“If You Have Ears”

This is a song for the masses
Whether elephants or asses,
For the poor and wealthy too
This is a song for the pious,
Whether saints or men of science,
This is a song for you

First the rich man, who breaks the backs of fathers,
ruins all their sons and daughters,
for your money and your clout.
Justice has you by the collar;
You can’t buy time with dollars,
and yours is running out.

Next the pharisee, enslaving all the orphans,
and selling your religion
for the widow’s soul.
But all those orphans have a Father,
and one day that widow’s Lover
Will take back what you stole. There comes a fire hotter than, than can endure any man. His love is a flame His love is a flame.

Be weary of musicians,
Men in my position,
who tell you what to think.
But also fear suspicion
that tells you not to listen
When a stranger tries to speak.

He who has ears, let him hear.
She who has ears, let her hear.
If you have ears, listen:

It doesn’t matter if you’re smart,
if you feel you got a good heart
or if people like you well.
It doesn’t matter what your church says,
’cause if you live a life that’s loveless,
You might already be in hell.

It doesn’t matter if you’re broke here, just a joke here,
If you’re shameful, if you gambled and you lost
It doesn’t matter if you’re dirty or you’re hurting
Or you’re hiding and it’s coming at a cost
It doesn’t matter if you fail or you think you’re not good enough,
Cause you can’t lose what you can’t earn and you, you can’t earn love.
No, you can’t earn love.

He takes the blame
(I blamed Him too)
But don’t be ashamed
(It’s what He wanted to do)
His grace is like rain
(When it rains it pours)
Do you know His Name?
(He knows yours)

You can’t light a log or a brick on fire with a match, but houses still burn down. How? Fires always start small…and then they build.

I isolate some dry leaves from the wind and add a flame. The fire almost dies, but I quickly add several twigs and some more leaves. Tiny embers smolder. I add straw, then slightly bigger sticks, and then make a tepee of logs over the flame. More twigs and leaves and bigger sticks until the logs finally catch. Then I let the wind in, and the fire roars.

As I stared into the flames, I knew I’d seen the likes of this someplace before. Lust is like this. Any kind of lust for any kind of thing. Isolation. A tiny spark. A harmless flame. A controllable fire. And then the house burns down. Here it is again in poetry:

– Flame –
Lust is a fire built upon straw
Till the forest is withered and the redwoods are raw.
Bricks may withstand the starting flame,
but there’s a ladder of leaves to every name.
So take not for granted the smallness of things
when a fury of heat the slightest spark brings
and melts even stone, the consummate lust
Sending ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Don’t take for granted the smallness of things.

I started day-dreaming about philosophy, theology, Christian apologetics and arguments I might use to convince him that my Christianity is truer than his atheism.

I’m not sure what made me stop. If there is a God, perhaps He was the One who reminded me that the college student I was meeting with was not just an atheist. He was a human being. He was not an argument to be deconstructed. He was a person — one of God’s image-bearers — to be treated with dignity.

So we met. We talked. I read some of the papers he had written, encouraged his study, and (when asked), I offered him insights into a Christian worldview. The whole thing was really civil and interesting. But in retrospect, there was one moment of our time together that stood out more than any other in our 2 hours of quality conversation:

I tried to buy his coffee, but he wouldn’t let me, even after I insisted.

Reflecting on our time together, I wondered if that one moment had provided more insight into his rejection of the gospel of grace than did all his carefully-articulated, philosophical arguments. It also reminded me why my attempts at clever arguments will never be enough to convince a man to accept grace.

If I’m honest with myself, I love to give charitably, but I hate to be charity or be thought of as charity. No one wants to be a beggar. But the gospel is clear:

It is by grace [or "undeserved favor"] you have been saved, through faith. This is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.

If I am loved by God, it’s not because I deserve it. It’s because He decided I am worth it. There is a difference.

So I asked my atheist friend why he didn’t let me buy his coffee, and our conversation continues with the gospel now coming into view. But regardless of what happens in our future times together, I must admit, I’m still gonna try to buy his coffee, and sooner or later, maybe I’ll actually get to do it.

Speaking of coffee, who buys yours?

