Les Miserables-The heart of God in the heart of a man

I'm finally reading the actual Les Miserables book after all these years.  It's the abridged version, but the real thing none the less.  Here are a few quotes I love so far (with some intros from me):

Early in the story, the bishop meets the convict Jean Valjean, and is the only person who will let him stay at his house.  The bishop makes some touching comments that challenge us, as Christ followers:

The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.    
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother."

The Bishop looked at him, and said,—
"You have suffered much?"
"Oh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double chain for nothing, the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still the chain! Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty-six. Now there is the yellow passport. That is what it is like." 
   
"Yes," resumed the Bishop, "you have come from a very sad place. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us."

Everyone else looks down on Valjean, but the bishop repeatedly addresses him with the respectful title "Monsieur".  Valjean remarks in his thoughts:

"Monsieur" to a convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked of the Medusa. Ignominy thirsts for consideration.

Valjean, expecting to be turned away insists on paying.  The bishop cuts him short to not only welcome him to stay, but to invite him to that most intimate of places: a spot at the dinner table.

The bishop goes on to request a new, luxurious bed prepared for this dirty, hardened man.  This bishop is the heart of God incarnate.

"I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am very weary; twelve leagues on foot; I am very

hungry. Are you willing that I should remain?"

"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will set another place."

Every one has cast me out. Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?"

"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will put white sheets on the bed in the alcove."

Stay out of bed

A few posts ago I quoted from this book that my wife and I are reading called The Birth Order Connection.  Over and over again we are amazed at Leman's real-life practical relationship wisdom.  I came across another quote that I wanted to share.

I know that in Christian circles you hear the "wait until marriage" mantra when it comes to sex.  I wanted to share Leman's version because, while he is a Christian, his book is not written for just them.  He has some interesting insights from having counseled couples as a psychologist for decades.  Here it is:

To stop means you're going to have to rise above your feelings.  One of the best ways to do this, frankly, is to stay out of bed.  I don't want to sound like a broken record, but premarital sexual intimacy has led more people into disastrous marriages than I could possibly count in my lifetime.  Sex masks what is really going on in a dating relationship.  Your body will betray your mind if you let it. 

Instead of being carried away by passion, make a few mental notes.  "What is it about this guy that is attracting me?"  "Why do I find myself drawn to this woman?"  As part of this analysis, you need to be aware of your weaknesses, whatever they may be: "I might be a bit starved for attention these days and easily overwhelmed by the fact that somebody actually wants to spend time with me.  I need to be careful."  Or this: "We always seem to have a good time, provided we end up in the sack.  I wonder what a date would be like if I told him I don't want to sleep with him anymore?"

Be bold and courageous in searching out your greatest fears.  If you suspect he may leave if you no longer sleep with him, try it out!  Confirm or dispel your suspicions; that's what dating is for.  If he hangs around, this relationship just may have a future.

One of the things I really think is valuable here is: sex ties you to someone before you know if you want to be tied to them.  Living together does the same thing.  It locks you in more significantly than the depth or commitment of your relationship really is.  I'd say we need to get back to what dating is really about: "trying people out" to see if they're worth marrying.  Yes, have fun, enjoy it, laugh, and so on, but do so with this in mind: I want to leave the 'exit' door open.  The more intimate you get, the tighter the exit door becomes. 

We all know that people start off dating on their best behavior because they want to impress.  That's okay; that's normal.  But remember that in time you will see more of the real person they truly are.  So, he or she may seem like the best thing that ever happened to you for the first few months, but give it time.  Go slow physically.  You will n e v e r regret going slow. 

So, let's say you give it time and you really do see a future.  Yes, you can feel free to narrow the exit.  Still, though, pace yourself.  No one gets married and says, "Gee, I wish we had jumped in the sack more (or at all) before we got married."

Again, Father has our happiness in mind.  He's really smart and this shows that his ideas make sense for us and our relational happiness.

Is It Lust?

One of the challenges of life is that love is interwoven with sexual desire.  Desire, however, operates inside of each of us, regardless of whether we are in a romantic relationship or not.

So, what do you do with it?  One side of our world says to do whatever you want.  It doesn't really matter.  Then, for some of us who are Christ-followers, we have another community around us that has opinions about how to deal with our sexual desires.  In my experiences, that community often strives to give us lots of "NO's", but doesn't often speak to the reality of the intensity of our urges.

