Beyond Words

When I heard about the cyclone that hit Myanmar (Burma) and killed multiple thousands of people, the news dealt a severe blow to my already shaky faith this week. My previous post about doubt as a spiritual discipline is the sanitized version of how hard it hit me. You see, I’m in the midst of some suffering in my extended family that makes no sense. Some people I love are dealing with horrendous consequences of choices they’ve made, but honestly, their choices have been no worse than some of the ones I’ve made in the course of my life.

I tried to apply a sort of spiritual checklist to see why God would allow those consequences in their lives. The checklist approach doesn’t work all that well. Some have repented and turned to Jesus, and they’re suffering as much as the those who haven’t.

I think I’m beginning to understand Job. You might take this with a grain of salt, saying I haven’t lost everything like Job–so how can I understand? The answer, I think, is that such loss can’t be measured in quantity.The story of Job was told in such cataclysmic terms, perhaps, because life was so brutal and short in the time the book was written, most people had experienced the loss of wives in childbirth, children to illness, and homes and livestock to calamities.

In the course of my life (and my husband’s), death has stolen spouses, babies, mothers and fathers prematurely. It’s no less painful to see the fullness of life and its potential stolen from people we love whose lives are strained and broken.

So when the image of countless corpses floating in floodwaters after a freak storm is juxtaposed on the image of people I know and love who are suffering, my mind and spirit reel and will not accept platitudes about God being in the midst of our suffering, or using suffering to test our faith, or even having a plan that’s bigger than it all. Sweeping generalizations might help us cope with the abstract horror, but they’re no comfort to the people whose lives were cut short , or worse yet, those are still living the horror.

Job came to the very end of his faith. But he remained faithul.

And I’m not ashamed to say that’s where I am today. I’m stripped of all my labels, categories, certainties. I’m not sure I know God at all, but here’s the clincher: I can’t take my eyes off Jesus. I don’t want to believe in a God who would allow 100,000 people to drown in one day, and let people I love suffer and lose everything–but I can’t stop trusting in Jesus. He was willing to die–not just for sin in an abstract, spiritual sense, but to show us how to disarm sin in its present, physical reality–with love.

You could put all my belief in this nutshell: if it doesn’t look like Jesus, I don’t think it’s really God.

So, if I don’t seem too excited about debates over how to make the church relevant in music and programming, whether or not Genesis 1-3 is literal science, whether or not women can teach men, or if there are five points on the TULIP, if Roman Catholics and Lutherans and Methodists are really saved, and a couple of other hot topics I wouldn’t even dare post on this blog–don’t worry about me.

I’m just back at square one. Jesus said, “Follow me.” And I know even if I don’t know what to believe, I can trust him and remain faithful.

*Note: Thursday’s Child refers to a line in the poem “Monday’s Child:

As a child born on a Thursday, I’m using it as a metaphor for how far I have to go in spiritual formation.

Posted on May 8th, 2008 by Kathy
Filed under: Thursday's Child | 7 Comments »

If my blogging slows down, it’s because I can’t keep my hands off my new keyboard. It’s by far the nicest piano I’ve ever played.

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 by Kathy
Filed under: The Friday Waltz | 2 Comments »

Sometimes burdens for the world, the church, and my family can overwhelm me. For reasons too complex to explain here, I got physically sick on Sunday and excused myself from our small group meeting. I went home and cried for an hour.

Despite some achiness, lethargy and nonfebrile chills on Monday, I plowed through all my professional and domestic commitments.

I was feeling wrung out on Tuesday, but I’d promised to make an egg casserole and bring it for breakfast at Beyond Welfare’s training session.

I didn’t plan to stay, but it seemed rude just to dump off the casserole and run. So I ate breakfast with people from as far away as Duluth, Minn. and Manhattan, Kans. who’d come for the training. One woman said the event was the first “vacation” she’d had in 15 years.

As I’ve said before, BW is not an explicitly Christian organization, but it’s founded on Christian principles. Some of its guidelines have turned into practices that, over the years, have formed a sort of liturgy. One example is the practice of going around the circle announcing what’s “new and good.”

On Tuesday, some people shared “news and goods” based on struggles and hardships. But they framed those negative things according to the larger good they hoped would come of their effort to work through them.

I thought of Philippians 4:4-9,

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. “The Lord is near.Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

BW’s “new and good” is one way to practice an attitude of trusting in God and focusing our minds and hearts on what is excellent and praiseworthy.

After a few minutes, I felt like I was detoxifiying from the negative onslaught that had made me ill and brought me to tears on Sunday.

Maybe there’s a reason Paul ended that bit of instruction to the Philippians with, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Posted on April 30th, 2008 by Kathy
Filed under: Spiritual Disciplines | No Comments »

Scott and I have been challenged to by the writings of N.T. Wright. We especially benefit from his New Testament “For Everyone” series, featuring his line-by-line Scripture translation in very simple English. The format for each section flows from the Scripture to a personal illustration or insight, followed by a historical-critical exegesis of the passage written with lay people in mind.