On one such visit to the roof, my buddy Tim and I were feasting on stories when we heard a strange noise coming from the glass-encased stairwell of the parking garage…like playing cards slapping against the spokes of an old Schwinn bicycle. But the sound was big, intermittent and echoing across seven stories of concrete. We investigated.

A dove had somehow gotten itself trapped within the stairwell. What was worse, all the outside world was visible through the glass and must have seemed so inviting and accessible. But it was not. The poor bird, in spurts of panic, fluttered and flailed itself against the transparent walls until it was utterly exhausted.

Then, and only then, was I able to approach. At my advance, it again attempted to escape. But it was too tired. By now it must have felt hopeless if birds can feel hopeless. I reached out my hands and wrapped them carefully around the dove’s fragile wings and body.

It was strange to see a free bird surrender.

I carried it out of the stairwell to a place where wind replaced the walls, and I opened my hands. It paused, spread its wings and made a beeline to the tip-top of the highest building in Ann Arbor. The view must have been better from up there because other doves were already there to greet it.

The whole thing was pretty cool, having the chance as a human to rule over the birds of the air in an honorable way. But I wondered afterwards who was helping who. I wondered at the ways I was wearing myself out trying to get what I want, save myself and set myself free. And I wondered if surrender wasn’t a thing to be avoided but embraced and celebrated. I wondered what it would be like to fly after having just despaired that flying would never again be possible. And last of all, I wondered what the view was like from the sky.

Maybe someday I’ll know.

– Living Mural –
Someplace sometime
a dove within the glass
made a sound of wings
tilling air stale with echoes.
Silence.
Spilt blood against the pane,
across the sky-framed,
living mural; muted welcome;
wishing walls were wind;
willing wings will mend
in the hands of Another
the air will move again.

I was sitting on my living-room floor when my 19 month-old son carried a book over and handed it to me. I took it; he turned and plopped down in my lap. I began to read to him, stopping from time to time to ask him didactic questions: “Where’s the balloon? Can you point to the red balloon?” You know, stuff like that to help him learn words, concepts, etc.

But I got distracted.

I just kept thinking about how I love when he sits in my lap. I enjoyed the smell of his hair and the warmth of his little frame. I kissed his head and smiled as he batted me away with his tiny hands. And that’s when it hit me. (Not his hands, the lesson)

In the course of life, I spend a lot of time asking God what I’m supposed to be learning. “What’s the lesson this time, God? Tell me so I can learn it and get on with my life.” But sitting with my son made me wonder if God is more interested in me and our relationship than He is in whether or not I’m keeping ahead of some imaginary, spiritual learning curve.

What if every lesson God could ever want to teach me begins and ends with the reality of His love for me?

Some may say there is much more to learn about healthy spirituality after we’ve grasped His love for us, but, to be honest, truly accepting that the God of the Universe unconditionally loves me seems to be the hardest lesson for me to grasp.

And I suppose if I could give my son some grand store of information or simply see him grow up secure in my love for him, I would rather him know my love…

…the red balloons can wait.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent [Jesus] into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us…[and] since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:8-10a, 11

In the last few posts, I articulated a worldview that I will now attempt to summarize in a single sentence:

Because a personal sense of insecurity is the root of every evil choice, the only way to live a life that is truly good is to – by faith – live as people who are completely secure (i.e. unconditionally loved).

I also shared the good news with you: you are unconditionally loved. As God’s creation and as is eternally articulated through the passion and resurrection of Jesus, you are loved without exception or condition.

Practically speaking, your salvation lies in the acceptance of the above reality. Not because you must arbitrarily adhere to some religious doctrine in order to be saved. Rather, it stands to reason that only the secure person is truly free…free of guilt, fear and the desperate need to self-protect and self-promote…free to protect and promote others…free to accept and give love courageously and with integrity. And there is only one faith that announces a God who is, in very nature, Love and thus capable of driving out our fear and making us completely secure. That God is manifest in the person of Jesus, and He makes possible the eternal kind of life, the life worth living, the life that leads to greater harmony and connectedness, the good life. Such a life – based in true security – is only possible because of His grace.

Grace is the cornerstone of unconditional love.

