We all have pain. It’s one of the strings that run between us. Tied in an infuriating knot around each of our hearts. So, when we encounter someone else pulling away from the sensory overload of life in pain, it should tug us toward them. But we run from our own pain. We pretend it doesn’t happen. So what then happens is that when we feel that tug, we ignore it, explain it away, or minimize it. Because we refuse to deal with our own hurts, our hands are empty of the gold we’ve mined digging through our own suffering. At best, we give stale platitudes. At worst, we shame the other for feeling what we have so politely hidden away: 

You should get over it. 

      You should be glad it’s not worse.  

                      If you’d just have more faith. 

I think part of us believes that acknowledging the pain of others somehow diminishes our own. Or it could be that your loss, your hurt, your depression, reminds me too much of what could be waiting around the corner for me. We’re afraid acknowledging another's pain might break the fragile peace we have with the universe, reminding it we’re past due for a beat down. Whatever it is, the others' pain makes us uncomfortable more than it draws us in. 

Can’t Hold Back 

An interesting thing about Jesus is that he didn’t seem to want to do a lot of miracles. I say that because when he did them, he regularly asked the receivers of raised daughters and eyes that could see to keep it between them. He probably knew that if he became known for miracles, people would start following him for the wrong reasons, and he wouldn’t be able to do what he needed to do. But I don’t think he could help himself. 

When he saw tears, nothing could keep him from wiping them away. He couldn’t help himself. He wouldn’t hold back. He was too much in love. 

Who Jesus is, is who we become. God said he’s conforming us into his image. We’re becoming like Jesus. That means we’ve gotta dive in when we see pain. Suffer with one another. Be covered in one another's tears. Dare to step into the shadow at the risk of exposing our own raw wound. We’ve got to be like our savior. I mean, that’s not our nature, so I don’t imagine it’s that easy to do of our own strength. But we’re a new creation, with a new nature. And we need each other. I don’t think we’ll be able to help ourselves.

-Chad West
12:33:00 PM
I stood on the beach, the sand like velvet under my feet. The sun was high above, but the clouds kept it from blinding us. The sea air kept the heat from stifling our fun. My friend stood next to me, watching his daughter paddling to a suitable wave on her board. She was sixteen. Her body gave an instant response the moment she decided to go from flat to standing on the board. She rode the wave in back and forth motions, then followed the board sideways into the frothing waves. A moment later, she was flattened out on it again, paddling once more to find another wave. I asked my friend if it was weird. If seeing her only a few years away from being an adult was strange for him. He looked back out at her, up on a wave again, her arms out for balance, doing the closest thing to walking on water.

My friend and I made our way back to the patio, washed the sand off our feet, and slipped into the pool. His other two kids pointed at something at the bottom of the pool, and his son managed to get the fist-sized crab into a net. I suppose it had made its way from the ocean a few hundred feet away to this concrete island, with its chloride oasis. It scurried out of the net and into a corner, behind a green plastic bucket, and stayed there for the next several hours as we laughed, swam and ate. I wondered what would happen to it if it couldn’t find its way back out to the shore.

The sun began to dip into the ocean and we began gathering our things. My wife looked at me to see if I were ready to leave. I started to go, but frowned, thinking about that stupid crab. “Hold on,” I said. I walked over and picked up the bucket the crab had been hiding behind and held it up. “I’m going to take him down to the water.” My wife laughed and said she’d go with me.

The crab scurried behind a rock, under the table, and finally against the wall where I managed to tip him inside the bucket. When I drop him into the sand, I thought, he’ll understand. But as I looked down into the bucket, as we walked along the beach, I realized how naïve that thought was. He was curled into a fist, tucked as far into the bucket’s bottom as he could. I knew that he’d never understand. He’d only ever fear me. He’d only ever think, in his crabby way, he’d somehow managed to escape some giant overfed predator. And, as I let him tumble from the plastic bucket onto the beach, he proved me right. He scuttled away, turning after a safe distance, and raising his claws, ready for a fight if need be.

“I probably saved your life, you ungrateful sucker,” I said, smiling.

