints who bring Jesus to us.

Why then do we bury the saints in our lives under a pile of useless halos? Why are we so quick to compost their yuck, lest anyone see and be tainted by it? Are we so insecure of God's power that somehow without perfect heroes we will not ourselves aspire to greatness?

We do not need examples who have gone where we can never hope to go, for then they are not models for us to follow as much as they are floodlights of cynicism-producing glare on our own fallenness. In exposing the sheer humanity of all these human greats both in biblical and historical times as well as our own time, we do not debase our own future achievements, we simply make greatness all that more achievable.

 

 

Stupak, Presbyters and Coming Clean

Bart Stupak has provided us all a timeless lesson. A high-profile political victim in the battle over health care, the Congressman is avowedly pro-life, a principled commitment that led him to support universal health care and oppose the House bill until it had better guarantees of prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion. In the final bill, he accepted an executive order, what many on both sides of the debate see as lacking teeth on banning abortions. In other words he caved in to expedient compromise.

A friend of mine, George Paul Wood, dismisses one responder's notion that Stupak was a champ, saying that Stupak's decision to vote for the final health care bill with fewer teeth makes him either a cynic or a chump. "If the former, it's hard to consider him a man of pro-life principle. I prefer to think of him as a man of genuine principle, which forces the conclusion that he's a chump."

This raises a troubling point about living a life of principles, dropping champ and shrinking the options to cynic and chump. Are these our only choices when we face such overwhelming disappointments in those who could have taken things one step further and instead chose to ignore the pain of making tough choices? Is there not another name for those who fall short?

Lots of us were disappointed all around on the health care issue, but then politics is rarely "undisappointing," isn't it, no matter where it plays out. Change the venue and see if it reads the same way. It's the decade of the 1950s. Evangelical church leaders everywhere are meeting behind closed doors, wrestling with a changing society and wondering what to do with the "Negro problem." I happen to know much detail on one such august body, the General Presbytery of the American Assemblies of God, but the same scenario played out all over the ecclesiastical landscape. While white theological "liberals" marched, white evangelicals hid or, worse, fought back.

The all-white, all male Presbyters voted against (actually hemmed and hawed for years over) ordaining blacks for fear of alienating whites. In the end the "feeling" was that it was a choice between reaching blacks or reaching whites, a choice they refused to tolerate anywhere else on God's good earth. Various proposals were considered, tabled, rejected, approved and left to gather dust until finally history itself forced the issue – history and Billy Graham, but that is another story.

Leaders inevitably disappoint. Stupak caves in when he might have held out for a more thorough pro-life victory (but why were there only a dozen other such principled legislators by his side?). Instead of being prophetic champs like their Azusa Street forebears [a reference to the "against-the-grain" interracial fervor of the earlier Pentecostal revival], the Presbyters chose compromising inaction. You can see such chumpiness in the ongoing church and Boy Scout lawsuits over child sex abuse, as is playing out once again in the Pope's back yard and in my own Portland. Or in countless corporate scandals that litter the week's headlines, especially those that pit the bottom line against people or God's creation. Nothing stinks more than good people making stupid choices.

Do such stark choices leave us with "cynic" or "chump" as the only options? Seems that in either case all we are left with then is cynicism, if not for us to swallow, then at least for those who follow. Does not the way in which our elders handled America's coming of age and fulfilling the "all are created equal" vision of its Founders account in part for the tidal wave of cynicism of the past half century? As the existentialists readily illustrate, cynicism is a very bleak view on life.

I look again at that word, "chump." It can mean either a stupid or foolish person or a thick, heavy block of wood – in other words, a blockhead. It means a person who lets himself get duped into caving on his principles. So either these heretofore named didn't really have solid principles or they let themselves get caught in "lesser of evils" compromises. I can understand how this works. You are in a tight situation, pressures mounting on every side. You try to hang onto your core values, but in the heat things start looking overly complicated. So you go for what you think is the best way out, only to realize in the end that "out" gets you nowhere good.

As is generally the case, the way looks much clearer from a distance. You know it. The world knows it. But why don't we ever admit it, instead heaping fuel onto the fires of cynicism by hiding history. I am struck by the writer of I John who says that "if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin" (1:17). Bold transparency leads to community and purity, but it can also lead to death – political or physical. Taking that risk is what makes a real champ, though in this life champs don't always survive to see their colors raised and to hear the crowd cheer. But the risk is one definitely worth taking. So, leaders, let's make a fresh commitment to come clean – always.

 

Back to the Basics

People put a lot of stock in significance. To thoroughly mix metaphors, we like to jump on the bandwagon of someone's rising star and go out in our own blaze of glory. We hunger to be connected with an important event or some famous person.

The value we crave in that event or person is in what worth has been added to them by the esteem of others. After all, it is only when others think something or someone famous that that someone or something then becomes important to everyone else. And so goes the chase through life as we all look for our own meaning in what significance others bring to us.

