When asked about things like homosexuality, abortion, atheism, and the like, some Christians will go on about how those people are ruining America, or how God’s going to send fire down from heaven to judge those suckers soon, or how we need to pass laws to keep them out of, well, wherever it is we think they’re threatening us at the moment. But then if you ask those same Christians if God didn’t tell us to love everyone, they’ll say something which sounds more level-headed like, “Oh, I’m not saying I don’t love them. I love them. I just don’t agree with them.” 

It's like hearing a blue bird suddenly bark.

2:51:00 PM

Our own personal wisdom tells us to protect ourselves at all costs. It says that increasing the chances of our success, survival and joy at the cost of another person’s success, survival and joy is perfectly justified as long as we aren’t directly hurting the other person. It says that my personal happiness is of greater import than sacrificing for another whose bad decisions probably got them in their current situation anyway.

But the Gospel is different. It’s dumb. …At least when we compare it to what we think of as wisdom.

9:57:00 PM
We Christians love to talk about good works, as if the sanctity of the entire universe were hinging on us making sure that everyone knows they need to be good as often as possible. We have strapped on our gun and badge and made it our sacred duty to secure the world from… well, knowing what most of us already know. 

But we’re not the moral police, we’re the love philanthropists. 

12:04:00 PM
I spent a lot of time trying to fill a void in the center of me. I was always looking to that next thing; the thing that was going to finally make me satisfied. I thought it was sex, I thought it was marriage, I thought it was fulfilling my dreams, finding a job I loved, being financially stable, but it wasn’t any of those things. Now, some of those things are awesome, but their awesomeness lessens to the degree to which you believed they were going to fulfill you completely.

One of my favorite artists, Amanda Palmer, wrote about a time when she, as a child, toppled down the stairs. Uninjured, but in a panic, she ran into the kitchen to tell her parents. The kitchen was full of family, but as she recounted her harrowing fall, no one believed her. “They thought I was making it up. Trying to get attention. Exaggerating. Dramatizing. And there I was …. realizing that everything I’d been doing in my life, artistically, could be summed up like this:

“PLEASE BELIEVE ME. I’M REAL. NO REALLY, IT HAPPENED, IT HURT (The Art of Asking, 2015).”

The realization came that the way that little girl felt, helpless, desperate to be believed—held and comforted—had colored how she lived her whole life. I can relate to that. So many things that I’ve done, the big moments—the big mistakes—have largely been an effort on my part to get meaning from recognition. If I’m loved, I tell myself,  then life will have mattered. If I succeed, I tell myself, I’ll know satisfaction. If I’m funny enough, honest enough, fit enough, good enough, give enough,  I tell myself, I’ll finally be full.

I wasn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be understood, or to connect with another human being on a profound level—I think that’s what we’re made for. That’s why love is central to God; is, in fact, who God is, and what he wants us to emulate. But to think those things provide ultimate satisfaction robs them of any succor they provide. Relationships become a means to a selfish end, not a sharing of selves. And even relationship with God becomes a thing where we come to him regularly, deeds in hand, and ask, “Are we good enough now, daddy?”

Because of the willing sacrifice of God on our behalf, we never have to ask that question. He believes us. He knows we’re real. He has experienced our pain.

-Chad West
1:43:00 PM
A recent study suggested that those who were trying to reach a healthier goal of some sort tended to indulge more. Those who fill their carts with kale and cucumbers (and snap pictures to post on social media) will likely also grab a few bottles of wine or a tub of ice cream as well. Why? Because we crave balance. And the more extreme we are in one direction, we will be so in the other. However, those who simply decided to live a healthy lifestyle had more success. I think there’s a spiritual application there. As Christians, we’re often told that we need to get better and do better. We’re shown perfection as our standard, in much the same way dieters are shown airbrushed muscle-bound men, and leggy photoshopped blondes, and we struggle to reach the unreachable.

There’s only so much struggle a mind can take before it needs rest. A hard day’s work or a deep conversation will need to be balanced with a nice nap or a quiet evening alone. For the moralistic Christian, those breaks aren’t things like enjoying a good book or prayerfully meditating, they’re deep indulgence in that which we have very tediously been trying to avoid. Because our goal is impossible perfection, our failures often involve bottoming out.

A Big Difference


When you’re trying to live morally, all you tend to care about is how your actions make you feel and how they appear to others. You want to get your God-card stamped so you can feel good about your religiosity. Whereas if your faith is less of something akin to a quarterly earnings report and more of a move toward changing who you are, you’ll become more and more concerned with others and how to love them.

Because a Christian lifestyle isn’t about doing, it’s about being.

When I see someone who used to be generally unhealthy suddenly bragging about their newfound healthy ways, I’m a) very happy for them, but b) also a little worried for them. While a little pride isn’t the problem, truth doesn’t tend to have to convince everyone it’s true. It just exists truthfully. I feel the same way about morality. If you’re always trying to convince me how moral you are and passive-aggressively attempting to make me feel guilty for not being in the same place, I wonder who it is you’re trying to convince. What is it that you’re afraid of?

A Life of Quiet Love


The kindest followers of Christ, the people who have had the most impact on me, have been the quietest about their successes and the most humbly honest about their failures. Their left hand doesn’t know that their right hand gave. They are far more concerned with finding an angle to love their enemies than they are with trying to fix or shame them. They are, in short, living love, not trying to be perfect.