Earlier that day, watching my friend’s daughter surf, he'd said to me that it wasn't easy. He talked about how difficult it was to let them make mistakes. How difficult it was to get them to understand that sometimes you’re trying to save them from themselves; save them from becoming you. How, sometimes, you even want to give up so you won’t get your heart broken, but you can’t. 

 I think of me. I think of God. I wonder how many things I'd seen as his judgment and anger that I’d unwittingly brought on myself; the consequences of my own arrogant actions. I wonder how many times I’ve fought him as he saved me from myself.

 -Chad West
3:26:00 PM
As a Christian, we can’t quite bridge the divide between sharing our faith and living it. It’s like a playwright wondering if advertising for actors to be in his play is as important as putting it on. James get a bad rap as a theological wet blanket, but this is all he was saying. Faith without works is meaningless. Not that works earn faith, but that they are a natural evidence of it. Because of God’s Spirit working in us to will and do, we will do. But what does that look like?

For some, their faith is a very personal thing. It’s about them being angry less, gossiping less, reading their bible more, or sharing their faith more. That’s all good stuff, but faith isn’t a straw through which we sip ourselves into morality. It is a non-stop fire hose that fills us to running over. In other words, love soaks us, but it also gets all over every nearby. Being around a Christian should be like sitting in the first three rows at Sea World. You should expect to get wet. 

The Mysterious Answer 

God’s love in us creates not only an empathy and kindness toward the needs and hurts of individuals, but a growing passion for anyone in need. The oppressed, the defenseless, the poor and the lonely. The marginalized, that can’t do anything for society, will generally be ignored by society. But our eyes should be locked onto them, our feet running toward them. Why? Because love is alive.

The message of the gospel—which is Jesus’ death and life for all sinners—shouldn’t be something we share out of duty. It should be the but, of course outcome to lives of love. It is the mysterious answer to our lives of hope. It is the truth that snaps the chains of our bondage to serve ourselves, so that we may serve God in serving others. 

Overwhelming Need 

There’s so much need out there that it’s overwhelming. Who do I help? How can I possibly help one without helping them all? To bring it home: which starving child’s mouth do I feed to the neglect of another. I feel Foer’s words: “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.” But instead of running away because we know we can’t possibly carry the entire weight of the world, we can stand right where we are.

We can love those we come into direct contact with. Those in the first three rows of our lives. Not only should we give to organizations or individuals who are working on those larger problems as we have the ability, our love should spread like a vine, holding those around us. We have family, friends, co-workers and total strangers we pass by daily to whom we can open our hearts. A helping hand, open ears, hearts that are willing to enter into the pain of others, and eyes willing to stay open in the midst of the uncomfortable reality of the others hurt.

It’s all, we will find, part of sharing the gospel. The literal saving message of Jesus for sinners is primary, but the loving works it produces as an example of the type of love that we’ve learned from God is unavoidable. And they will create questions that can only be answered by the gospel.


-Chad West
1:51:00 PM
Scripture is about as ubiquitous on social media as first day of school pictures and political rants. Before Facebook and Instagram, our grandmothers framed cross-stitched verses, and purchased various knickknacks emblazoned with the ones that touched their gray little hearts. That's cool, I guess. But the temptation is to rip words from their context, misconstruing their intended meaning to warm our souls. 

In the late 1800s there was a movement by people like the famous Dwight L. Moody and R.A. Torrey to reject traditional church interpretation. The well-educated clergy were the guardians of truth at the time. Men like Moody believed the bible wasn’t so complicated that any Tom, Dick, or Rodrigo couldn’t find meaning there. But, not necessarily the meaning. Just meaning. 

The clergy was known for boring sermons chock full of theological particulars that the average church-goer didn’t understand. Dissatisfaction with what must have felt like a kick in the blue collar to many was one of the things that fed the religiously uneducated Moody’s movement. And it created a monster in the process. 