Grace is undeserved favor. Without it, everything falls apart. Most religions articulate a reality governed by karma or something like it. You reap what you sow. No more and no less. If you do good, you receive good in return. If you do bad, you receive bad in return. There is truth to this, but if it is the final word on all reality, our only hope for salvation is our own capacity to maintain a “white-knuckle” goodness that will outweigh our mistakes and earn us a ticket to some etherial paradise. But grace, which is a concept unique to the Judeo-Christian God, interrupts the downward spiral of bad karma in this life and the next. Grace means that no mistake you’ll ever make is destructive enough to isolate you from the love of God. It also means that there is nothing you can do to earn His love.

Love is a gift, and gifts cannot be earned or lost.

Gifts may only be accepted or rejected, but the decision whether or not to give a gift lies squarely in the hands of the Giver. And He has made His decision. It will not be revoked. God – made manifest in the person of Jesus – loves us…unconditionally…without exception. And the key struggle of our lives – in every decision and on our last day – will be to accept or reject this truth.

Do you believe it?

To reject the true nature of our immense value and security in God’s eyes is to systematically invest in our own destruction. It means looking to other broken people, systems and habits to validate us. Enter fear, guilt, hiding and blaming. Enter addictions, isolation and death. The best way to waste your life is to insist on your own worthlessness.

Do you believe it?

To accept the true nature of our immense value and security in God’s eyes is to systematically invest not only in our own re-creation but also in the re-creation of all things. It means incarnating – amidst other broken people, systems and habits – the message of our God who is Love. Instead of taking from them, we give. Enter freedom, forgiveness, fearlessness and faith. Enter grace and the glory of reconciliation with ourselves, others and the God of the Universe.

You are not a waste…not to Him. He made you. You are His poem. You are His masterpiece.

Do you believe it?

This is a story about God and His perfect creation – humans. Just as God loved, so humans were created to love – to go out in creative goodness. So God placed them in a garden and made them free. But, even though they were created good, the first humans believed a lie and so became evil. They believed that God wasn’t good, and so they rejected God. But the moment they rejected God, they rejected the One who loved them perfectly. And in the absence of a Love that made them secure, they immediately felt insecure. They felt naked and ashamed, so they hid.

God looked for them. “Where are you?”, He asked, and they came out from hiding – a man and a woman.

God looked at the man. “Why did you reject me?”, He asked. The man blamed, “It was the woman you put here with me. She made me reject you.”

God looked at the woman. “Why did you reject me?”, He asked. The woman blamed too.

Ever since that day, men and women alike have struggled to regain their sense of security. God never stopped loving them, but it was hard for them to believe in His love because things weren’t perfect anymore. Every time a man or woman felt insecure, they would hide and blame, and in this way they were constantly withholding love and hurting one another.

And every time someone got hurt, he would feel insecure. Then he would overreact and hurt others. And those people would hurt more people until people didn’t really trust anyone anymore. So God decided to make a rule to keep them from destroying each other.

God said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

For awhile after that, there was at least some order. If someone was caught stealing, he had to repay what he stole. If someone wronged his neighbor, the neighbor wasn’t allowed to overreact. But he could expect justice – which meant fair compensation for the wrong done to him. Because people no longer loved creatively, God gave them the law so that at least, they might act justly and not destroy one another. But the people neither loved, nor were they just. They wanted justice for others but mercy for themselves.

For a time, reciprocity reigned, but even reciprocity needs Love to survive. People were good to those who were good to them but only until someone mistakenly hurt their neighbor. Whoever was hurt wouldn’t forgive as Love forgives, but instead would lash out, leaving the other person feeling misunderstood and insecure, which led to more lashing out, more evil and more insecurity. Ironically, people began destroying others and themselves all in the name of self-preservation. And in this way, humanity spiraled downward on its path of destructive evil until the day when everyone had forgotten about God and the garden.

People didn’t recognized good anymore, even if He stared them in the face.

And He did. God, who is in very nature Love, put on human flesh and came to earth to dwell among His broken people. He came to love them, but most did not recognize Love anymore. When He taught, they called Him a liar and demon-possessed. When He healed, they called Him a law-breaker. When He forgave, they called Him a sinner. When He fed them, they refused to be filled.

Satan can make a crooked line seem straight.

