I stood behind my grandmother’s house staring across an unplanted field to the tree line at its distant end. Our house was beyond those trees. During the winter you could make it out through the dark, bare and mangled fingers of the trees. The bus had dropped me off from elementary school a few minutes before and I’d decided, for some reason, I wanted to go home. She asked me to be careful and I left.

The hard, upturned earth crumbled under my feet, the occasional clod sending me stumbling. I was hot when I got to the trees, but fine. The canopy of green blocked the direct sun, but the heat had seeped in, settling down on top of me. After only a few feet, the first drop of sweat fell from my nose.

The further I got in, the softer the earth became until my shoes were making sucking sounds as they were released by the mud. But I knew it wasn’t far. I told myself I could make it. Then, I stopped at the sight of a trench that was full of dim water, too wide to jump over, as far as I could see in either direction. I walked its edge for a long time, looking for a narrow spot to cross, making fists, cursing it, looking back the other way, praying for some way home.

There’s a future in my faith that I anticipate.  It’s the pie in the sky portion at which those who don’t believe tend to roll their eyes. It’s a time when cheeks will be brushed of all tears by the hands that made them. War, that red gaping sore, mended; violence, bigotry, racism, and hate itself will be so distant we won’t think of them. Death will wither from lack of use and I’ll be made whole. My broken mind, my weak spirit, my tarnished soul.

But now I stand here in these woods, covered in the filth of my best intentions and my worst impulses. My brash choices stinging my pride like mosquitoes blanketing my bare arms. In this in-between, however, we are permitted sparks of the divine. Moments of transcendence. I am daily formed by deft righteous fingers to look more like Him—lying across that wretched muddy ditch so that others might walk across his back to the other side.

That day, my clothes soaked through with sweat, mud climbing up my legs like old vines, my shoes heavy with filth, the darkness faded as the light grew, and I saw the first glimpses of home though the trees. As I entered the front door, the stained clothes peeling away, I felt lighter. I was home, where the cool air pushed the sweat from my cheeks like a consoling hand.


-Chad West

Christian Life

7:53:00 PM

The air tasted of salt. It was bitter in his mouth. He hadn’t known how tired he was until he stepped off the ship. His arms ached and his legs felt empty, the stubbornly still dock strange under his feet. He closed his eyes against the sound of the sail flapping in the wind behind him, frowning in disgust at the familiar deep flutter that had accompanied him for so many hard months. He imagined he would hear the phantom sound of waves crashing against the hull in his dreams for weeks. Then he saw her.

She’d already seen him and her face had broken open into a smile. Her eyes glinted with tears in the bright sun. Her hands were clasped in front of her, but she shook as if she might explode into a run toward him at any moment. He felt himself move quicker, his empty legs threatening to buckle. But he’d crawl to her if they did. 

He thought he’d never reach her, never see her face, feel her embrace, and then he was there, holding her tight, feeling her shudder against him. 

Her eyes were red when he looked at her again. Her cheeks damp. His smile broadened, and he pulled his wife close to kiss her. There was no premeditation. It was just the thing to do. Love demanded it. Who would begrudge a man pulled from his wife by the sea for so long a time a simple kiss? But he saw the disapproving eyes, and heard the whispers the moment they were apart. He was aware of them watching for the first time since he'd seen her. He swallowed hard, regretting the reckless act. And he was right to. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be put in the stocks by his Puritan brothers for his crime.

The Crime of Kissing

Was it a crime? Um, yeah. The Puritans had all sorts of laws based on their religious beliefs. Laws on clothes, and sports and, you guessed it, kissing your wife in public. (Wouldn’t want to stir up the lust of the hapless standers-by now would we?) It was a strange time where moralism got people executed, “witches” burned, and wore out the hinges on the stocks from constant use.

A Solid Biblical Case

While such laws may seem far-fetched to our modern ears, they seemed downright biblical and necessary to those who followed them. While we aren’t ruled by the Church anymore (thank heavens), and our petty moral rules aren’t law, we do feel the weight of them in our religious communities--like stones for our backpacks. 