While having a dogmatic theology doesn’t protect Christians from huge theological issues, the practice of giving willy-nilly meaning to random verses certainly isn’t a problem-solver. The idea never occurred to me that everyone didn’t treat the bible this way. That it wasn’t a collected list of do’s, don’t’s and promises. I wasn’t unaware that I was reading letters, poems, and history. But I was taught to think of them as God’s dictation. Each verse was its own metropolis of meaning as much as each chapter or book.

For instance, I could take God’s specific promise “to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” (Jer. 29:4b) as my own. The promise that:  “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope” (v. 11). Instead of seeing it as a bit of history, I could carefully excise it from its context. I take a promise expressly given to Israel in their exile and pluck it like a flower to display on the table of my circumstances. I steal what is at most a glimpse into the loving nature of God, and make it about me and my failing marriage, or choice of college, or new job.

You might wonder why that’s such a bad thing. Even though that verse isn’t for me, it’s still a nice thought that represents what God probably thinks about his children, right? Sure, except maybe my life has a bit of Cancer in it, or my wife leaves me for TVs John Stamos? What do I think of this God who promises welfare and not calamity then? How do I take a promise given to an entire nation that this wasn’t the end for them and make it about me without things getting a little strange?

Last week, someone posted a verse from Galatians which—by itself, in this translation—could be construed to make a political statement that Paul wasn’t making. In fact, when placed in its context, the verse was actually saying the exact opposite of said political thingamajig. Now, imagine that’s it’s not just a life verse or a political position we get wrong. Imagine all this rolling around in the verdant pastures of scripture, plucking this verse and that, we make a daisy chain of bad connections that define our spiritual lives.

I’m not saying the highly educated are the only people that should handle the bible. I’m definitely not saying religiously uneducated people can’t read and understand scripture. (That would be ignorant of me). What I am saying is that many of us have been taught a dangerous way of viewing the bible. I still run across verses, finally in context, and wince at the fact that the real meaning hadn’t even been in the same area code as the meaning I had given it. I’m saying truth matters.

We rip scripture apart so that, to ironically appropriate Nietzsche, “the text has disappeared under the interpretation.” The books of the bible aren’t made up of a long list of adages we can pick at random. (Except maybe Proverbs. I'll give you Proverbs.) Each book is written in a specific context. 

You’ve got letters to churches covering specific topics, responding to letters we don’t have, directed to certain people in certain circumstances. You’ve also got poetry, songs, stories, and personal letters. Too often, we look at the bible as if it was a book of magic, and its words were holy incantations. Instead, God chose to use the weirdness of all these methods to deliver the message throughout the ages, and it’s our responsibility to understand the message as a whole. To work out our faith in fear and trembling rather than superficially applying the words we like to ourselves. Scripture should always end up defining us, not the other way around.
-Chad West
6:09:00 PM
We adore being lied to. Well, as long as it’s the lies we want. I'll admit that we've certainly become a jaded culture. It wasn’t that long ago that we trusted every word that came out of the mouths of newscasters. We believed our government would do the best thing for its citizens. Yeah, we were aware that advertisers were trying to sell us their doodads, but we would have been shocked to imagine one of them might poison us for a few extra pennies. But, in a way, we’re over that now. Not that we’ve become wiser, just bitter. Our trust is smaller now: in specific denominations, and political parties. We’re still apt to fall for almost anything, it’s just gotta come from the right mouthpiece.
12:14:00 PM
Jesus said that his followers are to be a city on a hill; a light that’s not hidden (Matt 5:14). He goes on to define that light as good works that bring glory to God (v. 15). We, however, love to redefine that light as other things. Things that don’t bring all that much glory to God.

The Light of My Self-Righteousness

We pick on the Pharisees a lot. But they aren’t there to point at and shake our heads in arrogant dismay. They’re a picture of what we humans do to the message of Jesus. We make it about us.

Christians, as do all broken humans when presented with an area in which we’re failing, will look at the sins of others as an excuse. Like the holy roller praying in the temple who saw the sinner next to him and thanked God he wasn’t like him (Lk 18:9-14), we are “confident of [our] own righteousness and look down on everyone else” (v. 9).