That pursuit of placing value on others by how they place value on us, however, sends us in the wrong direction. Instead of lifting us – and others – up, it brings us all crashing down, dehumanizes us and turns us into objects that are little more than step ladders for others to use to get to the top.

Jesus came and started at the bottom, resisted the impulse to climb and finally climbed on a donkey and then a cross in order to go even lower. And he called others to join him in his pursuit of the bottom. Not a race to tear one another down. Not a dash to dehumanize each other. But a steady downward move – from a human perspective, at least – to become the servant of all. To be a washer of others' feet.

Doesn't sound like much of a promo campaign – come join me and wash other people's stinking feet. I've had some low level jobs in my life, but I think the one that might have felt the lowest as a college student was as a shoe store clerk. Cleaning public bathrooms as a teenage church janitor might sound worse, but at least no one saw you do it. Taking off and putting on shoes for other people while they looked down on you could be a nasty job indeed – and it seemed those thirty-some years ago that the dirtier and smellier the feet, the more likely they were to let you shoe them.

Dutch-born author, Henri J. M. Nouwen, penned forty books in all, and his writings on spiritual life have inspired many. After years of teaching at such renowned schools as Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, the Catholic priest closed out his illustrious career sharing his life with people with developmental disabilities at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada.

Many saw that move as a step down from where he had been. I rather think he was simply moving forward on his journey to be at peace with God in heaven and his own place on earth. He wrote: "As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their 'right' place."

I think about the urge to put people in their "right" place, we who aren't ever certain of our own. Jesus was amazingly comfortable in his own skin. Sure he was God, so why wouldn't it be easy? But the writer of Hebrews (2:18; 4:15) made it very clear that it was no easy thing for Jesus to take on that "skin" and become one of us. And yet as he learned obedience to his Father in heaven – and Hebrews 5:8 does say he learned that obedience – he came to find his peace with his place on earth.

I watched the DVD, "The Passion," with my wife and daughters Saturday evening as part of our Passion Week focus. I've seen it often enough that this time I noted things I hadn't before. One observation that struck me towards the end was that as Jesus hung dying in his last moments on that cross, he came to a point of willful resignation to all the agonizing tensions that had been building for who knows how long. It even seemed as though Father God Himself had turned His back on Jesus, the Son, and there was nowhere else to turn. Then and only then did he declare the effort over, and with his last breath whispered, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46). Total vulnerability. Total submission.

I wonder as I write and post these thoughts why I am doing so after Easter. It seems like something we should have finished with three days ago. And yet that is the truth that lives on past the Resurrection – that only in dying to self, do we really begin to live.

 

Why I believe in Social Justice – Part II

Yesterday (see http://hnkconnect.com/viewpoint-why-i-believe-in-social-justice--part-i) I started my response to Glenn Beck, who has encouraged, nay, insisted that all Christians leave any church that preaches “social justice,” claiming that such teaching has the sinister influence of communism and socialism. Actually my concern is not about Glenn Beck. After all he has a right to his opinions and this is a free country. My concern is that all my Christian friends who swear by him (even those who don’t swear) will believe him on this point.

Beck can pontificate all he wants on politics, this being a democracy and all. But the minute he starts talking theological, well, then he is moving into my turf. Furthermore, he is a Mormon. I really don’t have too much concern about that, generally. I know some of my friends would be aghast if a Mormon won the Presidency, but as most of our presidents in the past century have been nominal Christians at best (the most obvious exceptions being Bush Junior and Carter), then I suppose a good Mormon is not a problem. But what does a Mormon TV personality understand about the preaching of Jesus and his Church?

I understand what he is saying. He’s saying that what he and others consider liberal social justice is not the kind of Bible the average church goer reads or wants to have preached from. Passages like, well, we’ll wait on that. And his biggest concern is that, even though the Bible is filled with passages about justice written long before Beck and Communism appeared, somehow the whole concept is wrong because supposedly the Communists have taken over the justice neighborhood.

For months now, I’ve had one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis on the home page of my website, http://hnkconnect.com. In case, you haven’t seen it, the quote comes from The Problem of Pain (1940): “The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands – that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed.”

Does the fact that Lewis says he agrees with Marxists on at least this significant point mean that he also is a Marxist? Hardly. As I wrote a few weeks ago in another blog posting, just because Communists brush their teeth does not mean that brushing your teeth is wrong. Even the bad guys (Communist and otherwise) have some great ideas and do wonderfully good things. And the good deeds that bad people do are still good.

I, for one, am not going to stop preaching a social gospel and I hope the rest of the Church doesn’t either. For far too long in the twentieth century, the Church avoided or twisted strange meanings out of timeless biblical passages as they avoided people of different skin color and waited for the Federal government to do what the Church should have done long before in integrating this society. The fact is that if the Church had not supported slavery and segregation, neither would have survived long in this “Christian” America.

Then after the government broke the back of segregation, the Church awoke to the disgrace of abortion – and found its social justice voice once again. I say, once again, because in the nineteenth century, the American church, especially the evangelical church, yea, verily the evangelistic and missions church of Charles G. Finney and others that followed him were on the forefront of movements such as the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, child labor laws and the crushing monopolies of big business. Finney’s converts (and rabid atheists) were the ones who fueled the anti-slavery movement. And those kinds of movements, my friend – anti-slavery and anti-abortion – are social justice.