Jesus, in his infinite wisdom and love, gave us that perfection through his sacrifice on the cross so that we, in our infinite sinful indulgence, could be redeemed and, by his Spirit, be more like him, without fear that we won’t be enough. Because he was enough in our place.

-Chad
12:48:00 PM

Watch this great interview with Stephen Colbert about his faith.

2:30:00 PM
What makes us think that there is more? What draws us to believe at all in the existence of a perfect day when the best we’ve experienced has always died with the setting sun? We daily digest the anger, confusion and frustration the world deals us, seasoned with moments of hope, love and joy, and the result, the “inconsolable heartburn,” as Capon names it,  is “the lifelong disquietude of having been made in the image of God.”

We bow over in mental anguish at the pain of desire in wanting what is not, but once was and will be again. In the core of us is the DNA of the Cosmic Lover, pulling us toward hope. Pulling us toward love without walls.
3:39:00 PM
When I was a kid, I remember standing next to a sixty year old woman in church. She was holding the hymnal up so that her elderly mother and she could share it. At one point, as the song moved to another verse, the mother reached up and pointed at that verse on the page, as if her daughter might not know. That image stuck with me. It’s an image I often think of when I see people trying to be everyone’s mother.

One of the bad side effects of moralism (the idea that our good works earn us God’s love) is that the moralist thinks he should run everyone’s life.
10:34:00 PM
I want to be distracted. From the uncertainty of it all. From everyone’s opinions presented as the whole truth. From my own unrelenting thoughts.

Give me ten episodes to binge-watch of Hell on Wheels or giggle through hours of Adventure Time. I want music and books, movies and games, all to divert the yammering in my brain. Put all my focus onto the unreality of some fictional characters pain and triumphs.

Just.

Not.

Me.

I’ll even take lies.

9:34:00 AM
I left without saying good-bye. I had dug myself a hole, curled up into it and stayed there. I had friends, but I didn’t know how to express to them how I was feeling. I was in a healthy home church, but I couldn’t bring myself to go. Almost a decade of accumulated pain, loss and bitterness had accumulated, and one last heart-break had flattened me down to the point of numbness. I had one friend, and that was only because he kept showing up when no one else (including me) did.

I walked away from everything I knew—family, my city, my church, not to mention a mortgage.

I didn’t just move a few towns over, I ran states away. I threw away, gave away or burned everything that wouldn’t fit into my car and hit the road. In retrospect, I was cutting my ties to all that hurt and loss. I was trying to physically do what I couldn’t mentally do—stop the pain.

I can’t imagine how confused and hurt I must have left my friends. And I see, now, that digging that hole and crawling into it, not taking advantage of those who were so clearly available to me, was an invitation for the pain to worsen. I was the dog, mangled by a big rig, crawling under the house to die rather than dragging myself to someone I knew would love me enough to care for me.

Made To Need

There’s an interesting passage in the creation story where God, after saying everything he’d created up until that point was good, stops and says that something isn’t good. It’s not good, he said, for man to be alone. Now, we can safely assume that God didn’t make a mistake there. I think, before creating woman as a companion to man, God is pointing out the significance of what he’s about to do is.

We need each other. That’s what God said. Not only that. We are made to need each other. Like a lack of oxygen or water lessens, or destroys, our health, a lack of companionship eats away at our souls. And when we think—as I did—that no one else will understand or care, or that we can handle this burden alone, we lessen ourselves.


It was pride, mostly, that kept me away. It was thinking my pain was somehow a rare strain of the pain of others, unable to be deciphered by mere mortals (other than myself, of course). So… don’t be me, is the message of this post. Let go of the reins and trust God. Let go of your pride and trust those He’s given you—those who love you most.
7:25:00 PM
My wife and I were at the grocery store the other day and she commented to me on how beautiful a young girl working behind the counter was. It was true. There was something about her particular face construction and whatnot that made your brain go, “We should stare at that. It’s so symmetrical!” Not staring in an uncouth way, but in the same way one might look at a nice painting.

The moment got me thinking about the nature of beauty.

Beauty as I See it

This idea of beauty is not something we’re born with, you know? At least not one’s personal idea of beauty. If you’ve ever wondered why some nice, pretty girl thinks messy, unshaven drug-addled drop-outs are the bees knees, this will make things make a lot more sense. Because while there is something our brain enjoys about a certain type of physical symmetry, personal opinions of beauty are also a socially programmed thingamajig. The people one is exposed to most, and are accepted as the norm (there's that love of symmetry again) in your specific social group, are thought of as the most desirable. 

That may be why you find yourself always dating the same type of person, but you can talk to your counselor about that, I'm more concerned in this piece about how it also may be why we treat some people as worthless.

Beauty as Social Currency

If what is beautiful to us can be influenced by outside forces, it stands to reason that, in the world we live in, people will use that power for nefarious purposes. It’s interesting to note that beauty is a concept that has often been defined by those who have more than the rest of society and believed themselves better for that fact alone. For instance, all the fat we so desperately try to lose was seen in some eras as a positive thing. Why? Because food was scarce and being overweight was an outward sign that one had money enough to purchase enough food to be so.