If there’s one weakness of the series, it’s the personal illustrations and anecdotes. They’re rarely as gripping as Wright’s translation and commentary. An example cropped up in our study of 1 Thessalonians this week.

While Wright seldom pulls his punches in calling out muddled Christian thinking and practice–to the point that some American Christians are offended when he uses Scripture to challenge the sacred mythos of our patriotism, for example–he chose an unfortunate illustration, in my opinion, for the scandal that led to persecution of the Thessalonian Christians.

“The remarkable thing was the instant effect the gospel had,” says Wright. “At the heart of it–and this was never far from Paul’s mind throughout the letter–was its call to worship the true God instead of idols. This was unheard of in Paul’s time. It would be like asking people in a modern city to give up motor cars, computers and telephones.”

What a missed opportunity for American Christians to consider what it means to radically follow Jesus! I think the people of Thessalonica gave up the equivalent of far more than the convenience of modern gadgets when they stopped worshipping idols.

In turning to the true God, they stopped putting their ultimate hope in those false gods. They stopped offering the idols their best or “firstfruits” in defiance of a visibly recongizable religious practice throughout the ancient world, both Jewish and pagan. And since those idols were tied to the state religion, when they stopped serving the them, they also were abdicating their civil and public obligations and defying their Caesar–setting themselves up for arrest and martyrdom.

If motor cars, computers and telephones represent technological progress as one of the gods of our age, I can accept this illustration on some level. But the gods of our age are more insidious than that. They lull us into believing our firstfruits belong to our personal and national security, comfort, convenience, entertainment, mobility and profits.

What should we be willing to give up in order to show the world we put all our hope and trust in the true God? Maybe we should look around and see where the world is suffering–not just in terms of short-term, individual needs, but in terms of long-term trends–and take the lead in offering solutions based on loving the true God with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength, and our neighbors–next door and around the world– as ourselves.

Are we willing to risk being perceived as less cool and culturally relevant in order to be more relationally and missionally relevant? If our God doesn’t call us to be different from the gods of the age, what difference does the gospel make?

Posted on April 28th, 2008 by Kathy
Filed under: Holistic Gospel, Monday's Church, Out On a Limb | No Comments »

Yesterday morning while praying and meditating on 1st Thessalonians 1 along with some other passages in preparation for worship and small group, I couldn’t escape the theme–our faith in Jesus does not spare us suffering, pain, loss and disappointment. In fact we’re warned to count the cost of following Jesus–because some of the pain and hurt in life will happen because we are Christians, not merely in spite of that fact. This does not apply to persecution alone, but also to voluntary acts such as putting others’ needs before our own, even when it hurts.

There’s too much at stake for Christians not to be honest about what it means to follow Jesus. Although we claim Jesus is the cure for our deepest needs, on the surface, we’re not offering anything that’s much different from the world’s philosophies. And most of the time we go around with a chip on our shoulder.

This may sound harsh, but it’s true. I hang out with people of all sorts because of my job and my volunteer commitments, and even the poorest and most down-and-out I mingle with don’t have a chip on their shoulder the size some Christians are carrying.

We’re not supposed to have a chip on our shoulder. We’re supposed to carry a cross.

I’ve been following from a distance the news about Oprah’s “A New Earth” Web casts. It’s nothing new, just the typical New Age spirituality claiming God wants us to internalize truth and reach a new state of consciousness and unity. You know the drill, by looking inward we will find divinity and join with it.

But when we claim Christianity is about our inward practices and just persevering until Jesus returns and takes us to heaven, we’re missing the most important thing Christianity offers that no other world religion does. Life. Eternal, emodied life. Not ghostly life in an invisible, immaterial world.

The New Age practicioners tell us we can find God in ourselves and lose our egos by joining with the divinity already present in all things. I think as Christians we’re often just as guilty of trying to form God in ourselves instead of being formed in Christ. Although we’re not prone to looking for God in all things in a panentheistic sense, we ignore the enfleshed reality of faith in our Savior–who was resurrected and lives in a body.

Our private quiet times and Sunday morning worhsip don’t amount to much more than a New Ager’s meditation techniques if we’re not willing to get up off our butts and be part of the Spirit led and equipped work God has called us to.

As a friend of mine once said bluntly, “We’re just a ‘G’ rated version of the world.”

And if we sit around complaining about how mean everyone is to Christians, we’re going to harden our hearts to the very people who need our relentless love. After all, Paul and Silas sang while they were in prison.

Everything in heaven and earth ultimately will be reconciled to God through Jesus, but he’s not going to come back and initiate some sort of magic force field to do it. He’s using us, just has he always has. We are commissioned to make disciples and fill the earth with believers, helping to reverse the curse.

Our best witness to the gospel is our humility, love, willingness to serving each other and our neigbhors , submitting to each other in our strengths and weaknesses, and getting our hands dirty in this messy world. And that means getting the chip off our shoulders so we can pick up our cross.

Posted on April 21st, 2008 by Kathy
Filed under: Holistic Gospel, Monday's Church, Out On a Limb | No Comments »