I don’t want to face the areas in which I fail spectacularly, so I point to those outside the church and talk about the sins they commit. I make a show of how I’m not a drunk, or an addict, or gay. None of that, if you think about it, accomplishes anything except to prove how "righteous" I am compared to another.

And the light goes out.

Talking a heck of a lot about what we’re against isn’t good works. It isn’t anything, in fact, but a smokescreen of pride.

The Light of Our Good Example

The whole point of being light isn’t that non-Christians will see our good works and do likewise. It isn’t to foist our niceness on the ignorant masses of mean. I know lots of people that are nicer than me, and you, too. The light is meant to bring glory to God.

We have this mixed-up idea that our faith is about sharing good morals with an immoral world. While Jesus changes the hearts of his followers, we don’t change anyone's hearts. No matter how hard we try, we can’t force anyone to love. And—and this is the important part—even if you did, it wouldn’t bring them one step closer to salvation.

Light... snuffed.

Paul is hopping mad at the Galatian in chapter 3 of his letter to the church there because they’ve started making their faith about them instead of God. He says, “I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” (vv. 2-3).

If I guilt you into acting better or even emotionally manipulate you into saying a prayer, what have I accomplished? Is salvation mental assent to the idea of being a good person or even believing there’s a god? No way! The demons know that much to be true (Jas 2:19). Salvation comes from faith in Jesus alone for our salvation.

True Light

The light of our love toward our neighbors doesn’t come from us. It is a side-effect of being a child of God. People do nice things all the time—some because they want to be seen as the kind of person who does nice things, others because they want a pat on the back, and others still because they’re just actually nice people. But the kind of love that Jesus is talking about is supernatural.

Supernatural love that brings glory to God is self-sacrificial, expects nothing in return, and gives simply because God has changed the heart of the giver into one more like Himself.  

(Excuse me... I need some sunglasses.)
1:44:00 PM
I know a guy who can’t help but straighten every crooked picture he sees. He has a brilliant mind, is good at winning arguments and uses those skills to engage every wrong he perceives. He really bugs me sometimes. I think what bugs me most about him is that he’s often right. The second thing that bugs me is that he reminds me of myself. A part of myself that, well… annoys me.

The first time I ever fully realized that being right might be a vice was in a response I got on Facebook a while back. I had posted on my personal page that not everyone believes what we believe and to expect non-Christians to act like Christians was counterproductive. Someone responded, “Well, that makes them wrong, doesn’t it?”

He was right, but something about the way in which he was right felt very wrong. I couldn’t put into words what it was that I was feeling, but I knew that the way he’d responded wasn’t Christian, even though he is.

Since then, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of how my tendency to want to fix everyone’s bad theology often negates their ability to accept any love from me. It also invites them to pick me apart; find everything nasty about me, and throw it in my face. It obliterates any chance at deep relationship. 

Truth matters. I want to be clear that I believe that. But knowing truth, and being wise about when kindness and mercy matter more than correcting theological error or ignorance, is an important skill to hone. Because I want to be right. I want to fix you so much it’s literally painful at times. I’m a sick, sick puppy who’s not near as smart as he thinks he is. But I’m learning that the need to be right on every little thing—even when it comes from noble intentions—obliterates my ability to speak the ultimate Truth.

-Chad West
8:06:00 PM
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
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
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
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.
9:04:00 PM
R. Scott Clark wrote that social media is a covenant of works. He said we have to watch our step, not showing our true faces, but “what we must seem to others lest the wrath of the ‘righteous’ fall upon us.” 

I’ve actually thought a lot about this idea over the last year or so.

While we all have to watch what we say among the people of this easily upset time in which we find ourselves, no one is as easily scandalized as the religious. While I’ll admit to some rather seriously religious moments—in the cultural sense of that word, not all that wonderful James: helping orphans and widows stuff—I’m generally fairly unreligious. In other words, I don’t take myself very seriously, nor do I take most of the cultural ideas we falsely associate with Christianity to heart very often. 