That twisted definition of beauty (which defines power and influence) affects the Church as well. The bible gives an example of this kind of behavior in James 2:3. James warned against giving the best seats in the house to the rich and important, and making the poor sit on the floor. And things haven't changed. At one church I attended, which shall remain nameless, they were desperate for new members—to grow the church—but when those who began to attend were not as upper middle-class, nor as well-educated as themselves, they weren’t  all that happy with it.

White churches are white, conservative churches are conservative, rich churches are rich—etc., etc., etc. Sometimes this kind of stuff is due to language barriers, or living in particular neighborhoods, but mostly it’s not. Mostly we just see ourselves as so much more worthy of beauty--as more important--from the other that we can’t imagine worshipping with them. It’s because we want beauty, as we have come to define and worship beauty, and all that comes with that all-important social currency, more than we want God.

Marinate in that.

The good news of Jesus says that those faux barriers of beauty we’ve created have been crushed to dust. There’s no male and female, conservative or liberal, black or white in God’s economy. We’re all equal and we’re all welcome at God’s table. Beauty is revealed as the unsymmetrical gathering of the lame and well, the rich and the poor, the mayor and the high school drop-out. Beauty is the diversity of those imperfects made symmetrical, made one, as they are gathered in God’s love.


-Chad
3:49:00 PM
I’ve had the stone-on-my-heart, dry-mouthed desire to be among the cool kids and I’ve felt the electrical exhilaration of being on top of the world. Too often, I’ve paid too much for a minute of worship and  been too unkind when in a position to give mercy. There were certainly times in my life that I believed being fashionable, trendy and altogether hip was the skeleton key to unlocking this bastard life. And, surely, that’s what Jesus wants for me.

We see the popular jerk getting the girl we have pined after and prayed for and we think they must know a secret. Because the stalwart, kind and loveable loser loses once again. The obviously idiotic get the attention and money, while the level-headed pre-planners are left in the dust with naught but a pat on the back. The slacker knows the band, and you can barely see them from the back row. It’s no wonder we think there is some hush-hush path to victory that involves a heaping helping of popularity and some mystical mix of self-aggrandizement.

A Second Path

There’s no doubt that the above behavior wins hearts and minds, builds empires and inspires t-shirts. But it just as often, later, crushes souls, levels lives and quiets the crowds. But, for some, even a shot at that brief explosion in the sky, that momentary firework of faux love and periodic adulation is worth whatever silent fall might come after. And that’s a choice you can make. One is most certainly capable of selling one’s soul for a few minutes with a tight body, a Scrooge McDuck volume of cash and a front-row seat. But there is a second path.

Some will misunderstand because of its radical nature, so it’s hard to explain, but be sure that it isn’t a place where tired zeros come to die. It’s where those tired of the chase after temporal immortality come. It is where cool may or may not be achieved in the eyes of the world, but it certainly isn’t the point, and is kept up long after its fashionable. It’s the place Jesus wanted us all along—a simple life, marked by love and peace with others.

It’s a world where the stalwart, kind and loveable loser is lauded.

It’s where those reckless at handing out their love aren’t seen as weak, but people to emulate.

It’s where the guy who knows the band gives up his front row seat so that light can shine one someone else who needs it.

The Key to Life

The key to life isn’t yet another orgasm that leaves you empty an hour later. It’s not the roar of the crowd that causes the deafening silence to be unbearable when you lie in bed that night. It just isn’t a band-aid, a quick fix or an unending series of fillers for that deep, dank hole in our chest. It’s Jesus. If you define yourself by your success; get your self-worth from others, you’re going to crash face-first into defeat.

There’s nothing wrong with being on top, but the world is a heartless turning wheel with no conscience. Life is a bastard, and, sometimes, so am I. I can’t trust the universe to guide me, or you to always care. I can’t trust my cool to stay all that cool for very long. But God offers his second way to those weary of the work of achieving cool. So, when I trust in Him, letting His perfect love define me and my self-worth, I don’t have to get those things from you, and I can finally have a balanced, real relationship with you. When I see that life is a gift to live in thankfulness, not a mystery to frustrate me, I don’t need your applause.
12:47:00 PM
There are two types of righteousness in the Christian faith. Martin Luther labeled these two as passive and active. Passive is the righteousness that we receive from God. We do nothing to receive it. Active righteousness is our good works, overflowing from a thankful heart, a new heart created in us by God through a new will empowered by God’s Holy Spirit.

Now, I get that good works is a frightening phrase for those of you who have been beat up by the concept of working your way into God’s favor. But this is not that. And when you realize that our good works don’t fit into the category of passive righteousness—the means by which we have once-and-for-all earned God’s acceptance—then you see you aren’t doing good works as some kind of payment to God. You are doing them because you belong to God. That new heart and God’s Spirit within you are working in tandem to make us more like our Father. As Luther put it, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbors does.”


That may not be a knowledge explosion for you, it may not set you back on your heels, but I grew up with a checklist of things I needed to be doing better in order to appease God. 

I’ll be kinder—check. 

I’ll give more—check. 

I’ll go to church more often—check. 

So, the idea that works aren’t currency is mind-boggling for me. To think that what we label “good works” is just another name for responding to the passive love from God we’ve received, letting it pour over onto the lives of those around us, like a big, beautiful exploding volcano of joy, an ocean of mercy, a world of love, by the power of God’s Spirit within us, takes the pressure off.