One author that, I believe, writes with more clarity than almost any other I have found is Brad Watson, a pastor, and an author of the book Is It Lust or Legalism.  He wrote an article in Charisma Magazine that gives a taste of what God taught him on this subject.  Check it out here:  Is It Lust or Legalism?

I'd like to get some dialogue running about Brad's article.


After reading Brad's article, here are some questions I think that are worth exploring:

Is this practical?
Is Watson giving too much freedom to our thoughts?
Is Watson's advice similar or different to what you've been taught elsewhere?
Do you think he's right?
Should we even care about this stuff?

Allegiant: when relationships get tough

Tris and Tobias.  I like them so much more than Katniss, Peta, and Gale.  They have a great chemistry

 and, for the most part, they really seem to care about each other.

Then comes Allegiant.  Things get much dice-ier for them in this book.  That’s pretty realistic actually.  All long-term relationships eventually go through an arc.  At the beginning, things often are great.  Excitement, mystery, newness, all these things make us feel alive to life in a way we weren’t before. 

The myth is that this goes on forever.  The truth, however, is not that love is doomed to failure or boredom.  That too is a myth, although one that can, and often does, come sadly true for those who don’t realize the first myth. 

Tris and Tobias are no exception.  Like in real life relationships, the challenges of life hit them individually, like a barrage of baseballs, and it takes a toll first on them individually and then on their relationship. 

So far, I see a trend that continues to harm their connection when it could be an opportunity to draw them together:

They are very understanding of their own pain, but don’t sympathize with the other’s. 

Two examples.  Both Tobias and Tris go through genetic testing and discover that something is supposedly “wrong” with Tobias’ genes, but not Tris’.

Tris quickly comments, “It’s not that big a deal.”

Now I actually think she has a valid point here and that she’s trying to love and validate that “This doesn’t change anything.”

But here’s the problem, she doesn’t give Tobias a chance to simply struggle to his conclusion with her.  Tris dismisses the hurt he feels.  He then walks out to struggle on his own (and get lured to Nita).

Another example.  Tobias finds out that his father, for whom he has contempt, was not sentenced to execution, but to being banished.  Again Tris dismisses the effect this has on her boyfriend.  She outright says, “You can be upset about whatever you want….But…it doesn’t seem like there’s much to be upset about.”

And, like any good story, their chance to follow up the conversation is interrupted.

Relationships, friendship, family, or romantic, are blessings from Father.  Blessings must be held gently.  Heavy-handedness usually harms, not heals.  The beauty of Jesus was God coming into our world and fully experiencing the joy, pain, grief, fun, laughter, hurt, and death that we feel.  Hebrews 4 says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.”

Tris is a great character, but we can learn from her mistakes.  Healthy relationships involve sympathizing with someone else’s weaknesses and feelings, even if they seem ridiculous from our perspective.  If you want to feel close to someone and, also if you want to see them move on from something, the first step is to ask, listen, and bear the feelings of the other person.

Allegiant: Is Christianity a fix-it religion?

[Spoiler alert]
Everybody is living inside an experiment. 

Creepy, eh? 

That's what Tris finds out in Allegiant, the third book of the Divergent series.  All of her life up to this point has been lived inside an experiment at gene manipulation.  A long time ago people decided to alter the genetics of a select group of people so that negative qualities would be erased.

However, "when the genetic manipulation began to take effect, the alterations had disastrous consequences....Take away someone's fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty...and you take away their compassion.  Take away someone's aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation."

So they ultimately damaged people's genes and, as a result, had to set up false, monitored societies, like the faction-led world of Tris and Tobias, to slowly fix people.

Have you ever heard someone say of Christianity, "it's not a religion, it's a relationship"?  It's become something of a cliche, but there is truth in it. 

Christianity, when lived as a religion, is a lot like the world of the Divergent series.  We want people to be better so we manipulate them by using lots of rules and fear.  We read about rules, preach about rules, and quote the rules.  We try to take human nature and fix it by external means. 

Here is the common problem with this method.  Like the situations mentioned in Allegiant, enforcement of standards leads to a whole host of internal damage.  We create a culture where certain feelings are unacceptable, so people hide their true struggles and stuff them, instead of sharing with others.  Be a good role model and be happy, yet we are cutting in our bedroom at night.

