What if I'm wrong? I'd rather be wrong...

I've been rediscovering a lot of music lately, and I had forgotten how many Nichole Nordeman songs I love. This one is so the conversation of my heart that I mentioned in my last post. I've done some digging, I've tried not to be "simple minded," and I've found the holes and the problems in the logic... but when weighed against the possibility that IT'S TRUE, that hope is real, that Jesus is love and life abundant, I'd rather be wrong about Him than wrong in disbelief.

What if? 

Nichole Nordeman

What if you're right?
And he was just another nice guy
What if you're right?
What if it's true?
They say the cross will only make a fool of you
And what if it's true?

What if he takes his place in history
With all the prophets and the kings
Who taught us love and came in peace
But then the story ends

What then?

But what if you're wrong?

What if there's more?
What if there's hope you never dreamed of hoping for?
What if you jump?
And just close your eyes?
What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?
What if He's more than enough?
What if it's love?

What if you dig
Way down deeper than your simple-minded friends
What if you dig?
What if you find
A thousand more unanswered questions down inside
That's all you find?

What if you pick apart the logic
And begin to poke the holes
What if the crown of thorns is no more
Than folklore that must be told and retold?

What if there's more?
What if there's hope you never dreamed of hoping for?
What if you jump?
And just close your eyes?
What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?
What if He's more than enough?
What if it's love?

You've been running as fast as you can
You've been looking for a place you can land for so long
But what if you're wrong?

Wanted: People Who Don't Think Like Me

I've been thinking for a long time now that what I need in life is a church of people who think like I do. In fact, I tend arrogantly to think that about most things. I wish my family thought about some things more the way I do-- wish I didn't feel so different from them sometimes. I wish more teachers thought about their teaching and their students the way I do. I wish voters and the masses thought more like me because then our country wouldn't be in so bad a condition. I wish I could make my students see so clearly the way I see it the gift I am trying to give them. You get the painful prideful picture.

I wrap it all up nicely, though. It's not that I think that I have it all together. It's that I know I don't, that I think critically and question and search and try. If everyone could only think and try like I do! Oh so humble. Yep, that's me.

Now what I want is a room full of people who don't think like I do. I want people with different perspectives (Isn't that word perspective the point in which I ground all my teaching?), people who see things in ways I'm not capable, people with talents and gifts different from mine, people with different personalities, different upbringings. I want people with different chips on their shoulders than the ones I bear, people who've been where I am but are moving forward, and people who might be able to find something they need in me.

Part of this comes from the book Revise Us Again by Frank Viola that Jason just read and then I read in turn, starting a little bit of a Frank Viola reading frenzy in our house. My favorite chapter of the book was the last: "Your Christ Is Too Small." Indeed  He is, not because He is but because we have blinders on our eyes-- blinders we put on ourselves. The chapter deals a lot with diversity and unity in the church and I think really captures why we fracture our church into denominations and fixate on issues that keep us from ever progressing or really being what the New Testament seems to be exhorting us to be. I don't know if I can recapture the effect here in a few quotations, but I'll try:

But there is a danger in receiving a greater revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, one that moves from shallow waters into the depths. It's the peril of allowing our first seeing of Christ to shape the way we recognize Him for the rest of our lives. (Please read that sentence again.) I'm going to make this shockingly pointed: The Lord Jesus Christ will end up coming to us in a way that makes it easy for us to reject Him.

Jesus continued to break out of [the disciples'] expectations. He couldn't be pinned down, figured out, or boxed in. The Twelve were constantly confounded by Him. His teachings were offensive. His actions scandalous. His reactions baffling. But the greatest offense of all was the cross. It offended everyone- both Jew and Gentile. The only crown the promised Messiah-King would accept was a crown of thorns. Look at Him again. A suffering Messiah, a defeated King. Boy, it's easy to reject Him.

You cannot cling to the Christ you know today. He will vanish from your midst. Jesus Christ is an elusive Lover. Seeking Him is a progressive engagement that never ends. He doesn't dance to our music. He doesn't sing to our tune. Perhaps He will in the beginning when He woos us to Himself, but that season will eventually end... We all wish to cling to the Lord that we know now. We all wish to hold on to the Christ that has been revealed to us today. But mark my words: He will come to us in a way that we do not expect-- through people who we're prone to ignore and inclined to write off... And so we cling to the Lord that we recognize-- receiving only those who talk our language, use our jargon, and employ our catchphrases-- and all along we end up turning the Lord Jesus Christ away.