I no longer feel as though I'd better love or else, it’s I get to love in my daily life by taking advantage of opportunities that God set up in advance for me, and empowers me to do. And by get to love, I don’t mean that I’ve neurotically convinced myself it’s a great thing. It means that I’ve been loved so hard that I really, really want to love others like my God loves me.
5:32:00 PM
About ten years ago, I was a part of a group of people who were licking their wounds after being severely tossed about and out by the church. We were an angry, hurt lot that did a lot of encouraging and a little bickering as we worked through our issues. As that group dissolved, my dissolution with the church froze into a bitterness I would carry around for a long time.

As my bitterness was slowly dissolved by the love of God I found myself starting life over again. A new state, new friends and, oddly enough, another group of people who are where I was ten years ago. Hurt, confused, and tender-hearted towards others who are hurt and confused. All of us bound together and reliant on the unremitting, undeserved kindness of God.

The Dizziness of Freedom
I’ve found that going through this time in my life was much like my late teenage years. There were times when you realized you could think for yourself, do things that were considered taboo and find that the world didn’t end, and basically breath without the help of the organization that you had considered indispensible for so many years.

Also like one’s teenage years, there is a lot of emotion in psychological healing. It seems that almost every act of freedom comes with an equal and opposite dose of anger at recalling the chains you were bound to for so many years. Every time someone in a place of spiritual leadership says something even close to that awful message of bondage, you find yourself shrinking back, welling up with anger and frustration.

Healing and the Occasional Snake Oil Salesman
It can be a lonely place. It can also be a confusing one as those who haven’t gone through what you have, yet believe the message of God’s love, find it difficult to understand your anger. Some people who have never gone through a bad church experience find it almost impossible to relate. Sometimes, these kind but clueless family members make you doubt your sanity. Maybe you’re just overreacting. Maybe you’re universalizing one bad experience.

But it does get better. Like all wounds, it heals. And like all illnesses, everyone thinks they have a quick cure. Kindly nod at their impatience and keep trusting God’s Spirit. Know that there will be kicking and screaming, angry takedowns of angry people, honesty that’s so raw it hurts to hear, simply because the voice that was muted finally realizes it can speak without the former consequences. Expecting perfection in yourself or others that are healing is a pointless endeavor. But we’ll still expect it because of our deep seated neurotic need to be and see perfection in all Christians.

Allow yourself to be human. Allow others to hurt and feel and cry and scream. Allow them their anger and don’t to lecture them out of their bitterness. It’s a wretched place that mistrusts everyone, including God, but you can’t fix it by yelling for us to stop. Love, that’s what we need. The patience and understanding of love is the only thing that will quiet our hearts and eventually see us to the shore from the raging waters of bitterness. Be patient, with yourself and with others. Trust the Spirit to work forgiveness and healing in you (even when you don't want it) and know that even the biggest mistake is not fatal in God’s economy.
1:43:00 PM
Do you see it? I’ve seen it. 

The helplessness is like standing over the barely breathing form of a loved one, slowly slipping away. It’s the ache of staring at the no longer stirring forms after they’ve gone. Except I’ve done it. I’ve skipped into the room of my beloved, and twirled on my heel as I pulled the pillow from underneath their head and pushed it down over their face.
10:12:00 PM
For years, I’ve been saying that I’m a sinner. But I don’t think people have really believed me. When I say that, I’m not giving you a half-smile and a wink. It's not a necessary pretense. No, I need the new nature that Christ has given me, the Holy Spirit forming me into his image. I need the resurrection work of God, because I am just as apt to fall to temptation as anyone else. 

And I often do.

To be clear, I want to please God. I want to love more. I want to forgive more. I want to think more of you than I do of myself. But you could find out my secrets tomorrow. Not the socially acceptable stuff, either. My closet of skeletons could break open under the weight of my sin and spill out for all to see. And, if that happens (and it could happen to any of us) I want to remind you that I told you so.

I don’t say that as some kind of excuse. I’m ashamed of my mistakes. I say it because I’m irrelevant. 

I don’t tell you God loves me because I’m hiding something. I don’t tell you God loves me as an excuse to hide my sin. I tell you God loves me in spite of knowing the depths of my sin. Because I know it’s true. Because, without the truth that while we were still dead in our sin, Jesus died for us, I’d either be trying to convince myself that I’m not as in need of forgiveness as I am or a cowering, devastated mess. I tell you because God loves you too.

In spite of ourselves, we’re loved. Imperfect messengers are all there are, and imperfect messengers don’t lessen the truth of the message. Not when the message is that we are weak, imperfect messengers loved by a kind, gracious God.
6:12:00 PM
I stopped my thoughts before they escaped into words, checking their pockets for hidden slights or contraband foolishness. I might not even say them at all... Just to be safe. There was too much chance they might offend. And who knows what would happen to the eternal soul of some poor listener if I unwittingly ruined the Good News of God with some imperfect pronunciation?

My actions went through the same rigor. I scrupulously weighed them in light of how they might affect my witness to God. I had come to believe that I was the only bible some people would ever read, and that weight was enormous. In my mind, how well I seemed to keep the imperatives of the bible (and those inferred and tacked on by various other Christians for good measure) was indicative of how many people I could lead to Jesus. 

I wish someone had told me that my goodness wasn’t the Good News. 