It seemed Satan was winning. It didn’t matter how much God loved His people. Humans just continued in their insecurity and destructiveness, refusing to see Love until they had finally followed their destructive path to its logical end:

They destroyed Love itself.
They destroyed their Creator.

God, who is Love, came in the flesh to love His people, and – not recognizing Him – they treated Him as evil. They mocked Him, stripped Him, beat Him and nailed Him to a cross. As they mocked His torture, He could not hide. He did not blame. Instead, He forgave them until breath left His lungs and His heart stopped. He died creatively loving His own destroyers and then was laid to rest in a lonely tomb.

The next day was quiet and still.

It was as if the story of all creation had ended in tragedy, and everyone in the theatre sat silently longing for more while knowing that no more was possible now that the Author had ceased to exist. Even Satan held his breath, surprised that the nothingness of evil could wholly consume something as substantial as Love.

But the cross is an intersection, and an intersection is a place where paths meet and diverge in the same instant. It is an end as well as a beginning. What if in the same instant that humans insecurely destroyed their Creator, He was unconditionally loving and forgiving them? What if that is our God? What if our God is good? What if He is a God who interrupts the spiral of destruction with grace, re-creating everything that was destroyed with unconditional love and undeserved favor?

The people mourned:
“How could we have destroyed our Lover?”
“How could we have destroyed our Creator?”
……………..

……………..

On the third day,

The people repented:
“Where are You, Lover?”
“Where are You, Creator?”

They flocked to His tomb, mourning and repenting, hoping for the comfort of His presence one last time, however lifeless it might have been. But when they arrived, the tomb was empty, and a Man was walking through the nearby garden in the cool of the day. They did not recognize Him until He began to call them each by name. And as He spoke the names of the people, the eyes of each person were opened, and they saw that He was their Lover! They saw that Love cannot be destroyed.

Love begets love begets love begets love and so on as every name He calls goes out in creative goodness. For those who have received Him are secure. They continue not in enslaved self-protection but in freedom and bold love until all creation knows its true value increasingly more forever and ever.

This is the good news:

Your Lover is here, and He’s asking for you.

Where

you?

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. – Is Theology Poetry?

Now I will describe to you what I see.

In my last post, I defined evil as that which is contrary to reality. And though our experience of evil is real, it is only real because people manifest lies. And I stated emphatically that every evil act society has ever known can be traced back to this one lie: God isn’t good.

What is God?

No human being can boast absolute control over everything. To varying degrees we may “feel” as if we are in control, but none of us has absolute control over even his own life. We constantly face decisions as to what we will pursue and how we will respond to our circumstances, but we cannot force whatever outcome we want in every circumstance. In the words of Benjamin Franklin:

Certainty? In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.

And if not taxes, at least death! The point is, some things in life are up to us, but as for everything else, Mastercard won’t help you. We have names for that which is out of our control. We call it fate, chance, luck, fortune and even destiny. For the purposes of this post, let’s make this concept our starting point for God.

God is out of our control.

Imagine for a second that there is an invisible force “out there”, which dramatically influences your life yet is completely out of your control. How does that make you feel?

Oscar Wilde apparently sees this as romantic:
The very essence of romance is uncertainty. – The Importance of Being Earnest

Maybe you don’t find uncertainty romantic. Maybe for you uncertainty evokes anxiety or even terror. Put simply, if you believe that God (that uncontrollable force) is good, then uncertainty is romantic. But If you believe that God is not good, then uncertainty is threatening. Let’s think about what happens when people feel threatened.

1. Attack (Fight)
Homicide, War, Genocide, Terrorism, Racism, Hate, Abuse, Domestic violence, Extortion, Theft, Exploitation, Divorce, Hoarding, Slander/Political Mudslinging, Blaming, Passive Aggression, Self-pity, Self-promotion, Self-defense, Self-justification, Nepotism, Economic Ruin (from too much debt), Cheating, Fraud/Deception, Lawlessness, etc.

2. Withdrawal (Flight)
Hypocrisy, Isolation, Loneliness, Neglect, Fatherlessness, Bitterness, Resentment, Codependence, Addiction: alcohol, sex, work, drugs, etc., Passivity, Hiding, Divorce, Deception, Tax evasion, Joblessness, Suicide, Religious Piousness, Brown-nosing/Obsequiousness, People-pleasing, etc.