In fact, this is the very root of denominationalism and Christian movements. It works like this: A group of Christians sees an important aspect of Christ. That insight usually comes from a servant of the Lord whom God has raised up to restore a certain truth to His church. The group is captured by it. Even changed by it. And they stand on the earth to promote and express it. But then, subtly, they build a circle around it. And then a castle and a wall. Then they enshrine it. And when someone else comes in contact with them with another aspect of Christ to share, they blow it off with monumental disinterest.

Until our Lord returns, we will all continue to "see in a mirror, darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12 ASV). Consequently, a church ought to learn the fine art of weaving together the varied experiences and insights that each member brings to it. Those experiences and insights will be diverse. But they are what make up the body of Christ. And as long as they don't take away from the gospel or depart from the biblical revelation of Christ, they ought to be embraced.

Let me be clear. There is nothing more opposite of the Spirit of Jesus Christ than the spirit of pride and arrogance. A famous saying goes like this: It's possible to be "pure as angels and as proud as devils." I disagree. If you're proud, you're not pure. For God resists the proud (1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6). We find Christ in only one issue: poverty. "Blessed are the poor in spirit," were the Lord's words (Matt. 5:3). A spirit of poverty says, "I need to know Him more. I don't have the corner on Him. I am a child in this business. I'm still in school. I'm still learning. I haven't arrived."

I will end this chapter with a question: How well can you know the Lord? You can know Him in proportion to the poverty that's within your heart. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matt 5:3). The opposite of that statement is what the Laodicean church said of herself: "I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing" (Rev. 3:17 NKJV).

A sure mark of spiritual poverty is a wide heart. If you have a narrow heart, you will recognize Christ only through some of His people. And you will be blinded to find Him through others. Jesus Christ is a lot larger than what most us have thought, and He works through a lot more people than we would expect. In C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Aslan tells Lucy, "Every year you grow, you will find Me bigger." This is a wonderful description of authentic spiritual growth. We know we are growing in the Lord when Jesus Christ is becoming bigger in our eyes. Is your Christ too small? May we rescript our lives in a way that opens our hearts to the fullness of Jesus. Please, Lord, revise us again.

Besides this book, which I know it looks like I've typed in its entirety above (but, believe me, I haven't-- read the rest!), the other thing that's getting me thinking about getting beyond myself is that I've been confronted with how Christianity appears to others a lot lately. I've seen Facebook posts of frustration with Christians and their short-sightedness, heard from friends with different beliefs, and read some posts from a blog that I stumbled upon today called "Friendly Atheist." 


And the first thing that has stuck out most to me in these experiences in the past couple of weeks is that I get exactly how they feel. I completely see how Christianity looks like a sham. I don't blame them for shooting their darts and casting their stones. I get it. They have a point. A lot of points. The church (and by that I mean you and I) would do well to quit trying to "save them from hell" for being wrong and start listening to them for the truth they have to tell, which is maybe more relevant than half of what's coming from our pulpits anyway, and start making some changes. 