I do, however, try to be respectful of other people’s preferences. But some people just want to lay their rules on your back like heavy burdens no matter what--in short: they want to control you.

That ticks me off, but, man, it’s surprising how much power those people have. 


A Convenient Example


For example, when you write for a living, you get so weary of dealing with the pointless reprimands that you start self-editing. And, like I said, I’m all about laying my rights aside for the weaker brother (well, I’m in love with myself, so it’s not always easy), but sometimes it’s a fine line between self-editing out of love for someone’s conscience and just being bullied into doing and saying things in certain ways.

Jerk Faces

They say things that are just plain mean, clearly unbiblical, and toss out superficial judgments like candy at a parade. I can’t do anything about those people. (I said that more for me, than for you. …I have to remind myself.) But if you care about showing love and humbly marrying it with truth, you’re going to be sensitive to how what you say is taken. Which makes you more likely to back off from the truth in the name of love.

 That may be acceptable when dealing with your smaller freedoms. But it's downright dangerous when you start talking about the gospel.

Lying About the Truth

When the message is that it took the death of God’s own Son to cover our sins, there’s not many places your pride can go to run from that truth. It reveals two things at once—our deep, deadly sin and God’s deep, abiding love for us. When we add a single thing to that message we’re building a theology of works.

If I say that my good works, my sanctification, has anything to do with God’s being morally satisfied with me, I'm negating the message. I'm saying my political activism, my time in the soup kitchen, the church nursery, or all the money I've given to good causes is as effective as the death of God's own Son. Even if they just give us that last 1% we need to cross over the line; even if we say it's with God's help--it's still partially us, and we can take pride in that. If I say that anything I do at all adds or detracts from God’s free gift, I’m making it about me. 

 And people love a message about themselves. And it's a dangerous thing to mess with people's loves. They can get mean. Real fast.

 So, the temptation to back off from the true message is huge. Especially when people are making you feel guilty for not being hard enough on sin, or not talking enough about how bad sex or booze or gay people or cigarettes or blue states or red states or whatever, are.

One side will tempt you to focus more on the law, and how our works, especially side-issues that do more to make us feel self-righteous than help anyone, are so vitally important. (and they are, just not in the way they're saying.) The other side will push you to talk about people’s felt needs, and giving them a therapeutic answer to assuage their guilt rather the gospel.

 If you sell the lie, you might also sell more books, get more friends, and get a lot of kindly notes and pats on the back, but it isn’t the Message--you're also selling your soul. There’s only one message—one name under heaven by which men may be saved—Jesus, and him crucified for the ungodly. And that kind of love is offensive.

-Chad West
12:31:00 PM
Have you noticed that, for some people, God’s personality is mysteriously similar to theirs? Sometimes, if we’re dead set on getting our way, the way we see God’s will is going to magically line up with our will. He wants you to have that big house that overextends your budget because God wants the best for you and, darn it, you deserve it. God does think you’re being persecuted because people disagree with you, and it’s not at all because you have zero tact and a big mouth. You see, that kind of thing is not Christianity, that’s just us having an imaginary friend to justify our lousy behavior.

10:21:00 PM
We Christians seem to think the world's problem is a behavioral one. And if the problem is bad behavior, then the solution must be good behavior. And, while we're sinners too, we know the truth. So, we think we should all get together—there’s a heck of a lot of us, after all—and we can totally make a difference in this dark world. 

9:53:00 PM
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

I struggled for years with the loud and persistent message of God against sinners. The idea was that if you were a smoker, a drinker, a skimming-off-the-top candlestick maker, God despised you and your evil ways and you might as well stay away. His salvation, they implied, was for the good; for those who had it all together. He only gave his gift to the worthy. You didn’t have to be perfect, of course, but you had to be trying.

That’s a lie.

2:46:00 PM
We Christians have an unhealthy relationship with suffering. If suffering itself weren't awful enough, because of our screwed up ideas about it, our pride is often stabbed in the process. We either can't imagine that any ill would come to we generally good and gentle folks, or that God would allow us, specifically, to suffer in a world obviously chock full of suffering. We, whether we would be able to admit or not, see suffering as the result of moral failure; as punishment.