We tell each other what to do and not to do and subsequently create hidden cultures where people act out these forbidden behaviors in secret. 

Religion gets to play a fix-it role again when we go to church on Sunday and confess our sins in the service.  We feel some relief and turn around and do all the same things again the following week.

At the worst, religiosity can make us cocky and lead to lots of bickering, much like the Purity wars mentioned in Allegiant.

Scripture gives us a different picture.  "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."  Galatians 2:20

"When someone is joined to Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has gone and the new has come."  2 Corinthians 5:17

I was a good kid, according to the rules, when I was in junior high.  My teachers saw me as a responsible, well-behaved young man.  Still, I was just doing what was expected of me.  I was a manipulated gene, manipulated by the approval I received.    Really, there was a very different me going on inside that I kept hidden from others.  I began to truly change, to become a "new creation," though, when I surrendered my life to Father. 

My heart began to change naturally as the Holy Spirit showed me my issues.  I found myself growing compassion for people I had once hated, developing patience for people that bothered me, finding out the joy of opening up about my honest feelings, and growing in desire to learn and know Jesus.

Lasting change, I'm finding, comes not from monitoring or manipulation, but from meaningful relationship with Father.

Don't Hug Me; I'm Grey

Grey.

My previous post explored its strange role in our view of life.

It's the color that most comes to mind when I imagine the world's that are created in dystopian books

like The Hunger Games or Divergent.

They are worlds without vibrance.  The characters seem to dress in dull hues and their buildings are drab, sharp, and utilitarian.

When a world is left with nothing but physical survival, as the ones in these books appear to be, there is no beauty, no heart, no art.

Is that the world you live in?  Does this feel like the world of your soul?

Have you seen the series of popular Youtube videos named "Don't Hug Me; I'm Scared"?  They are meant to be humorously disturbing as what appears to be a children's puppet show turns into a lesson in fear and the grotesque.  The second of the two videos, however, is particularly interesting.  In it, a puppet sings a song and teaches the others about time.  As expected, it turns slowly macabre.  Characters imagine their own decay as they, their friends, and in one case, their parents fall into states of senility and eventual death.  One particular lyric refers to time teaching us about the "future".  That word is sung over top of a picture frame showing the word, "nothing."

That video, while certainly intended merely for humor, is a perfect illustration of a world without beauty, without hope, and really, without God.

God, to me, is the game-changer, the infusion of white.  White, as the last post pointed out, is "the color with all the colors in existence combined."

"You see, grey is almost a bright color."  Almost.  When your life is grey it easy to ignore what is missing.  When your life is black it may be easier to see that you are missing brightness.  But grey dulls your senses, and helps you get used to missing out and makes you think this is all there is.

But, if there is a God, there is meaning, purpose.  Love's magic returns.  Friendship again has lasting value.  Suffering has a context that allows it not to be meaningless.  Someone cares how I react to it.  How I live my life and how I treat others matters.

I share this with you because I too sometimes get beaten down by life.  Times like these make me wonder what it's all about.  Does anything matter?  And so I fight for my soul and preach to it: "Father loves you.  He will give you grace for each thing that comes along.  He cares.  You, and your life matter to Him."  And with repeated exposure to reality, divine reality, I can, sometimes slowly, find colors once again.

Dating Wisdom from an Alien

 It helps to know what the point of a relationship is.  It would help a lot with decisions.  Still, that can be so confusing.

Sometimes it helps to get some insight from an outsider. 

Aliens qualify, then, don’t they?

So, in class we’re reading this book called The Dark Side of Nowhere by Neal Shusterman.  The main character, Jason, discovers he’s the child of alien parents.  This causes some challenges for him, as you can guess, particularly in relation to his human girlfriend, who has no idea about it.  Anyway, the following paragraph lends some insight into Jason’s (the alien) understanding of dating:

“Every evening I saw Paula.  No matter how exhausted I felt, I would meet her at the mall or Banzai Burger or the batting cages—anyplace we could go to be together.  We would talk about pointless things, and that was okay, since important part was just talking.  Every once in a while she would start bringing up that picture of Billy Chambers, or the message written in that house in Old Town, or my glove, which I should never have shown her.  I would always find a smooth way of changing the subject, and she would let me.  It was nice to know that she was more interested in me than in the mystery.”