The second thing that has stuck out to me makes me feel warm and like my heart is swelling just thinking about it because the second thing I've found, particularly while reading on the blog dedicated to atheism this evening, is that I know in my heart that there is more out there than us. There has to be. I have faced a crossroads in the past few years multiple times where my choices have been to accept God on faith or reject Him. And I have thought about the reject Him option. I really have. Why? Because it hasn't seemed real. Christianity and church and I and my own arrogance in my way of thinking have made it seem like a lie, a "chemical weapon for the war that's raging on inside," as John Mayer puts it. I've started to wonder if it really is just a crutch for dealing with the meaningless of life... I understand the vitriol with which an atheist may criticize the religious. We religious people use our swords and shield of faith and self-righteousness pretty carelessly and crushingly really often. We don't even know the history of our faith or our Bible as well as people who don't believe and deftly poke holes in our logic as we just stand by and instead of answering intelligently or genuinely with humility tell them that they're wrong and we're right, and we'll pray for their salvation. We look like fools when we take hard stances against things otherwise scientifically plausible and accepted because "the Bible doesn't say so," and we bemoan the "banishing" of prayer from school as if it isn't something done in our hearts anyway, as if it's something that could ever be taken away from the inside. We vote on the basis of "preserving the family" because we seem to think all hell will break loose Sodom and Gomorrah style if gay marriage is allowed, while turning a comfortable blind eye to all the ways hell really is breaking loose because of us or because of our negligence. We split our family over whether the elements of Communion literally become Christ's body and blood or are symbols, when and how Baptism should occur, whether we should use instruments in worship, and if we do allow them, whether we prefer organs or electric guitars. No wonder people hate us. And they don't hate us because of Satan. They don't hate us because they resent what we have or because we're so good and they're so not. They hate us because we show our ignorance and our blindness all the time, all the while claiming to know the truth, all the while insisting we're right. Why? Because if we find that one thing we have always thought was right is wrong or that it's not exactly as we thought, the whole thing crumbles for us. And we can't afford that, so we fight for it-- every single point from dinosaurs to eternity and from homosexuality to divine authority of every word of Scripture-- so that our foundation doesn't give way beneath us leaving us with the choice of rejecting our religion-which we could never do!- or admitting humbly that we may have been wrong, that we may not have God completely figured out.

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?

Now, I'm going to admit here that I'm taking that Scripture out of context. I don't know the last time or if I ever have read all of Micah. I haven't even read the whole Bible... yet. I am not a biblical scholar, and I'll admit I know the verse mostly because it's popular. But isn't that a sound principle? Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.

Humbly. 


I am so grateful to God right now that He did not let me reject Him completely forever. Because when I read testimonies against Christianity, when I think of all the reasons our religion is laughable and despicable and false and everything negative you can imagine, I now not only relate but know something more. I know that there is a God. And a Christ and a Holy Spirit. And all three are far much more than we've painted them. Surrounded in mysteries we cannot fathom.


And the only way we can ever know them-- Him-- more is to admit that we don't know. And surely that is the best way we can ever share Him with those who don't know Him. 


We've made evangelism about sharing all the right answers with people. Giving them the path. Showing them the way. Praying the prayer. Joining the club.


And we've made it so easy to reject. Because we have presented it with such arrogance. Because we refuse to see our own non sequiturs, because we refuse to be wrong, because we limit all possibilities besides what we know. 


Humbly. Humbly. Humbly.


All I want to do right now is tell people about the God I am feeling, knowing, seeking right now with new fervor, with new delight, with new eyes...


Oh, for the chance. And for the ability to share humbly, humbly, humbly, without overstepping, without being a hypocrite, without shadowing God's light with my errors and my lack of understanding...


"I need to know Him more. I don't have the corner on Him. I am a child in this business. I'm still in school. I'm still learning. I haven't arrived."

LIGHT

As a good ol' Lutheran girl, I should be able to write a whole post without much effort about the season of Advent and the significance of light as a symbol in this time of anticipation and hope, but I need to revisit my traditions... All I will say, is light is a beautiful symbol. A good hint to anyone needing a boost in a high school English class is "Look for light and dark imagery and symbolism!" From The Scarlet Letter to Heart of Darkness, that light and dark symbolism stuff is sure to impress on an AP exam, right?


I think it's more than just a tired literary trope, though. I think it's part of our DNA from the very dust of Eden... I mean wasn't the first recorded command of God "Let there be light"?


The theme of light in the darkness stretches throughout the Bible and is sung about beautifully in contemporary music. I want to dedicate the rest of this post to some of the lines about light currently  captivating my thoughts...

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 

God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.Genesis 1:3-4



The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
John 1:9



Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.
Luke 11:36

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

Ephesians 5:8

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

Isaiah 9:2

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

John 8:12

Oh great light of the world

Fill up my soul

I’m half a man here

So come make me whole

Oh great light of the world

Come to impart

The light of your grace

"Great Light of the World" by Bebo Norman


It's been a long long time
Since I've known the taste of freedom
And those clinging vines
That had me bound, well I don't need 'em
Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning

I can see the light of a brand new day

I can see the light of a clear blue morning

And everythings gonna be all right

It's gonna be okay

"Light of a Clear Blue Morning" by Dolly Parton

Reignite

It puts an unwanted emphasis on how we should have lived. 