4:05:00 PM
If I didn’t know God; if I were among those who hadn’t tasted the Bread of Life and so knew the upside-down wonderfully crazy love of Jesus, I know I wouldn’t want to be a part of this religion. I see it just like everyone else—the hate and anger, the self-righteousness and illogically applied beliefs that counter what the bible actually says. I don’t see the Jesus I know in that stuff. I don’t experience the warmth of the fire that would draw me in from the cold, cold loneliness of the world.

So, it’s not surprising that a new Pew Report showed that people identifying as Christians is in decline. 

5:07:00 AM
Growing up, my view of Christianity was kind of outwardly focused. I would say that I, at least partially, defined who and what I was by how others acted. If someone cursed, did drugs, slept around or got divorced I pursed my lips and thanked God I wasn’t like them. I wanted to save people from their crappy lifestyles, not to reconcile them to Love himself. 

5:39:00 PM
While I can receive ninety and nine compliments, it’s the one complaint that I ruminate on and chase after. When I’m lying in bed, sleep eluding me, it’s not the memories of love, admiration or the friendship of others that float into my head. It’s the mistakes and moments of shame I’m bust conjuring like angry spirits. The worst-case scenario sticks to us like velcro, and our tendency to believe the worst affects everything, even how we believe.

5:37:00 PM
There are those who have never been hurt by religion. Yes, I know that's hard to believe for some of us, but I've found it to be true. I'm very glad for those people and that they haven't been through the pain it takes to fully comprehend what I'm talking about when I say that Christians can be manipulative and deeply hurtful, or that some of them have significantly damaged the hearts of thousands upon thousands of people. 

I've certainly had great experiences with Christians and even churches, don't get me wrong. And while it's a dangerous thing to let yourself become bitter (been there, done that, got the festering ball of hate where my heart used to be) there's nothing wrong with talking about your experiences. In fact, I'd say we are more bereft without your stories.

5:24:00 PM
While I’ve chosen not to practice counseling for the time being I still have all that training and even some real-world practice under my belt. So people know that and, frankly, they will occasionally get a little weird around me. I think that's because people are scared of being found out and judged. 

The same sort of thing happened when I was a pastor. You sometimes got the feeling that people were not altogether comfortable being around a religious professional (whatever that means).
My point is that we’re all, religious or not, kind of scared of being found out and/or judged. But  that's fairly rare on the counselor side. It wasn’t rare at all as a pastor. In fact, judgment seemed to be the primary expectation of religious people from others.

I did my best to disabuse people of that idea (which didn’t always sit well with the more starchy pants-wearing church members). But it’s a surprising thing to watch what happens when you treat people who are used to being judged and dismissed as if they matter just as much as Charlie Churchmember (sounds Dutch) who shows up every Sunday.

Because, you know, they are just as important. 

11:12:00 PM


Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. Jesus' response, recorded in Matthew 22:37-39, was, “'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your heart, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Here, Jesus is saying what the entire rest of the bible says over and over--and we somehow miss--to do what God wants is to live a life of love.

Maybe because it’s second we think it’s not important, but we don’t do all that great a job of loving our neighbors as ourselves. 
6:49:00 PM
We talk a whole lot about the Faith. 7 out of 10 people have a blog and 6 of them have a book coming out. And I'm glad there's so much truth being taught out there (Because there's also a lot of crap). But it's often just chunks of the whole. One person talks a lot about this chunk of theology and another is hung up on the other. But we might never get a framework by which to accept or reject someone's assertions.

3:45:00 PM
I’m weary of the constant wooing I receive from the manly religious men among us with their Flintstone-like portions of meats and campfire bonding sessions. It makes me feel like we of the more copious nether regions are seen as nothing more than Neanderthals, and these meaty methods are the only ways our primal male minds can be attracted to God. My problem isn’t with meat—heaven forfend—it’s that most of the ideas of manhood they’re selling (and I’m sure this kind of naïve attempt at connecting applies to you of the double XX chromosome as well) come from personal and cultural experiences, not the bible.
10:27:00 PM
Good Friday is the day we celebrate Jesus’ death on the cross. It is a day of mixed emotions. God himself bleeding and suffering for crimes not his own, but suffering in our place. There is a certain amount of sorrow, but there’s also joy, bubbling up from below. The joy comes because we know the rest of the story. A stone rolled away, a dead man getting up and walking away. The Spirit descending into each of our believing hearts. 

8:57:00 PM
If he had ridden in on a horse, like some conquering king, he never would have been crucified. But he rode in on a donkey, a sign of peace. And it was a donkey that had never been ridden, which was fitting because the kind of peace Jesus brought had never been offered before. It was a peace between God and man at the cost of God’s dignity.

The Life—Creator of all things (John 1:3)—offered himself to go through the violence of birth and the harsh sentence of living, only to die. Life itself suffered death, so that we could live again; fall into our Father’s waiting arms. As has been said, love held Jesus on that cross.
6:58:00 PM
I’m tired of telling people how to be good people. When I do it, I feel like I’m preying on the low self-esteem of those who just want to do the right thing and are berated for inevitably failing. When I tell them how to do the right thing in the right way, I’m just preaching the law to those in need of grace. Sometimes I feel like I’m just encouraging the lie that if people get their acts together, God might deign to throw some acceptance their way.

10:37:00 PM
When you grew up with the idea that you had to work your fingers to the bone or God would be displeased, it’s really difficult to shift that way of thinking. No matter how much good theology you throw at it. So it's like rediscovering the Good News every day. 

6:00:00 PM
I get tired of people telling me to be a better Christian.