What does “social justice” mean? We’ll take a look tomorrow in the next posting at some of those subversive passages Beck doesn’t want us preaching. [You can find it tomorrow at 2GC@PDX or on Facebook.] But for now, let me state it in plain English: Justice is central to God’s vision for His earthly creation. Check out Isaiah 42:1-9, where the prophet says that God will put His Spirit on His servant and that servant will bring justice to the nations. Then Jesus came fulfilling that very prophecy. Justice means doing the right thing in restoring righteousness to all individuals and human systems. The systems part is where the “social” comes in. Some people don’t mind the “individuals” part of that preaching, but tell me where in Scripture does God abdicate judging what groups of individuals and nations do?

To be continued…

From "Night Shift"

As I’m still on a break from blogging to finish a couple of major writing projects, here is another excerpt from Night Shift: On a Mission Crossing Borders in the Night, to be published in a few months:

There is another important distinction to be made about Daniel and his three friends as Babylonian Incarnationals. While we tend to emphasize their line drawing, what is forgotten is how much these four guys had really embraced the host culture. They had been taken as slaves to this alien world to serve in an anti-Yahweh government and they willingly did so with much devotion and faithfulness to their own God – all with the goal of blessing that godless nation.

During the Clinton administration in the 1990s, many in the American Religious Right were deeply opposed to the president du jour on the basis of spiritual allegiance. In that decade I loved to pose the question to my fellow American Believers, “Could a Christian serve in Clinton’s administration?” When I got the anticipated reaction (“Are you kidding?”), I asked them, “Could a Christian serve in a communist government?” (“Of course not”) The coup de grace to this line of thinking came when I would point out that Daniel and company served in Babylon’s government and at very high levels.

If anything is representative in Scripture of an anti-godly earthly rule, it is Babylon. In the New Testament book of Revelation, Babylon is synonymous with the “Great Whore.” You can’t get more unsavory than that when it comes to governments and rulers. More than any other geopolitical entity referred to in Scripture, Babylon has come to represent the epitome of human rebellion against God.

And what was the end result of such “compromising” on the part of these four Hebrew men? The unthinkable happened – King Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of this very same Babylon, came to embrace and exalt the God of Israel!

In the early 1990s, my wife and I were in language study in Taichung, Taiwan…. We were enrolled in what was called a bushiban, a private non-accredited school, for learning Mandarin….

Most of these Westerners, generally much older than their youthful teachers, were Christians come to save Taiwan. Each tiny classroom was barely large enough for two people – a comparatively diminutive Chinese teacher and a hulking Western student – separated by a narrow desk, awkward and embarrassed knees almost touching. In the middle of this scattering of classes was a lounge where students could rest their exhausted brains and let loose with pent-up mother tongues.

In one of these frequent English gab sessions, a very concerned student brought up the danger to be faced in eating local produce. Taiwan, because of its warm climate, has a crop rotation of two to three times a year, enabling farmers to take advantage of the precious little arable land. This student was concerned that the intensive use of the soil robbed the crops of any nutritional value.

Like the story of Chicken Little, the discussion grew in intensity with each passing break. By the time everyone left for lunch, people were in distress that their bodies were being deprived of essential nourishment and their children were in danger of developing mental disabilities.

Back in the serenity of our own home, my wife and I pondered this rampant anxiety and decided that there must be more facts than we had heard with this rumor because while the natives might look thinner than us, few appeared overly malnourished or mentally disabled. The rumor proved unfounded and we went on eating the local fare, much to our benefit.

In the book that bears his name, Jeremiah addresses similar concerns among exiles that have been carried off to Babylon. The letter, found in Jeremiah 29 and probably written eight to ten years after Daniel’s removal to Babylon, is directed toward these displaced Hebrews. Whether or not Jeremiah and Daniel were acquaintances and regardless of whether Daniel even knew of the letter, we see in Jeremiah’s instructions the very principles that informed Daniel’s incarnational approach.

In his letter, Jeremiah lays down three basic principles and follows up with some promises and warnings. First he tells the exiles: Settle down. Unpack your cultural baggage. And don’t spend your time thinking about going back home. This foreign land is now your home….

From "Night Shift"

I'm taking a break from blogging for a couple days as I work to meet a deadline in getting my book, Night Shift, to my editor this weekend. The current posting series, "The Truth Shall Set You Free," will return next week, but for now, here is an excerpt from Night Shift, to be published later this year:

There is a state of being to be valued more highly than becoming "Native." That is the state of being Real, and as the Velveteen Rabbit discovered, through which there is immense power to accomplish much good.

Written by Margery Williams nearly a century ago, "The Velveteen Rabbit" is a children's story about a stuffed toy that is loved by a boy and eventually comes to life. The rabbit becomes real only after he has lost his newness and has been reduced to a tattered state of wornness through much use.