You know what this alien gets?  Dating is about boring stuff.  In fact, all relationships are about “wasting time” together, or in other words, laughing about silly things, talking about the day-to-day, sharing what’s on your mind, asking questions about each other, eating ice cream, walking dogs, and so on.

If you can’t do that with the person you’re dating, you may want to consider moving on. 

Here’s why: boring stuff is really personal.  And that’s what we’re doing in relationships: sharing the real me with the real you. 

The biggest outsider who showed me this is God.  He is intensely personal.  He’s not particularly looking for a nation to come to Him.  He’s looking for individuals, real honest people, to love and to know.  He’d like to waste time with you and for the two of you to get to know each other. 

When you’re in a relationship like that, whether with God or a human, then what is “boring” to someone else becomes really intriguing and fun, because you get to share that with each other.

Frozen & Mr. Banks

When I first became a Jesus follower in high school I was amazed at the depth of wisdom about life that I found in Scripture, and all things "Christian."  I quickly assumed there was no wisdom elsewhere, that God could be heard only through the voices of His followers (and, of course, His followers that agreed with my perspectives). 

And then there was Paolo Coehlo.

I began to devour nearly everything this mystical novelist published.  Here's the weird part: God met me in deep, profound ways when I read Coehlo's books, ways that still affect me today.  I began to see that the voice of my Father could be heard all around me and often I can tell when it's Him.

I recently saw two movies that touched me, and made it hard for me, in my manliness, to hide the fact that I was tearing up.

The first was Frozen.

Yes, my world of five girls makes Disney movies part of my life's fabric.  Because the young princess Elsa has a confusing power to freeze things, her parents are forced to keep her isolated from everyone, including her sister Anna, with whom she once was very close. 

Neither Anna's parents, nor Elsa herself, ever explained to her why her sister had to be kept apart.  This is the part that moved me: Anna, instead of writing off her sister because of her coldness, fights for, and ultimately sacrifices what she longs for, for their love.  In the climax of the film, she has the chance to get the guy she loves to kiss her and save her, but she chooses to give up that chance so her sister can live. 

How many times have I written people off because I didn't understand them, because I didn't know their story?  How many times have I looked down on people for something without considering that it may have been great pain that is the cause. 

This leads to the other movie: Saving Mr. Banks.  It's the story of the woman who wrote Mary Poppins.  The movie consists of many flashbacks to her childhood where she recalls the father that she loved so dearly, but who was painfully addicted to alcohol. 

Here is a woman with a past, a story that explains a great deal about how she is as an adult.  It struck me just how much of a legacy her father left on her.  It was indeed a legacy, though, a legacy of shame, guilt, and sadness. 

None of us can leave a perfect legacy, but, oh God, let us strive to leave an

honest, good one.  I can think of it now with my kids, but for you guys you are leaving legacies too to your siblings, your family, your friends, your boyfriend or girlfriend, and your classmates.  No one really hides their light under a bushel.  The question is what kind of light are you giving off?

Wisdom comes in my surprising places.  This time it was the movie theater.

I want to feel OK about me

Do you ever feel just not good?

Do you ever feel like something’s not right, but you just don’t know what?

Do you ever just wish you felt okay? 

…about your life?

…about you?

Do you ever feel like you are on a roller coaster, sometimes up, and sometimes down?

I did too.  I remember it very distinctly, because it was during my high school years that I first noticed this.  I found that hanging out with friends made me feel good about me.  But, if a weekend went by without hanging out, I felt sort of empty.

Dating had helped too in the past, but getting dumped certainly didn’t help. 

Going on vacation felt good.  I liked to ski, so when I was rockin’ it down a black diamond run, I felt on top of the world.  But, of course, vacations end.

Getting a new AC/DC album was pretty sweet.  Or even a new locomotive for my model train set (I know.  I’m a nerd).  But those got old or broke.

Then I saw this book at a store called Joy That Lasts by a guy named Gary Smalley.  What I read in that book changed my sense of “feeling okay” forever. 

I’ll write in an upcoming post about what I found.

Suffering through Christmas

It's nice when someone asks how you're really doing.

It's nice when someone says they'll pray for you.
It's nice when someone thinks you're amazing because of all you've gone through.