I was watching an old episode of Seinfeld the other day and the gang was talking about going to funerals. Jerry hated going because it always made him feel like he ought to do more with his life, but then—when he tried—he couldn’t figure out what more he could be doing. I know… It was a Seinfeld reference, you were expecting a punch-line. But the joke part is kind of on us.

I wish every one of us could experience the thrill of something akin to climbing Everest—or whatever exciting thing you and I believe is going to give our life some final kind of extra meaning. Because it’s worth it to feel the exhilaration of finishing something spectacular and then quickly realizing that it didn’t add poop to your worth. The mountain won’t remember you. It won’t give one fudge about the strips of skin or drops of blood you left on its face. It’ll just keep on mountain-ing, not caring that you climbed it. And you’ll be busy looking for the next thing.

But that’s not bad news. It’s good news.

Think about every single thing that you crave. Every well-formed body you wish to experience, all the cookies, drink or illicit substances you want to stuff into your body. That new car, the bigger house. They’re never enough. As soon as the experience of having them is done, and the initial elation is over, you’re searching for that next thing. The better thing.


Nothing completely satisfies.


That’s the bad news.
 
The good news is that we can stop our frantic search for better.
What’s generally meant by being a better Christian is meeting the useless expectations others have duct-taped onto the Christian faith. Don’t watch those movies. Don’t read those books. Don’t listen to that music. Don’t go there, do that or touch that. I mean, don’t be an idiot, but don’t believe the lie that something is useless unless some religious nut condones it who thinks he knows how to live the Christian life better than you. (Col. 2:20-23)
 
A big part of why we have these rules—that are more preference than perfection—is because we want our faith to be about us.

Sometimes, when a community is raising money for something, they’ll put up a big sign with a thermometer on it, showing how much money has been raised towards the goal. That’s how most of us picture the Christian faith. Perfection is just hanging out at the top, waiting for us to get there. When we feel like we’re doing really well, we proudly show our thermometers to others with the insinuation that they should be more like us. When we’re aware of our failure to even come close to perfection we become discouraged and ashamed.
 

Perfection isn’t a scale, it’s a state of being.

 

You don’t get closer to it. You either are perfect or you are not. It’s not something you achieve every once in a while. Perfection has to be maintained non-stop. (Jas. 2:10)
 
So, you’ve got two choices in the religion game. You can follow the Law (which leads to death—2 Cor 3:6) or you can accept God’s unconditional acceptance.
 
What I’m saying is that you can’t do it. You can’t become a better Christian. Although, counterintuitively, in living a life of trust, walking by faith, you will start to look more like God because of His Spirit.

Besides, perfection was given to us because of Jesus. Now, getting better isn't the main point at all. It's having a relationship with the Father who ceaselessly sought you out.



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3:20:00 PM
Christians are a worrying lot. One of the things we worry about lately is that our culture is becoming more secular. It is. You can stop worrying. While that will create some unique challenges for us, we’ll manage. But, that doesn’t change the fact that we are still really worried about this. And it’s not just the loons in the family this time. It’s the, ahem, respectable among us, too.

In fact, what stirred this up for me was this guy I respect a lot saying something that I didn’t really agree with. His comment, to me, is representative of a larger, wrong-headed idea about evangelism and dealing with those outside of the church.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It…

The comment was in response to the question of what he thought one of the greatest challenges we’re facing in evangelism was. He responded that we are talking past each other because our common ground is being lost. It was a quick response and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he meant something different. However, that doesn’t change the fact that this echoes the worry I’ve heard a lot lately.

Well, you might ask, aren’t we losing ground? Isn’t American culture slowly realizing that they don’t believe in God and that lack of belief means they also don’t believe in morality as God defines it?

The answer is yes, but…

…And I Feel Fine.

I’ve heard a lot of people lament the fact that we used to know that, at the very least, the vast majority of those outside the family of God shared similar moral beliefs as we. Now that’s not the case. So, they are deeply concerned that if we don’t have that moral common ground that we can’t even begin to talk to them about God.

But I submit that having common moral ground is beside the point.

I think the problem is that we’re focusing on the wrong things. We’re so used to the advantage of having some morals in common that we think we must have that particular advantage to talk to people outside the faith at all. It’s just not true. Because we’ve built up entire arguments based around those similar beliefs over dozens of decades doesn’t mean they’re the only arguments (or that they were particularly good in the first place.)

I simply don’t have to convince someone of my views on morality to talk to them about Jesus. We don’t have to agree on anything at all for me to talk to a fellow human being about unending redeeming love.

If Christianity was a philosophy, which we seem to believe it is, then we would totally have to convince the living heck out of people. We’d have to come up with different intricate arguments which we then used to counteract other’s dubious beliefs and make sure that we are well-prepared to give an answer for the totally logical argument we have within.

But it’s not a philosophy. Christianity is about a person. (Notice the prefix.) Jesus Christ. God among us. The Prince of Peace.

So, the idea that we are losing common ground is somewhat of a silly notion. At least, to me. I think it comes from a false premise, namely that we need some type of philosophical mutual understanding to talk to people about Jesus. If you want common ground—love without strings and sincere friendships are universal common ground, and I detest the idea that this would be considered a simplistic answer.

God’s Spirit and the visible love of Jesus on our behalf are plenty truth to go around.
If anything, I think it is in fact Christians who tend to lose common ground with Jesus.