If we are to become real to those among whom we serve, we will have to sacrifice our newness and our polish. We will have to become Real, not native. But this process is something that happens to us – like the Velveteen Rabbit, we do not seek after it. To become real means to become at once useful and expendable and extremely desired and valuable to others who are quite different from us. As the skin horse in the story says, "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

Again, the initial period of language and culture learning is valuable in making friends, of presenting yourself as a learner to others eager to be master teacher to the newcomer. That means being willing to make mistakes and being curious about the way others think. I remember well the amazement I felt when Dr. Robert Bolton, a scholar of Chinese languages and culture as well as of missiology, began asking for my observations on Chinese language and culture within weeks after I arrived in Taiwan. Here was a man who never lost his youthful desire and curiosity to grow, even from neophytes like me, who went on to earn his doctorate after retirement more for the growth than for the pedigree.

No matter at what stage we find ourselves in the assimilation process, humility and openness always make room for us in any new culture. Being real means getting out of your own skin, so to speak, and not worrying about what you look like. A child learns quickly because a child is less inhibited to look and act like a child, apparently a prerequisite for spiritual and personal growth. Once Jesus likened the door into the Kingdom of God as being as small as the "eye of a needle," a hyperbolic reference to the preposterous notion of the rich getting into God's culture apart from the power of God. (Mark 10:25) As Matthew quotes Jesus, "Unless we become like little children, we will never enter the culture we know as God's Kingdom." (Matthew 18:3)

Whether my neighbor Frank in Taichung or my co-worker Bill in Waco or Scott, the manager of my postal box in PDX, there are ready and willing mentors everywhere. And it is that very openness and humility in us as learners that makes us more effective communicators of the Gospel culture. For when our deliberate intent is to absorb for a higher purpose, the absorption becomes a two-way street because a spirit of absorption, engagement really, is contagious.

Real, not native, is the goal of incarnation.

The Truth Shall Set You Free - Part III

Yesterday, I wrote on Facebook that people often wonder where I'm going when I pose a thought or question. Sometimes I know where I am headed and just want to see what others are thinking about it before I say what I am thinking. As soon as I speak, I change the color on the "canvass" (the listener's understanding) and I lose the ability to know what the canvass looked like before I spoke. [Other times I pose a question to see how open people might be to my answer.]

Communication has three parts – one, me as communicator; two, the thing I am communicating, three, the reader or listener and what that person is really hearing from me. People do not hear what others say as much as they take what others say and process it through their own intricate web of personality, personal history, and perceived understanding. So sometimes it is helpful to understand our audience before we say too much, and honest questions are a good way to do that.

Or, sometimes, I may not know where my question is leading and I am wondering why it has not already been asked. I often start a blog posting in the same way: here is a thought, now where does it lead? I am intrigued by where the thought takes me. Start with a presumed truth (by me at least) that "God is love." Now how does that statement affect my relationships, my politics, my schedule for the week, my spending, and so on? Turn it into a question as in, "If God is love, then what does that mean for … (this situation or that issue or this person)?" You open all kinds of possibilities you never considered before. Doesn't hurt to challenge the assumption either: "Is God really love?" – and allow for the possibility that the answer is "No" and then pursue the idea, "What IF God isn't love?"

Leave it a statement ("God is love") and people are inclined to say "Amen" and keep on hating their neighbor or abusing their kids or ignoring the needy. Turn that statement into a question in some form and we cannot ignore it with a simple "Amen."

I am also intrigued by where a thought goes, because people often assume the trail. Just as often their assumptions are wrong. We'd still be reading this blog on parchment by candlelight if Edison had assumed the usual trail of thought in regards to electricity – after all, thousands of years of human understanding can't be all wrong, can it?

Take the maxim, "Charity begins at home." To make that statement doesn't necessarily make it true, does it? I might be inclined to ask things like: "If charity begins at home, what does that mean for me sending money to help in Haiti?" Or, "Is it really true that charity begins at home?" "Is that saying really in the Bible?" (a commonly held assumption) "Could it mean that we have to start learning charity right in our own familiar world first before we can express it elsewhere?" The list is endless and opens up all kinds of further questions that can lead to whole new understandings about life and about myself.

One of my favorite lines over the years has been that "Communists brush their teeth."

Now out of context, all kinds of responses can come to mind. Before you read on, say that phrase ("Communists brush their teeth") and then complete the sentence or give a response. Be honest and write it down, because as soon as I say what I am about to say, you will alter what you were going to say and maybe not even admit to yourself what originally came to mind.

I have used that phrase, "Communists brush their teeth," because in most circles, Communists are seen as the personification of Evil itself. Among the friends I have who are actually members of Communist parties, you'd be hard pressed to prove that point. But there are people who would stop brushing their teeth today if I equated teeth-brushing with something that is Communist. The point being that A + B does not always equal C. A: Communists are evil. B: Communists brush their teeth. C: Brushing your teeth is evil. Sounds ludicrous doesn't it. At least one of these assumptions is wrong or the equation doesn't work.