This is what we see on the news isn’t it? And when we see it, it increases our sense of insecurity. Everything from the Gulf coast oil spill to the economic recession to terrorist bombing attempts and divorce rates is all the consequence of human decisions resulting from a personal sense of insecurity. And yet we allow this bad news to further our sense of insecurity, which leads to even more evil! This doesn’t make sense. Who will stop the insanity? Who will interrupt this downward spiral of destruction with some news that is truly good?

Consider this: The epic battle between good and evil is actually a battle between reality and non-reality, between truth and lies, between light and darkness, between a positive and a zero.

Remember, our beliefs effect almost every decision we make throughout the course of our lives. Whatever we believe will manifest itself in our decisions and actions. So, to some extent, it follows that, by observing our actions, we may also gauge the quality of our beliefs. Good actions will follow from good beliefs, and the best beliefs will be those which most accurately reflect reality. The best actions are as such precisely because they demonstrate an acknowledgement of the way things really work, and they function within the confines of objective reality.

A good worldview is one that perceives the world as it really is.

In my last post, I mentioned that a good worldview should be grounded in reality, but I also mentioned that we’d have to do the hard work of discerning what is good for us as humans and what is reality. I will attempt to lay the groundwork for both in this post.

The idea of “goodness” is inextricably tied to the concept of “reality”.

What do we mean when we say that something is good? For example, that’s a good pencil sharpener? Fundamentally, we mean that the thing excellently performs the purpose for which it was created. If a pencil sharpener is good, then it sharpens pencils excellently. It really is a pencil sharpener. If a pencil sharpener isn’t very good, that means it fails to sharpen pencils efficiently. If we say the pencil sharpener is bad, that means it is broken. In other words, it no longer sharpens pencils, which calls into question whether it is even really a pencil sharpener anymore. It has become something less, something without definition and purpose. In a word, it is waste and “good for nothing”.

So it is with human beings.

God created the first human beings in His own image. He made them very good, and their purpose was to be fruitful and increase in number, to rule over and subdue the earth. In other words, their purpose was to keep creating just as God created. Their purpose was to keep reality going, and they were good at it…until they believed a lie.

You know the story, don’t you? God gives the first humans permission to eat from every tree in the garden except one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There is no sign they had any intention of eating from that tree until a talking serpent comes along and convinces them of the most tragic lie in all of human history: God isn’t good.

Every evil act in history can be traced back to that one lie.

Let’s pause for a second to better understand the nature of evil. I am often asked why a good God would create evil in the first place. Usually when people ask this question, it is because they have encountered evil and have been hurt by it, and they wonder why God didn’t stop it. Fair enough, but the question is based on a false premise. God did not create evil. Evil is not a thing to be created. Everything God created was good. He spoke a good word; that word became reality, and reality was good. Evil, I suggest to you, is not “real” in and of itself but is, rather, the manifestation of that which is not real. Evil is the manifestation of a lie, of non-reality. Evil is what happens when we believe lies and act on them in the world. Evil is what happens when we incarnate “nothingness”. To incarnate nothingness is to produce nothing, to be nothing, to be good for nothing.

“For the wages of sin is death…” Romans 6:23a

A life lived in accordance with reality will always be good, meaning that it will be creative in the truest since of the word. That is, it will promote creation, harmony, wholeness and health. On the other hand, any life that becomes the manifestation of a lie is, by definition, evil. That life is an investment in non-reality and non-reality can’t exist. Any investment in non-reality promotes non-existence/destruction, cacophony and disintegration. We cannot invest in non-existence and expect to exist for long.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the spiritual forces of evil…” Ephesians 6:12

The battle between good and evil is not a struggle between “flesh and blood” adversaries – one good and the other evil. Rather, it is a war waged against “flesh and blood” itself, a battle raging against creation by that which is nothing more than a lie. Of course, our experience of evil is real, but that is only because we and others choose to manifest lies. And any manifestation of a lie is sin. And sin leads to death.

In essence, Human Beings (including you and me) were created to incarnate creative goodness, but to the extent that we incarnate lies, we become something less than human: evil, a waste, and good for nothing.

What we believe matters…

Note: Next Post – Incarnationism Part 3: The Triumph of Good