Life is a gorgeous, broken gift. 

Six billion pieces waiting to be fixed. 

The smartest thing I've ever learned is that I don't have all the answers, 

just a little light to call my own. 

Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows, 

a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole. 

(See my current favorite book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes, for commentary from a king gifted with wisdom, on the subject of the impossibility and vanity of searching for "all the answers.")

I keep finding more and more truth and beautiful freedom in that fact-- the fact that I don't have all the answers-- and not in a complacent, no longer searching way and surprisingly not in a postmodern all-the-answers-are-relative-and-what-is-truth-anyway? sort of way either... it's more like seeing that I don't have all the answers, but I do have one answer... one truth... and it is enough. It is only a little light... like the Advent candles lit one by one to represent the hope we have as we look for our God to come and dwell with us, but it is a speck of light that can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.

I want to start embracing the gorgeous in the gorgeous broken gift of life again. I want to remember and meditate on the Savior that made the world and life to be gorgeous, came to live in the gorgeous world that we made broken, and was broken so we could again be made gorgeous. I want to be embraced by, feel indwelling in my heart, and radiate from my very being the redemption that the coming of God to us promises. 

We're all just broken pieces. But the light is coming. The light is here. The light is warm and illuminating, and when it comes in full, we will be able to see clearly.... no longer straining to understand love like trying to gaze at an image obscured in a mirror but seeing clearly in the light of Him, in the light that fills the emptiness, dispels the dark, and makes the broken whole.

Come, Lord Jesus.


How should I live but as one who has the promise of such a light and a redeemer as Jesus?

Life is a gorgeous, broken gift.

Death is promised to the bee whose sting protects the colony. 
Was its life worth nothing more than honey for the queen? 
Life is a branch and it is a dove, handcrafted by confusing love. 
Sign language is our reply, when church bells make no sound. 
In hollow towers and empty hives, we craved sweetness with a fear of heights. 
Was it all just a grain of sand in an hourglass? 


The smartest thing I've ever learned is that I don't have all the answers, 
just a little light to call my own. 
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows, 
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole. 


Death is a cold, blindfolded kiss. 
It is the finger pressed upon our lips. 
It puts an unwanted emphasis on how we should have lived. 
Life is a gorgeous, broken gift. 
Six billion pieces waiting to be fixed. 
Love letters that were never signed, sent to where we live. 


The sweetest thing I've ever heard is that I don't have to have the answers, 
just a little light to call my own. 
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows, 
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.

C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce: Reflection

incomplete draft written several weeks ago, posted here as written originally


Oh, to be a genius like C. S. Lewis and to be clever enough to conceive something like The Great Divorce, a novel about a bus ride from heaven to hell. 


I'm reeling from all the thoughts Lewis spins into the fabric of the story, wondering who I am in the story (or perhaps, better, who I am not). I am frozen simultaneously in despair at the inherent brokenness of humanity the story illuminates and in awe at the grace and redemption the story paints as something so mysterious, so clear, and so real I yearn for it.


The story is told through conversations between those who are visiting heaven from hell and  inhabitants of heaven trying to convince them to stay. No one ever does stay, though; everyone chooses to go back to the bus and back to hell. And, amazingly, I think most of us make the same choice every day.


The two following condensed conversations represent me the most, I think, but every sketch has far too close a likeness to me for my liking...


The Elder Brother (See Tim Keller Prodigal God), the Earner of His Way

'I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here [heaven]. You will not get yours either. You'll get something far better. Never fear.' 'I'm a decent man and if I had my rights I'd have been here long ago and you can tell them I said so.' 'You can never do it like that... And it isn't exactly true, you know? You weren't a decent man and you didn't do your best. We none of us were and none of us did. Lord bless you, it doesn't matter. There is no need to go into it all now.'  