I have often used that statement, "Communists brush their teeth," to show that just because someone is a Communist does not mean that everything they think or do is wrong. You could as easily use it to show that just because someone does something right doesn't mean everything they do is right. In either case, we have just opened up a whole new set of windows in our thinking processes. And that is good because light shines in and light leads us to truth and truth sets us free. Or maybe we should question those assumptions, too. Did Jesus really say that? And if he did, what did he mean by that? Amen.

The Truth Shall Set You Free - Part II

For me, the greatest tool for change and for introducing Truth is honest and guileless questioning. By honest and guileless, I mean questions that do not presume the questioner has all the answers any more than the System which is being questioned. Such honest questions understand that God and God alone is God.

We who are of Faith and we who are of Science of all people should not fear questions. Questions are what birthed modern Science. And questions are what births Faith. Copernicus questioned what everyone knew to be true, that the earth is the center of the universe, and in so doing launched modern science, all in good faith with Faith. Nathaniel came to Jesus with questions and doubts and Jesus called him "a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false." Jesus loved questions, loved to ask them himself, and tore into question-haters with a vengeance.

Even the earliest accounts of dialog in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures begin with questions. The serpent challenges Paradise with a question: "Did God really say?" And when God comes to Adam and Eve after they have eaten the forbidden fruit (unquestioningly obeying the serpent, by the way), God starts His dialog with them with a question of His own: "Where are you?" In fact, He continues to ask a whole series of questions before He makes His first declarative statement, all these questions designed to poke holes in their unquestioned presuppositions.

The Story of the Fall looks like it is God pushing Adam and Eve away when in reality Adam and Eve have already pushed themselves away, only they don't realize it. Instead of questioning and querying God, they have ignored Him. And it will take several more chapters in Genesis before humankind finds a lasting way back to a God who has been pursuing them all along. "Where are you?" is, after all, a question filled with pursuit and desire.

The principle of this whole meta-story is that unless questions are raised to crack a System that does not allow questions, that way back will not be found – whether that System be post-Fall humanity, Phariseeism of Jesus' day, aging "Communist" Statism, the Religious/Political Right, the Religious/Political Left, or the modern god of Science. For all these human Systems resist what the true God never resists – honest and persistent questioning.

The problem with modern society today - be it Glenn Beck or Carl Sagan, Joe the Plummer or Susie the Seamstress (we are talking stereotypes here) - is that we don't ask enough honest questions. Oh, we raise questions alright, but those questions are more answers in disguise, and they are intended to replace one unquestionable System with another.

The surprising thing about Faith is that it comes in the most innocent and honest forms, birthed as babes in a basket of reeds or a shepherd's stable. Faith challenges the closed Systems of this world not with a sword, but with humility and doubt. Moses and Jesus both entered closed Systems in the least threatening way possible and their mere presence raised doubts that those Systems were all that unquestionable and impenetrable. It was babes, not equally imposing or threatening systems, that eventually overthrew the closed Systems of their day.

God never fears our honest questions, even questions that doubt His existence. For He created our minds to think and we damn ourselves to eternal darkness when we stop thinking and believe without question, as did Adam and Eve, that we have all the answers.

The Truth Shall Set You Free - Part I

The whole thing starts with a faulty premise, of which there are many in our world, including within the House of Faith. But the faulty premise I begin with today is not in theology. It has to do with science. The faulty premise is this: Probing questions destroy truth. No, probing questions liberate truth.

True theology and true science are alike in that they both start with questions, meaning that what brings me to them and what opens them to me are questions. Lots and lots of questions, each one leading to seven more with no end of the querying in sight.

Questions do not destroy truth. On the contrary, they open up truth so that we may experience and understand it in all its reality. When we shut down inquiry in the name of science (or faith or whatever), we betray science (or faith or whatever) in the process.

This is an age of sound bites and, to be frank, I refuse to bite, whether the issue be socialism or democracy or homosexuality or global warming or health care. God is too big to fit into most of our sound bites and all these issues (and more) involve God, which means God is not inclined to address these concerns in sound bite drivel, especially when sound bites are intended as a means of cutting off further questioning. We think God does not like questions, when it is fallen humanity that abhors them. God loves questions and He created the human mind with an unlimited capacity to doubt the previously understood, formulate inquiries and ask away.

People of faith are often heard to say "God said it and that settles it for me," assuming that such a sound bite is a sign of faith. But a true man or woman of faith is a hungry person, hungry with an insatiable desire to know more and more of God and His creation. Not just what He said or did, but all the whys and wherefores we can muster. So, too, if science is a part of God's Truth, then we should never respond with a "that settles it for me," when what we really mean is "Don't bring it up any more."

When we first went to China in the mid-90s, we found that our mere presence was a scientific and philosophical intrusion into a closed system - a system that allowed no doubt or questions when it came to politics, sociology, religion, or the natural sciences. But we, as outsiders (Westerners) and in some cases people of faith, did not fit into that closed system. And yet we had been invited in by the very core that sustained it - the State. Moreover, we were invited in as authorities by that State. Maybe we weren't welcomed as authorities on anything that might question the system itself - such as theology, sociology, politics or even, say, biology. Our venue was limited to English, foreign culture and international business after all. But we were invited in as teachers and scholars nonetheless.