But it puts divine medicine on a chapped soul when someone shares your suffering with you.  They enter into it as much as they can with listening, empathizing, asking, helping, comforting, even sometimes feeling the same things.

That's Christmas.

God doesn't just say, "Wow.  Life is hard for you guys."
or
"I'll send some angels to help sometimes."
or
"Good job facing the trials of life!"

No, He comes INTO it, WITH US.  Emmanuel, is this name that the ancient Jews were told the Messiah would be called.  It means "God with us."

That baby in Bethlehem becomes a man and showed us another time that He would be with us.  Here's a quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber's book Pastrix that captures it:

Every time I go looking for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross.  In death and resurrection.

This is our God.  Not a distant judge nor a sadist, but a God who weeps.  A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us.  Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross.  Therefore what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering.  This is a God who bears suffering.  I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering.  God transforms it.

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son."  Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother."  After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said, "I am thirsty."

"I am thirsty," he says.  "I am not watching this from a distant heaven.  I too am thirsty."

Thanks giving

John 10:17-18 "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord."

"That Jesus would endure such hostility against himself with the full freedom to end it at any weak moment makes me appreciate the cross that much more.  As free choice got us into this bondage of sin, so Jesus' free choice would walk us out of it.  His example also reminds us that we are not victims either.  Even though disgusting things might be done to us by others, we still have the freedom to overcome evil by putting our trust in him.  He still redeems the darkest moments of life with the wonder of his grace."
-Wayne Jacobsen, He Loves Me

Happy Thanksgiving!

Is it Lust?

One of the challenges of life is that love is interwoven with sexual desire.  Desire, however, operates inside of each of us, regardless of whether we are in a romantic relationship or not.

So, what do you do with it?  One side of our world says to do whatever you want.  It doesn't really matter.  Then, for some of us who are Christ-followers, we have another community around us that has opinions about how to deal with our sexual desires.  In my experiences, that community often strives to give us lots of "NO's", but doesn't often speak to the reality of the intensity of our urges.

One author that, I believe, writes with more clarity than almost any other I have found is Brad Watson, a pastor, and an author of the book Is It Lust or Legalism.  He wrote an article in Charisma Magazine that gives a taste of what God taught him on this subject.  Check it out here:  Is It Lust or Legalism?

I'd like to get some dialogue running about Brad's article.


After reading Brad's article, here are some questions I think that are worth exploring:

Is this practical?
Is Watson giving too much freedom to our thoughts?
Is Watson's advice similar or different to what you've been taught elsewhere?
Do you think he's right?
Should we even care about this stuff?

Why I Loved to Hate Hazel

Have you ever loved something partly because it bothered you?  It's kind of like when you look back on a tough time in your life and recognize that, if you could go back, you wouldn't change it because you're different, in a very good way, because of that experience.

Both of my posts on The Fault in Our Stars have been negative.  Yet, the more I think about it, I think that alone is due to the fact that the book engaged me both on an entertainment level and on a soul level.  It hurt to see this young girl facing death in her own life, and in her beloved's, and having this hopeless outlook at the same time.

While I criticized Hazel's supposed 'honesty' about suffering, I applaud her desire to not accept silly answers.  And that is something I share with her.  I have never been content with cliche answers to life, death, and especially spiritual issues.

I noticed something that began happening in the last few pages of the book that also sweetened my heart.

After her boyfriend Augustus dies, Hazel is angry, yet her loss seems to make her long for more than her "oblivion is inevitable" approach.

First, she reflects on her dad's comments (mentioned in the last post):
"What we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us--not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us, as individuals."

She begins to feel that Something in the universe knows her, individually.  She goes on to say,
"I was thinking about the universe wanting to be noticed, and how I had to notice it as best I could.  I felt I owed a debt to the universe that only my attention could repay."  

In the last few pages of the book, Hazel, for the first time, mentions heaven in an affirmative manner.  Her mom, she discovers, has been taking courses so she can be a grief counselor for kids with cancer after Hazel dies.  Hazel is ecstatic and exclaims:

"This is so great.  If I'm dead, I want you to know I will be sighing at you from heaven every time you ask someone to share their feelings."

In similar fashion, for the first time she also speaks of God.  She has heard that there is a high divorce

rate for couples who lose a child to cancer.  Hazel wants to know if her mom and dad will make it.  Her dad says,
"Your mom and I love each other, and if we lose you, we'll go through it together."
"Swear to God,"  I said.
"I swear to God," he said.

