Musical Supplement to the Parable of Two Lost Sons

There are two sides to every person
Like the two sides of a dime
Heads or tails it depends upon
Who's watching at the time
Though I hate to say it
Mine is no exception
One part is the prodigal
The other part: deception
Like the prince and the pauper
Like Jacob and his brother
Each hide a different heart
Each a shadow of the other
Me and my doppelganger
Both share the same blood
One I have hated
The other have I loved
One of them's the Golden Boy
The man I'd like to be I show him off in the parades
For all the world to see
The other is much weaker
He stumbles all the time
The source of my embarrassment
He's the one I try to hide
The Golden boy is made of straw
His finest suit will surely burn
His vice is the virtue
That he never had to earn
The prodigal's been broken
And emptied at the wishing well
But he's stronger for the breaking
With a story to tell
I'm not easy with confessions
It's hard to tell the truth
But I have favored the golden boy
While the other I've abused
And he takes it like a man
Though he's longing like a child
To be loved and forgiven
And share the burden for awhile
So take a good look in the mirror
Tell me who you see
The one who Jesus died for
Or the one you'd rather be
Can you find it in your heart
To show mercy to the one
The Father loved so much
That he gave his only son...


--"The Golden Boy & The Prodigal" by Jason Gray

I Need.

There are two ways to be your  own Savior and Lord.  One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good... Jesus's message, which is the "true gospel," is a completely different spirituality.  The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism.  Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles-- it is something else altogether.  The gospel is distinct from the other two approaches: In its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change... Jesus says: "The humble are in and the proud are out" (see Luke 18:14).  The people who confess they aren't particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God, because the prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it... When a newspaper posed the question, "What's Wrong with the World?" the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: "Dear Sirs: I am.  Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton." That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.   

The above selection from Keller's Prodigal God touches my heart in the same place seared by the words of Hart's hymn in the post below.

"Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream.  All the fitness He requires is to feel your need of Him." 

Feel my need.  Need.  Need.  Need.  I keep thinking about all the ways I try to make need go away.  I am uncomfortable owing, and I don't like to admit need for anything from money to driving directions and from the time of others to the grace of God.  Needing translates to weakness.  To debt.  To the stress of trying to keep up, trying to stay on even terms with everyone.  I don't want to need more than I am needed.  I want to give more than others can give to me.  I don't need anything...

I like to think my John Mayer-esque philosophy of uncertainty "Am I living it right?" is a testament to my  constant quest for the right answers and the right way to live, but maybe it's really an attempt to get out of needing-- to get out of needing God's right answers and His grace when I can't live up to them.    What I tend to ignore in my search for "rightness" is the fact that I'm never going to "live it right" because I'll always have to straddle the two thoughts of right living that Keller identifies.  I'll always struggle with conventional rightness and morality, always question how any one set of conventions can be right when so many cultures and perspectives have their own definitions of right and when the notions of right from any one view are always changing.  Yet I'll never be satisfied completely by any course of rightness that I set for myself.  I have an arrogant amount of faith in my own opinion, I'll admit, but not enough confidence to be sure I can accurately determine what's right or actually live that right out if I can even identify it.  So it all comes down to need.  Not just need, a need for divinity.  Need for God, need for a Savior.

I have to admit-- amidst all my soul-searching, all my reading, all my discussing, all my pondering-- that I just flat out can't do it.  I can't figure it out.  I can't find someone else who has figured it out.  I can't study enough to put together pieces of rightness into one picture of what life should be, and I can't live that perfection either.  I can't.  I need.

My idolatry lies in looking for answers from humans, from my brain, from my heart.  I want something to prove itself so right that I can do it and never fear that I have it wrong.  I want to be completely confident that I'm living a life that is pleasing to God and that is right and just.  All of my searching and all of my attempts to be the right kind of Christian are what the hymn articulates; all I'm doing is fondly dreaming of fitness, looking for a way to be satisfied in my own soul that I am living life the right way.

What I should be doing is something entirely different.  What I should be doing is learning to feel my need more acutely, acknowledging my need, embracing my need, loving the one who fulfills those needs, living in gratitude.

I am what's wrong with the world.  God, You are what is right.  Make me love Your rightness in worship of You and in service to others.  Help my soul to feel and know its need and to delight in You in its fulfillment from only You.  

Would Jesus Start the Kind of Church We Attend?

The following is the most well written paragraph I think I've read concerning the thought it expresses.  In the first chapter of his book Prodigal God, which I am currently reading for a Bible study group at church (shocker!)*, Timothy Keller beautifully and succinctly communicates the fearful truth that our church must be missing the point.

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people.  The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers [as in the wayward son in the parable popularly known as "The Prodigal Son"] they must be more full of elder brothers [as in the brother from the parable who resents his father's forgiveness of his less righteous brother] than we'd like to think. 

* The shocker! comment is not ironic; I've steered clear of church Sunday school classes, Bible study, and the like for a while now.  I still fear that many/most exist for good Christians to regurgitate the "right answers" and congratulate each other for knowing the faith so well, but I want to quit being so closed.  I do believe that people grow and learn from community with others, and my condemnation of the communities around me does nothing for anyone and is bitter sin on my part.  It is time for me to quit judging and loathing what I suspect to be wrong and start learning and living what truly is right.