The State had taught our students from birth that there was only one way to think and that to raise any questions about the State's System of Thought was both ludicrous and something not to be tolerated. But we, who apparently did ask questions, who did think outside of the acceptable System of Thought were not only tolerated, we were given a position of great authority in a society that had venerated teachers from Kongzi (Confucius) to Mao with the utmost of respect.

As their teachers, we did not have to pose any questions to our students or speak to them of our own "heretical" ideas. By our sheer presence, we became the crack in the heretofore unquestionable authority box of the State - and we had the unwitting sanction of that very State to do so. As we used to explain to our rookie teachers from the "Outside," the first step toward the Cross begins with a question. We didn't have to point people to the Cross as much as get them probing reality, because in God's universe, all honest questions eventually lead to the foot of the cross.

For the first time in their lives, these students realized that questions could be raised, and thus everything was open to inquiry, even the Box itself. If we had come in attacking that Box, we would have closed their minds for another generation. Instead we became a sanctioned part of the System's desire -- yes, the system itself -- to raise doubts about the status quo, in true Marxian dialectic methodology.

Marxism, real Marxism, is all but dead in China. What is left of the old ideology is a failing pseudo-Statism that is as dogmatic-and-dead as elements of Faith and Science can at times be in the West. Such dogmatism will not fade away through direct attack, especially by outsiders, but only through honest and guileless -- and persistent -- questioning. This pseudo-Marxism is as ripe for failing as Khrushchev prophetically said the West was, especially a West that denies its twin roots of doubt and faith.

Life Themes: Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade – Part II

After a few decades, life's rivers all flow together so that it is difficult to remember what came from where. Such is the case with a second key element I as a 13-year-old gleaned from David Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade.

When the skinny young preacher arrived in the ghettoes of New York City in 1958, all passionate about helping the urban gangs, Wilkerson had no earthly idea what he was doing. He really didn't even have a heavenly one, except that he wanted to do something to help. After making a public relations mess at the courthouse during a murder trial, he was left to wander the Big City's grimy streets on his weekly escapes from his country parish in Pennsylvania. In those days, nobody had a clue, least of all him, what to do about the gangs, their violence and the new threat of drugs.

So in lieu of a plan or a program, Wilkerson just started walking the streets, seeing what he could see, until he wound up connecting with the gangs, in no small part due to his photo getting blasted in the media for crashing that trial. As he connected with the gangs, he actually involved their input as to how best to reach out to them. They became partners in planning their own rescue and, as they became followers of Jesus, they joined him in ministering to other gang members.

A little over a decade after I read The Cross and the Switchblade, David's son, Gary, and I plotted together on ministering to high school and university students. Our ministry ways eventually parted, though I continued to flesh out these ideas, particularly around the Apostle Paul's missionary methodology, something I've been field testing for years and I am finally putting into print with Night Shift to be released later this year.

What I saw in Wilkerson was an "on the street" approach that now seems almost ordinary. But back in the late 50s and early 60s it was revolutionary. These events, after all, took place before the spiritual and cultural convulsions of the 60s and 70s that would shake up every area of society, not least the church.

What especially stuck with me was his simple practice of walking the streets in his new environment. After I launched out in my own work, first in pioneering student ministry stateside and then in serving in Asia, I took to walking each new cityscape as my first item of business. No contacts, no connections, no problem. Just get out and observe the place up front and personal, and out of that start get a feel for how life moved. It was part of the exercise of prayer I talked about in my last post. But it also led to an understanding of how a particular neighborhood or campus or a certain city functioned and flowed. And through that walking engagement, I would invariably discover the human activity hubs where I could meet people in their own natural environments.

I am not a cold turkey kind of guy. I don't mind meeting a stranger, but I need some kind of natural connection to get past "hello." Like buying vegetables in Asia's open markets or picking up my mail at the nearby shopping center. I like to warm up to people and let them warm up to me. As one fruit-seller in China said to his friends about me one day, "He's just an old face." And the networking was on.

Wilkerson isn't a cold turkey guy either – he may be an evangelist and a prophet, but he is no gregarious salesman. He didn't just go up to these gangs and start talking to their members. They discovered him first – all because he'd made a fool of himself in the papers. He disarmed them with his innocence and a lack of ulterior motive other than to love them through Jesus, something sorely lacking in many Christian encounters with culture in our day and age.

Which is why I think he served as such a helpful model to me. I wasn't from the world, let alone the streets, and neither was Wilkerson. And, no offense to him, I felt that if he of all people could succeed "out there," well, I could too.

Life Themes: Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade

The past few weeks I've been polishing off my manuscript for Night Shift, preparing to send it to my editor so he can chew it up and spit it out! A couple of times in this book I reference David Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade.