This was the substance of my first spiritual milestone in my life, around the age of 11 or 12 in Confirmation class. I always felt things inside me grind against each other when I heard the parable of the workers coming at different times of the day; it defied all my logic that God would give equally to those who did not work equally. I can see myself, even as a child, as a snippet from an old Shirley Temple movie when she asserts with a pout, "I'm very self-reliant. My mother taught me always to be that way." I can see myself, rooting on the heroes of Rand novels for their individuality and reliance on and love of self. "I recognize the right of no man to one minute of my time," Roark testifies, and I applaud his virtue of selfishness where selfishness means being firm in one's convictions and in need only of oneself and no other. But it's all a delusion to think that one can be totally self-reliant, that one can be good enough. That kind of thinking is accompanied by a life of justifying why one is truly good enough, why one has done exactly what should be done in all ways in all instances. It's impossible without embracing the idea that anything you choose to be right is, in fact, right. As in vogue an idea as that is, don't the very laws of nature contradict it? Don't all our senses of what is good and acceptable cry out that things are either right or not? Somewhere deep down in our humanity, we know there has to be something that is right and true, or we wouldn't have to come up with so many reasons for why our right or truth or lack thereof  is the correct right and truth. But I don't know how I arrived at this sentence... back to my original thought: the astounding thing that I realized at 11 or 12 was that my natural inclination was to assume that I was one of the workers to work all day. I was one of the ones who deserved what I got, and surely, if someone who worked only an hour was to get the same amount that I did, I should at least get a bonus. That's only fair... but at 11 or 12 my idea of what "fair" means was radically altered. Fair-- our whole country is based on the ideal of what is fair and what is the right of every person. We live in fear in public education of accidentally giving something to one that is not given to another, and we don't do anything-- take field trips, give rewards, have fundraisers-- that could be construed as unfair. My kids at school know the word oh-so-well and complain all the time that something is not fair when what they really mean is that something did not go their way, regardless of whether it was actually fair. But who really wants fair? We all say we want to be treated fairly, but that's only because we assume that what we have done in life and who we are merits treatment that we desire. But we think too highly of ourselves. Universally. We think we deserve all when we deserve nothing. I have had to realize that of myself many times in my life and embrace again and again the "beauty of grace," as Relient K sings, that "makes life not fair." I love the promise the Spirit makes in this passage: You will not get yours [rights] either. You'll get something far better. Why is it that we puny humans think we know what we want and what is good for us? Something far better is promised...

The Intellectual

'I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances... I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness-- and scope for the talents God has given me-- and an atmosphere of free inquiry-- in short, all that one means by civilisation and --er-- the spiritual life.' 'I can promise you none of those things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmospheres of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God... hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched.'

There is a moment in the complete version of this conversation when the intellectual has completely dismissed the Spirit and rambles on, "I feel I can do a great work among them. But you've never asked me what my paper is about!" Why do I hate my job sometimes (a lot of the time/ most of the time)? Because I feel ineffective. Because I keep longing for something where I could finally do a great work. Where I could finally put my talents to use. There is always a nagging voice in my head, "You should be doing more. You were the smartest kid in your elementary school, a valedictorian, a Niswonger Scholar... so much has been given to you. So much is expected of you." There is always a scale in my mind weighing my pitiful accomplishments against those who have done so much more, all the Vanderbilt undergrads who won medals at graduation for accomplishing more in the past four years than most people do in a lifetime, other teachers who do better jobs or work in more "successful" or more "underprivileged" schools, or those who have gone home and are giving back like I'm supposed to... There is a reason I love John Mayer's question "Am I living it right?" The reason is because I know I'm not. Like this intellectual ghost, I am always trying to find ways to show that I am getting it at least partially right, and I'm always looking for the next opportunity or career that would allow me to fulfill-- finally!-- the destiny intended for me. And, then, there are always the questions. The questions. The questions. I constantly find more questions, more problems, and I fear that I am getting further and further from the answer all the time, but I don't know how to get closer to the answer when any answer I can get for one question inspires more questions in me. Oh for hope in an answer that actually exists. Most times I don't want there to be an answer for despair that I won't ever fully know it, for despair that makes me find reasons to justify not having to have an answer. But I do want an answer. And forgiveness for all the ways I perverted my talents and usefulness... perverted them into mirages of gods, idols, the things that I spend all my time trying to hone, perverted them into unworthy sacrifices, deluded into thinking if I could just use myself and what I've been given properly then my life would be justified.

What to do next?

As my time runs out, and I'm going to have to go to church, the question is "What to do next?"


How do I get out of this place?


I'll let you know when the answer comes....