(Live Studio Audience says, “Oooooh.”)

The conversation we have been very publically having with the world at large has been about morality, and not Jesus. Therein lies the problem. We have somehow confused what the Bible says with what we’re more comfortable with. We’ve made ethics an idol, when it is God himself who changes us by virtue of being in a relationship with him.


If you’re looking for common philosophical ideas, your boat is sunk. Thankfully, Jesus isn't even a little nervous.



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9:00:00 PM
We think it’s about doing things. I mean, consider one of the most popular (I’m doing that quote thing with my fingers) movements of the last few decades: WWJD? Let’s be honest, that was about not lusting and giving it back when you got too much change, or not getting so angry at that horrible driver. That’s all good stuff to shoot for in life, but Jesus is so much bigger than you and I not being such a jerk. But, like that silly fad, we latch onto such things whole hog.

If those bracelets, shirts and lapel pins had any real power, the poor would find themselves better off, the outcasts would find a safe-haven in church and the world wouldn’t be shaking their heads at us about our self-righteous politics, but at our insane concept of thinking of the weak, disenfranchised and openly sinful as just as important as ourselves.

Our problem isn’t our desire to be better, it’s the poor reach of our imaginations. 

We can’t think past ourselves. We can’t seem to think past the socially unacceptable peccadilloes of our particular denominations or personal belief systems. We so focus on sin that we forget that it has been paid for in full by our God and what that means beyond our superficial worries about things like cigarettes and too-tight yoga pants.

It means letting God ridiculously love others through us who show no love (because we are loved even when we turn our backs on Jesus.)

It means allowing God to inspire generosity toward those who might not deserve it (because riches were poured over us at our least deserving.)

It means trusting God to provoke in us radical kindness to the most sinful people we know (because God was radically kind to us at our worst.)

Sometimes, we despise ourselves because of our sin. Other times we despise others in which we see sin. Neither is helpful or particularly Christian. When we see the weak-willed, the cheaters, the speakers of broken theology, the thieves and the sexually promiscuous, we shouldn’t then look away in disgust. We should see reflections of ourselves—those for whom Christ died. They should stir in us, by God’s grace, a great compassion that moves us to love.

We should ask ourselves what good it does to attack the non-Christians due to their sin? What becomes of the world if we change its laws to match our fastidious moral natures? That world fades and dies. A footnote in a long history of poorly chosen wars the Christian church has chosen to fight. But the men and women we love by God's power, without measure, those we forgive the unforgiveable (because that’s what Christ does for us), those whom we speak life into—now we’re talking about Eternity. 



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9:00:00 PM
I was at a get-together the other night and someone asked if anyone else had the experience of feeling guilty and not being able to tell if it was true guilt or if it came from the years of the superficial guilt over everything we were indoctrinated with by the weak religion of our youths. It was one of those moments where my chest tightened with excitement and my eyes widened. It’s a struggle I’ve had for years.

 If you don’t know what I mean by this, I’ll try to explain. As a Christian, there are certain other Christians who—well-meaning or not—ground the idea of a petty and petulant god into your skulls. Things like dancing, certain (well, most) forms of entertainment, fermented beverages and not being a doormat wife made him quite huffy. So, having spent your formative years with that idea of God can make you neurotic about what’s truly a negative waste of time and what’s harmless fun.

I’ve come to question a great many rules in the last several years. I even went back and looked at the moral Law in the Old Testament, only to find that it was largely rules about treating neighbors respectfully, taking care of the poor and not cheating people in business—so, basically, love. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a demand for perfect love, but, nonetheless, love. Not the burdensome majoring on the miniscule that we’re taught is true spirituality.

I’m of the belief that asking the question, “Why?” can be a spiritual discipline. If you have some long-standing rule in your life, or if someone is attempting to put another log on the pile, simply ask yourself, “Why?” If you can’t come up with a suitable biblical reason, drop it.

It’s not up to you, anyway. There’s only one way to get to God and to gain his favor—the death and resurrection of his only Son, Jesus. The other way is perfect perfection, and none of us got that. The beautiful thing about grace is that what you can’t do, God finishes. We reach out in our piddly love and God extends it. We try to watch with him just one hour and we can’t even stay awake. But he does. And, because of that, we’re good. Jesus finished it on that cross and gave us hope for a future three days later.

In Between Noon & Three, Robert Capon writes it better than I can when he writes, “...there is therefore now no condemnation for two reasons: you are dead now; and God, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, has been dead all along. The blame game was over before it started. It really was. All Jesus did was announce that truth and tell you it would make you free. It was admittedly a dangerous thing to do. You are a menace. Be he did it; and therefore, menace or not, here you stand: uncondemned, forever, now. What are you going to do with your freedom?” 



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10:15:00 AM
    Come, come, whoever you are.

    Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

    It doesn't matter.

    Ours is not a caravan of despair.

    Come, even if you have broken your vow 

    a thousand times

    Come, yet again, come, come.
                                                            -Rumi
          
10:18:00 PM
I haven’t met a single person (including myself) that doesn’t think they have at least one aspect of life figured out. We generally go around rolling our eyes and wagging our heads at the behavior and words of others. At our jobs, at grocery stores, bars and church. If only they knew what we knew!