Like the lady who told my wife I must not be much of a Christian because I chose not to identify with a specific political party. The friend who told me I shouldn’t say freaking because we all knew it was just a substitute for that far more insidious f-word. Even, at the risk of raising dander, the logic that one shouldn’t smoke because our body is the temple of God.

I could make a solid biblical case for some of those (and a myriad other righteous rules if that's your kink), because they often seem to make sense. (Our body is the temple of God, after all.) But I could also, retroactively, make a strong case for why one shouldn’t kiss their wife in public when it might cause a brother or sister to stumble. See how slippery a slope this can be? (You're composing your rant on the smoking thing, aren't you?)

I See Your Point

It’s not that we shouldn’t have personal ethics or convictions. It’s not even that some of these types of rules aren’t good ideas or maybe even smart or healthy. I'm not against rules. The problem is when we universalize our personal opinions, or stretch the logical conclusions of a biblical principle to its breaking point. These so-called righteous rules can pile up to the point that we feel stagnated in our interactions with others, constantly guilty about not meeting all of them, feel self-righteous when we have, and—most disastrously—more focused on these pulled-out-of-thin-air laws than on Jesus.

Not to pick on the Puritans too much, but they also had folks running around town making sure the citizens were pious enough in their behavior. The Piety Police, if you will. This kind of rule-based righteousness causes us to become curators of our brothers and sisters personal morality. We feel like we should remark on every slightly askew comment, correct even the tiniest error, and shame those other sinners into shape. We beat them to death with the log in our own eye over the speck in theirs.

Love, the bible says, covers over a pile of sins. That doesn’t mean we don’t also lovingly and humbly correct the brothers and sisters who've stumbled into the quicksand of sin--those whose lives in which we have earned the right to be heard. But it does mean that we aren’t walking around with a moralistic magnifying glass, inspecting the every action and word of the other as if that was the be-all end-all of the faith.

Spur one another in love and good works, not harass one another until they snap in two and you win. Our peacock tails of self-righteousness might seem impressive, but they will wilt in the holy presence of God. Instead of adding to the burden of ourselves and others, creating rules that seem like good ideas, but are really just self-righteous indulgence, let us live in love, and preach the gospel of Jesus for sinners to one another. In this way, our message won't be that we’re better people than the world, but that there is One who is good, and there’s enough forgiveness for all. That's like, well, a kiss on the lips.

-Chad West

Moralism

1:00:00 PM

We Christians want to change the world.

We feel as though it’s our calling, nay, our right to give this butt-ugly planet a makeover with our sterling religious principles. And I don’t disagree that the world is a mess. It’s an entire bottle of grape juice on an expensive white couch in your boss’s house. Your ex-boyfriend calling because he wants his Zeppelin album back when the serial killer is just about to walk past you unawares. A disaster of tremendous proportion with terrible consequences. 

Problem is, no one can seem to agree about what that change should look like, or how to accomplish it.

Well, Jesus, people answer. And it’s a tight Sunday School answer, I’ll give you that. How can a religious-minded person of the haloed variety disagree when another Christian plays the Jesus card. You don’t, is what you do. You fold. …But, before I do that—at the risk of lightning to the face—I’ll ask you the question of what Jesus looks like.

I only ask because I hear so many varying views. Sometimes he’s cackling as he runs down the street with a posse of angels, cold-cocking the wicked, and other times he’s too busy telling his followers how to be happy and successful to bother with sin. He’s all about each man owning his weight in weapons and wiping out his enemies, or wiping the sweat off his brow after a long day of turning AK’s and scimitars into plowshares.

Exactly which Jesus do we want the world to look like?

The Problem of People

Then there’s the other people. I’ll be honest here and tell you that I’m not that big a fan of people. I mean, I like myself pretty well, and can occasionally stand people who are like me, as well as people who agree with my profundity as a general rule. But I don’t like you all that much. That’s kind of our thing as Americans—individuality. Heck, it’s kind of our thing as human beings. Even people who belong to the same group, with vastly similar beliefs—such as Christians—can’t seem to get along well enough to decide on a new color of carpet, let alone solving the puzzle of a complex society steeped in sin.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

People like me want to make the world into people like me. We think it would be a better place where others had logical conversations and cared about whether their opinions were based on fact or low-rent rhetoric. We’d also be more civil than you jackholes. (Even now—even though I know I’m being sarcastic—that sounds like a grand place.) But, that’s how deluded I am in sin.