In the end, the fact that I was so irritated with Hazel showed the greatness of a book that did not just entertain me, but pulled at and wrestled with my soul.  And for that, I am grateful to John Green the author, and also to Hazel.

Heaven is fairy tale?

Hazel Grace, the sweet, terminally ill girl that has found love from The Fault in Our Stars. I want so much to like her. I want so much to find her inspiring. But she angers me. I should feel bad about that. I mean she's dying. But she claims she doesn't want pity. Here is just one example of many that frustrate me: Hazel loves this one book. Her dad read it and says, "It was a bit hopeless," he said. "A bit defeatist." "If by defeatist you mean honest, then I agree." "I don't think defeatism is honest," Dad answered. "I refuse to accept that." "So everything happens for a reason and we'll all go live in the clouds and play harps and live in mansions?"   I come across this thinking so frequently: if you really want something to be true, it must not be. Because you really wish there was a God, because you really long for there to be an afterlife, it must not be. Some atheists pride themselves on being so honest, so in touch with the facts and reality. Theirs is just another wishful-thinking mode too, though they don't admit it.   Some very much hope there is no God or no afterlife. Alas, that may require them to recognize some responsibility towards that God or that how they live their life now may have some effect on the next life. The "honesty" argument falls in so many places. I love my wife. But one could say, "Hey let's be honest. We are all competing organisms. My survival is my main goal. I am an evolutionary product with no inherent meaning. I am a blob of stellar material that has come to life and all I can do is maintain my miserable existence. So, I will choose to protect myself and serve myself at whatever cost it takes." And I can say, "I'm just being honest." But, here's my problem: I believe in love. Yes, I really, really want there to be a thing called love. I want it to be true that giving of myself not only blesses my wife, but also blesses my God. I want it to be true that all the love and relationships that I have built with her and my four little girls will have meaning both in this life and the next. Yes, I believe in love. Call me dishonest, if you must. I give Hazel's dad credit that he tries to hold onto some semblance of belief, though the best he can come up with is, "I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed." He seems to be trying so hard to avoid saying there is a Being who actually cares. Maybe he's afraid of being 'honest.' God (truly), I hope Hazel gets honest by the end of this book. But maybe because I really want that to happen, because I actually care enough about this fictional character to hope she finds real meaning, that must mean I believe that everything happens for a reason and we'll all go live in the clouds and play harps and live in mansions*" Honestly, I suppose I do...minus the harps, of course. *To be exact, no I don't believe everything happens for a reason, though I do believe that God can bring meaning and life out of even the greatest tragedies.  The clouds, harps, and mansions are simply a cartoon cutout of a real belief in a life that will happen after this one that will certainly be much more meaningful than comic strip versions of heaven.

 

Do I mean anything?

I'm reading two different books right now.  One is called The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, a fiction story about two teens with cancer who fall in love.  The other is Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber, a former addict turned tattooed, f-bomb dropping Lutheran pastor. The differences between these two books is like oil and water.  In Fault, the main character Hazel has to carry around an oxygen tank because her lungs won't work otherwise.  She has terminal cancer.  A young cancer survivor named Gus comes to a support group meeting.  When asked his biggest fear, he responds, "Oblivion," meaning to cease to exist after death. 


Hazel tells him the following:
"There will come a time...when all of us are dead.  All of us.  There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything....Everything we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught....if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it."

Wow.  Makes you feel small and insignificant, doesn't it.  But then...I read a chapter in Pastrix called "Beer and Hymns."  Nadia tells the story of how her church meets in a bar to sing hymns to God each week.  However, one particular week stood out because a few days before that one guy shot and killed some 12 people in a movie theater during a midnight showing of Batman. 

Nadia considered cancelling the meeting, but instead, they did it anyway.  Here are some of her remembrances of that night.

"It took a few minutes for me to pinpoint the uniqueness of how these hymns were being sung [that night].  But then I knew.  It was defiance.

"Mary Magdalene was the very first to proclaim, in the midst of loss and sorrow, that death had been defeated.

"Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events.  Those platitudes are tempting, but they're nothing but luxuries for people who've never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them).  But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death--ideas present in so much of postmodernity.  Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons.