I was 13 when I first read it. The summer before I'd been to California with my family for a national church conference where he spoke. I remember waiting for him to sign my copy, something that never took place. In the long run, it didn't matter. All the value needed was in what he'd already written inside.

The book, a best seller early on, chronicles his venture as a country preacher going to New York City to reach the urban gangs and founding what is today a worldwide organization called Teen Challenge. I did meet him years later and helped on some of his World Challenge projects. He became a long-term supporter of our work. At some point, the book was made into a movie, though I never could connect him with Pat Boone, who plays him on the screen.

A few short scenes from his book have had lasting impact on my life, influencing me at more than one turn in the road. It starts when he is still at his rural Pennsylvania parish. Watching late night TV, he decides to get rid of the tube and turn the time spent watching into praying. One night in prayer he's drawn to a copy of Life magazine where he becomes obsessed by a photo of some gang members on trial for murdering this guy in a wheelchair. On impulse he heads to their trial in the big city to try to help them. He makes a mess of that, winds up being thrown out of the courtroom and gets his photo in the papers, totally humiliated before the whole nation.

He has no idea why, but he keeps being drawn back to the city on a weekly basis and all he knows to do is walk the streets. After sleeping in his car one night, he wakes up to find some young kids jacking it up to steal his tires. Through those kids he meets their older brothers, gang members all. Everyone recognizes him as the one thrown out of that trial, a hero to every last one for being abused by the cops, and soon he's connecting with all kinds of gangs.

What struck me most from that story was how he prayed. I'm sure he prayed Pentecostal style when he knelt down in his country home, but when he walked the streets of New York trying to figure out what to do, it was eyes wide open, prayers going straight from his heart to heaven. It's a scene I've played over and over. Walking those streets, looking to find what God was calling him to. Slowly coming to see the inner city neighborhoods the way only God could have shown him.

"Prayer walks" mean all kinds of things these days – mostly structure and programs. For some, there's a whole technique to it. For Wilkerson back then, it was just plain ignorance mixed with just plain obedient faith.

I started mimicking him whenever I found myself in a new setting and not sure what to do. Working Texas campuses large and small as a campus pastor in my early 20s. Circuit-riding the nation in Campus 80s, praying for ministries to be started from New England to California. Settling in the Ozarks to pastor a campus group at SMSU (Missouri State). Reaching out to university students in Taiwan. Working with all strata of society in Northwest China. And now…

I never have bothered too much with style. I mostly just walk or ride a bike or sit and look out an urban vista or study faces passing by. People "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." The passage from Matthew 9:35-38 comes back every time, especially the part that follows the helpless sheep, where Jesus tells his disciples to ask the Harvest Master to send out workers to meet the needs they see – and then he sends them out in fulfillment of that very prayer. It's a prayer that never fails.

Life Themes: I Meet Mark Buntain

The year was apparently a pivotal one for me. As I wrote in an earlier posting, I was 13 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. That same year, I published my first article, a free verse I had written for school titled "My Favorite Place." It was also the time in my life that I read two books whose impact on me has lasted to this day: Sheldon's In His Steps and Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade. And it was the year I met Mark Buntain.

Buntain was that other foreign saint in Calcutta (Kolkata), and a close friend of the more famous one, Mother Theresa. A native Canadian, he was itinerating as an evangelist at a church in Kelso, Washington, when he heard my missionary grandfather preach and went forward to dedicate his life to missions, or so the family story goes. He followed his call to India in 1954, where he lived out his life in devoted service to God, the lost and the poor.

He came to our church in South Jersey for a Sunday evening service when I was in the seventh grade. Our youth group, such as it was at the time, met for the hour before and he was our honored guest. There were just a handful of us - three teens (all seventh graders) as I recall, my dad (the pastor) and our guest missionary.

It could have been a crowd of thousands or an interview with royalty as far as Buntain was concerned, for he readily engaged us, answering our questions, telling us stories, and sweeping us up with his infectious spirit. I have no idea what he preached in the main service that night - all that lingers in my memory was our private conversation with him.

There was in Buntain a deep and abiding passion. While I know little of his life story, I do know that he cared for people, especially the kinds of people that few others cared about - those who had never heard the Gospel, those who were oppressed, and those who were misfits because they didn't fit on anyone's most desired list.

I am convinced that Buntain's passion for people flowed out of his devotion to Jesus. He was obviously in love with this Jesus he could not stop talking about and to -- he frequently interrupted his sermons to talk directly with his Lord.

Two decades later I heard him preach at a minister's convention in Missouri. He shared the pulpit that week with a well-known orator. I walked away thinking that when I heard that other man preach, I was impressed with the speaker, and when I heard Buntain speak, I was impressed with Jesus. Buntain may have lacked polish, but he knew Jesus and that shone through more than anything else.

Two of those three teens from that Sunday night long ago eventually served overseas, Linda in Korea and me in China. I know it wasn't Buntain's influence alone. But I do believe that Buntain's willingness to spend an hour with a handful of seventh graders on a Sunday evening made a lasting impression on each of us.