In reality, I flatter myself. It would truly be a world full of neurotic, apologizing citizens who would rather read a book or watch a cartoon than interact with one another. Fixing potholes would get put off until tomorrow, school would be mostly art classes with no sports or math, and the world would be ruled by a counsel of gingers who were too polite to disagree with one another. Chaos.

That’s you too, by the way. So there’s no wonder we can’t change the world. We may all look at ourselves, and the crowd of heads nodding in agreement that we’ve surrounded ourselves with, as stable people with good ideas. But as good as those ideas may be, they’ll be forever tainted with our self-righteousness, indecision, and anxiety over what those nodding heads will think of us if we go against the grain even once. We can’t even implement God’s good and loving laws without corrupting them with our agendas, selfishness, and arrogance.

So, how do we change the world? Good question.

Living a Radically Normal Life

Maybe we let Jesus speak for himself. Tell us who he is. Jesus talked about loving our neighbors, and our enemies. His disciples learned to think of the needs of others as just as important as theirs. There was talk of giving with no expectation of return. Not showing preference to the rich or powerful, but treating everyone as equals. He even died for the ungodly, offering his righteousness to his unrighteous enemies (us).

I feel guilty because I’m not a missionary or whatever. But it could be that what I do every day, keeping in mind what Jesus and his followers did and said, I’m doing my part in changing the world. If I faithfully care for those God puts in my daily life, do my job as if I were working for God, and treat my enemies like dear friends, I will have the opportunity to share the good news—Christ for the sinner. Sinners like me.

I’m not trying to do the impossible task of making heaven on earth by passing laws to adjust the behaviors of all to my liking, but I’m living out the love of Jesus. In the job I have, in the town in which I live, among the people I naturally encounter, I reach out to the needy, the hurting, the poor, the lonely, and the angry with the love of God. Speaking it is finished into the lives of all who will listen. That's the mission.


-Chad West

Engaging Culture witnessing

8:00:00 PM

It’s really no wonder that a great big chunk of the world thinks that the message of Christianity is the same message as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, that is: Be excellent to one another! (That survey takin’ fool, Barna, says around 54% think, 'be good' is what gets you in good with the Heavenly gatekeeper). When I heard the message of the gospel in church, it was always intermixed with the message of not doing bad.

So, What's the Gospel?

Horton has said that you can’t live the gospel, because it’s an announcement. I can’t live out the message that Jody loves Nathan, or the news that Al Miller passed away, or that there’s been a spill on aisle 3. But those messages are important to Nathan, Al’s wife, and the guy in charge of the mop. In a similar way, the message of the gospel is news that announces a change--the news that Jesus died for his enemies (us) and we can be set free of our bondage to sin, our guilt, and be reunited in relationship with our Creator by his kindness alone. 

It’s the news that Christ has come, not a list of right and wrong.

A Nasty Mixed Drink

We get those two mixed up a lot. The law of God reveals God’s character and who he desires we Christians to be (and causes us to be by his Holy Spirit). That law is good and right, but it’s not the Good News. The two of those together is a nasty mixed drink that waters down both. Yet that’s what we’re out there giving the world. God loves you, so, get right, or get left, we say. The not-so-subtle implication is that yeah, Jesus died and all, but you gotta put a little skin in the game before you get that gift. 

And that's a lie.  A big one.

The message isn’t the law. The message is Jesus for sinners.

The message isn’t do better and God will like you, it’s God’s righteousness for the unrighteous.

Of First Importance

In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Pauls says this: “Now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, and in which you stand firm. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,”

Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension for the ungodly is the message with which we have been entrusted.

When we let that message go—when we imply that the message is anything other than Christ dying for our sins; the message of peace between God and man—we’ve accomplished nothing but confusing non-Christians and corrupting the gospel. Any old religion can tell you to be more moral. Anyone with half a decent heart can point out all your flaws. But only the gospel can tell us that, in spite of our deep sin, God offers us peace through Christ.

Gospel

9:04:00 PM