"When we sang hymns to God at the bar, it sounded like a people who simply would not believe that violence wins, a people who know that the sound of the risen Christ speaking our names drowns out all other voices.  It drowns out the sound of the political posturing, the sound of cries for vengeance, the sound of our own fears and anxieties, and the deafening uncertainty--because all of it is no match for the shimmering sound of the resurrected Christ calling our name.

"This is the resurrected God to whom we sing.  A God who didn't say we would never be afraid but that we would never be alone.

"Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples.  Like Mary Magdalene, the reason we can stand and weep and listen for Jesus is because we, like Mary, are bearers of resurrection, we are made new.  On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid.  To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles...that death is not the final word.  To defiantly say, once again, that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it.  And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, still we make our song alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia."

I'm not done with The Fault in Our Stars yet, but I'm hoping Hazel finds more hope than that sad "reality" that she gave to Gus.

I hate myself

I don't really hate myself, but there have been times when I have.  It still sometimes hits me, but I've learned how to fight that impulse.  I think we all can get pretty good at hating on ourselves.  In fact, in some Christian circles, hating on yourself is seen as a sign of spiritual maturity or something. 

So, I'm reading this book called Pastrix by an ELCA Lutheran pastor who also happens to drop f-bombs and has tons of tattoos named Nadia Bolz-Weber; oh, and she's a woman.  That alone would throw many for a loop.  There are a lot of things in the book that many would be uncomfortable with.  In fact, there are things I'm uncomfortable with in it too.  Still, I love this woman's heart for Jesus and people.  As I read I'm going to post some parts of the book that jump out at me.  Here's one where she talks about identity.

(BTW, she's going to be the speaker at an upcoming Ohio ELCA youth conference)


And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."  Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

And the Word that had most recently came from the mouth of God was, "This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased."  Identity.  It's always God's first move.  Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God's own.  But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong; capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school-they all have a go at telling us who we are.  But only God can do that.  Everything else is temptation.  Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are.  And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God..." he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God.

So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question.  Identity is like the tip of a spool of thread, which when pulled, can unwind the whole thing...Our identity has nothing to do with how we are perceived by others.  But it's still tempting to believe.  I mean, if Jesus was vulnerable to temptation, the rest of us certainly are, whether it be temptation to self-loathing or self-aggrandizement, depression or pride, self-destruction or self-indulgence.  We are tempted to doubt our innate value precisely to the degree that we are insecure about our identity from, and our relationship to God.

Wisdom from a Vampire

I read a vampire novel!  It was my first.  I know it’s hard to believe, but I never read any of the Twilight series, though I saw the first movie.  The book I read was simply called The Vampyre by

John Polidori in 1819.  In it, the main character Aubrey joins a mysterious man named Lord Ruthven on a trip. 

Aubrey is not initially aware that his companion is a blood-sucker, yet he can’t help but notice Ruthven’s strange behavior.  When they stop in towns, Lord Ruthven is very generous with needy people…certain needy people.  If someone is legitimately poor and needs help, Ruthven gives him nothing, but if a person seeks money to spend on vice (a fancy word for sinful stuff) Lord Ruthven gives lavishly.  Even at the gambling table, the secret vampyre wins against desperate men, but loses on purpose to greedy men.

We can learn from this vampire!  Lord Ruthven desires to destroy and the best way to do that is to indulge our sinful appetites.  Sin is such a churchy word to throw around.  This story illustrates what it truly is though: anything that destroys life, love, and relationships. 

Jesus said that evil “comes to steal and destroy.”  That is evil’s goal in our life.  We need to recognize that we have an enemy, and it’s not a vampire.  Our enemy wants to wreck us, to shame us, to make us feel worthless, to get us to go further in our self-destructive habits, to burn the people that love us, to break off connections with others, to isolate, to hate others and ourselves, to not care enough to do much for those around us.

“But,” Jesus goes on, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”  What part of you is taking life?  What voices are trying to tear life and love from you? 

I’m trying to listen more to Jesus’ voice that tells me to choose His way, to choose to live life fully and to love fully.  I have a tendency to listen to the other voice that says, “You’re not enough.”  That

can depress me and keep me stepping away from my wife and the people in my life.  Yet, I’m recognizing evil’s voice more and letting the great power of the Holy Spirit override it. 

Join me in fighting the life-sucking vampires!