Later in college, a group of us organized a ping pong marathon to raise money for missions and we chose Buntain's hospital in Calcutta as the recipient of what we raised. What he had started as an evangelistic outreach and turned into a church came to include a complete educational system, a feeding program, a hospital and all sorts of other avenues for meeting the needs of the poor. Mark and his wife, Hulda, saw people and their needs as whole people in need of a full gospel.

And he understood how intertwined is the two-fold mission of declaring and demonstrating the Good News. In my adult life, I've come to formulate and articulate that dual mission as a theme in my own life. Somehow, some way, Buntain planted a seed that quiet Sunday night forty plus years ago.

Life Themes: In His Steps

I read In His Steps, one of the bestselling books of all time, when I was just 13. I reread it this past weekend for the first time in over forty years in an attempt to discern why it has had such great and lasting impact on me.

Recently, Charles M. Sheldon's famous subtitle, "What Would Jesus Do," has become highly marketable as "WWJD", but Sheldon himself received little in royalties from his book and gave those all away to charity. As a pastor in Topeka, Kansas, he lived the book's message, supporting missions, launching Bible study groups and outreaches, and championing reforms such as better housing for the poor, job training and placement, prison reform, improvement of schools, and pacifism. As a university freshman, he started a Sunday School for Chinese laundrymen, teaching them English by reading the Bible.

He also founded some of the first kindergartens in America, one in a destitute community of freed slaves and their children outside of Topeka. Among those kindergarteners, Elisha Scott grew up to be a respected attorney. His son, Charles Sheldon Scott, also a lawyer, argued the winning side of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court the year before I was born.

But all this about Sheldon's life I have learned only in recent days. While highly inspiring, it contributed nothing to making the message of In His Steps part of my life theme.

The fictional story, written in the style of its day, 1897, is wooden for modern readers, often pedantic, perhaps because he wrote it first as a sermon series. The story line follows a pastor and congregation who resolve to ask themselves whenever they have a decision to make, "What would Jesus do?"

Sheldon did not prescribe how everyone should live out this principle. "There could be no fixed Christian way of doing money," he wrote. "The rule that regulated use [of money] was unselfish utility." Each disciple of Christ was to find his or her own way in living out the pledge, but there was no doubt that such a commitment would affect every area of life including the economic. It is obvious that Sheldon anticipated that, as people adopted and lived out his pledge, it would result in "a perfect upheaval of Christianity, as we now know it."

He repeatedly attacked the exploitation of the poor in the promotion of prize fights and the sale of alcohol, arguing that such corporate greed be fought at every level including the economic, corporate and legal. For him, prohibition is a fight against the sin of corporate greed as much as of personal drunkenness. As one of his characters prays, "O Lord, how long shall Christian people continue to suffer by their silence and their ballots the greatest form of slavery known in America?"

His wealthy characters who took the pledge challenged their own "luxurious class" to repent of class elitism and the wanton use of money. It was not enough for the wealthy to devote their money to God. "Men would give money who would not think of giving themselves....They gave what was the easiest to give, what hurt them the least." At this Sheldon was only warming up. "The Christianity that attempts to suffer by proxy," he wrote, "is not the Christianity of Christ."

As his characters live out the pledge, they become devoted to developing better housing for the poor, good wages for employees, education for all children, industries more conducive to justice and compassion, food preparation training, and job training and development for the poor. Moreover the book sets as a goal the reform of journalism, the transformation of the political system itself so filled with greed and corruption, and the expression of the Christian mission in all walks of life.

Sheldon's emphasis on humanitarianism, compassion and justice are firmly grounded in his devotion to Christ. "I cannot interpret the probable action of Jesus until I know better what His Spirit is...We must know Jesus before we can imitate him." He believes that "the Christian of our time must represent a more literal imitation of Jesus, and especially the element of suffering."

That Christians must enter into the suffering of others as Jesus did is a dominant theme. "Christian America! Is it a reproach on the form of our discipleship that the exhibition of actual suffering for Jesus on the part of those who walk in His steps always provokes astonishment as at the sight of something very unusual?" The "Christian" America of his day was highly steeped in a cultural Christianity in which neither the faith nor the citizenship reflected the true Gospel.

Sheldon puts great emphasis on a spiritual baptism, that this effort to reach and reform is not something to be done purely by human effort. He petitions over and over again "for spiritual baptism within the church in America such as it had never known." As a student of history, I am intrigued, for it was but three years later that the modern Pentecostal movement was birthed in the very same city of Topeka. Sadly the American church was to splinter over the next decade into three strands, each taking an aspect of Sheldon's message with it. With Modernism would go his emphasis on social justice, with Fundamentalism would go his devotion to Christ, and with the Pentecostal movement would go his emphasis on the Holy Spirit. All three had been part of the galvanized wing of the latter 19th Century Evangelicalism, but his book heralded the end and not the beginning of such a unity.

So how did this book influence my life theme? Hard to say, except that I spent the next twenty years in research and writing, trying to discover how and why those three strands had splintered and could not even now be brought back together again.