I do it all the time. I saw a lady coming out of Publix the other day, apparently healthy, young, beautiful and holding her very expensive purse on her arm as she pointed an elderly employee, who was pushing her very full cart, toward her fancy car. Oh, I had plenty to think and say about her.

I always know better. We all do, don’t we?

Christians do this to each other concerning theology too. Some worse than others, yeah, but we all think we’ve got at least one aspect of our faith pegged. And we search like a hungry lion for someone to correct.

I sincerely despise seeing this in Christians. It’s one my major pet peeves. I want to choke them out, screaming, “It’s about love, you moron! Love!” …Yeah, I know I have issues.

But it really is about love, you know?

John 13:34-35 says, “a new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (NIV)

(Also, to name a few more: Mt 22:37-39, Rm 12:10, Jn 4:7-8, Mt 5:44-45, John 15:12-13, Rm 12:8, etc.)

To be sure, the command to love is such an overwhelming part of Scripture that you’d think it’d be hard to ignore. But I do it every day.

Love, the bible says, is how the world knows we’re from him. (Not our goodness, it’s important to note.)

Knowing that not only are you loved, but the whole world (jn 3:16) is loved too means gives us freedom to interact with the lost. But we also have to understand that we aren’t going to the lost as those who are better than them, but sinners who’ve found God’s grace. To quote Luther, we are “beggars telling other beggars where they found bread.”

Jesus was known, because of his indiscriminate love, as a friend of sinners. If we’re not in danger of being labeled that too by the uptight religious sort, we’re doing something wrong. Because of God’s unlimited love, not only are we free to have dinner with prostitutes, it’s important that we do. Unconditional love reaches out to be friends with the sexually deviant, play cards with the drunkard, laugh with the inmate.

An understanding of our deep need of God’s love and grace lets us do that without an ounce of pride. It lets us see ourselves as no different than (dramatic music!) them! The only difference, to be clear, is that we already received the free gift which is also available to them.

If you need a little help with that last bit, 1 Corinthians 5:12 says, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the body.” That’s God’s business, the verse goes on to say. It does say, however, that we’re to judge within. But keep your guns in their holsters. Even that’s not what you might think.

Here’s the thing: We’re not anyone’s mother. When I see you going what I consider a little too far I don’t have to feel the need to correct you. When you say something I wouldn’t necessarily say, I can let it pass. Of course, if you come to me talking about cheating on your spouse, I’m going to tell you the truth. But my point is that I don’t have to correct your course in every opinion you have that I disagree with or every action I couldn’t imagine doing myself.

Let each other breath. We’re all imperfectly growing in Christ.

Love is the key to all of this. Doing to others what you’d have them do to you is a beautiful example of love in action. I don’t want to be talked down to. Check. Don’t do that to others. I don’t want to be shamed. Check. Don’t do that to others. I want to be loved unconditionally.

Check. Do that to others.




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4:33:00 PM
I don’t have anything to say. I mean, I can sometimes put something on a page that can make you feel or think. I can speak something in front of a crowd that you might take home. I’m pretty good at winning arguments. But that’s not the same thing. I’ve got no meaning. Not without something else. Another important ingredient.

The bible says something interesting about meaning, and it applies to pretty much every situation. It says that I can do everything right. I can feed the homeless, dress the naked, preach the good news and even die for my faith and it won’t mean a thing (nothing!) if it’s not done in love. It’s meaningless. Not less meaningful. Ultimately meaningless for us.

The bible says over and over again that life is about glorifying God. Any Christian who’s been to church more than a few times knows that our Salvation comes solely from God, not our works. They know that even our good works are inspired in us by the Holy Spirit. All praise, ultimately, belongs to God. But, you give us the smallest of reasons to take credit and we’ve gobbled up the whole shebang.

I want a pat on the back. I want the awards and the praise. I want to be recognized and thought of as wise and generous, kind and thoughtful. I just want to pay lip-service to God and secretly hoard it all for myself. I want, and I hate to admit this, religion.

Not that helping widows and orphans nonsense. The tit for tat, good news: Chad is awesome and much better than you sorry sinners religion. I hate that about me.

Capon wrote that God “wants empty vessels: preachers who have no religion left to preach.”

I want that too.

I really do. That’s the Spirit, by the way. I’d ignorantly choose the self-aggrandizing nonsense.

To do that takes total reliance on God. It takes reliance on him, not to clean us out like dirty pipes, Mario Bros. style, but to put whole new pipes in. You think that’s not scary? We’ve got our five-year plan and day-planner to think of!

He wants us connected to him permanently. And not as some integral part to the system, but as a conduit of his perfect love and grace. We’d screw it up. He finished it. He’s the root, we’re the vine. He’s the tree, we’re the branches. But, look, fruit! Connected to God, we become capable of doing that which we could never produce on our own.

So worth it.

When I stop thinking that kumquat of love is all me, maybe then I’ll stop acting as if I’m conveying a message to sinners whom I have nothing in common with. I’ll stop seeing the bible as a first-person shooter, where I’m the hero, blasting those wretched sinners, and realize I’m the wretched sinner. When I’m empty of all my rules-based religion, arrogant correction and unloving speechifying, I might have something worthwhile to say.

My voice will be softer and my eyes might not look so much like razor blades.

I might love the unlovely, the liars, the lustful and the ungrateful, because I finally see myself in their eyes and recall the Savior’s gentle forgiveness. 



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10:05:00 PM
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