 And that's just not true. 

12:12:00 PM
They’ll tell you that you should forgive and move on.

They’ll say that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that you somehow caused it, or that you’re lying.

Don’t listen to them.

It’s okay if your pastor, your father, your uncle, or your gym teacher goes to jail for his crimes—and they are crimes. Against you, against God. You’re not being unforgiving, unchristian, unreasonable or not thinking about the problems it will cause. You are being wise. You are being strong. Taking a criminal off the streets to protect others from his touch.

Maybe that’s all you need, is for someone to tell you it’s okay. Sometimes we’ve heard the lie so much that it’s hard to hear the truth. But, it’s okay. And you will be too. 
12:18:00 PM
All my life, I wanted to do something special. My heart ached with hunger for some reason to beat. I dreamed of success that led to peace. It’s probably why I went into ministry. Besides the religious expectation that anyone showing a serious interest in Christianity must be destined to be a pastor, I wanted meaning. The problem was that once I had a meaningful calling, I started asking myself if it was meaningful enough.

I wondered if I were being spiritual enough. (I wasn’t.) If I were studying enough. (I wasn’t.) If I were witnessing enough. (I wasn’t.) If I was doing everything the congregation expected of me. (I definitely wasn’t.) So then, even smack-dab in the center of my personal world’s most important vocation, I wasn’t satisfied. I was letting myself, my congregation, and—most importantly—God, down.

2:53:00 PM
If you haven't heard Rosenbladt, this is a great talk to get you started. One of our biggest problems in the Church is not understanding the roles God's perfect Law and the Gospel play in our lives. When we try to make the Christian life about us, and how well we follow the Law, we're just asking for a life of fear, shame & doubt from which the gospel is our only hope. As Rosenbladt said,
The Law needs to be heard by my old Adam. Because he hasn't believed in Jesus, doesn't believe in Jesus, never will believe in Jesus. All it understands is power and fear. So, as a Christian, I need to hear the Law, because the old Adam won't listen ... But, suppose I'm right on the edge of the abyss, and saying, 'I must not be a believer at all.'  If you don't give me the gospel, then don't even bother to come to me.
Listen Here:

Law & Gospel in the Christian Life

2:32:00 PM
We get so mad about the way the world portrays us Christians. We get upset when they don’t understand the bible like we do. We get angry when we don’t always get our way, because our way is the right way, darn it! Don’t they see that?

We’re entitled and self-righteous when we do that, you know? And we miss the whole point of the Christian faith.

5:44:00 PM
In this long lusted after revival of the fan-favorite, award winning podcast, Etcetera, the buffoonery knows no limits. The Order of the Merry Monk of Love talk about Erik's new book, Chad's old book, Lauren's sordid love affair with Luther, and the plight of a poor constipated Capuchin monkey and a far too dedicated zookeeper.
2:01:00 PM
“The Gospel is a harsh document; the Gospel is ruthless and specific in what it says; the Gospel is not meant to be re-worded, watered down and brought to the level of either our understanding or our taste. The Gospel is proclaiming something which is beyond us and which is there to stretch our mind, to widen our heart beyond the bearable at times, to recondition all our life, to give us a world view which is simply the world upside-down and this we are not keen to accept.” 

― Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh


(Photograph by Hideta Nagai, My Shot)
3:29:00 PM
I remember growing up and being, like, silly over some actor or songwriter whom I found out was a Christian. I would become pretty obsessed with them after that. If I’m honest, even if I wasn’t 100% sure they were a Christian, I’d be okay with that. If they just said some semi-religious things, I'd jump on that wagon hard.

Looking back, I think it’s a pretty strange phenomenon. I mean, I get that I wanted to be represented in the larger culture, and that I wanted to get behind my bros and sis’s in Christ. But blindly supporting anyone that either says they’re a Christian or just spouts off spiritual-sounding things is not very discerning.

What’s more, I see full-on adult Christians doing the same thing. (Me too, sometimes.)

Never Meet Your Idols

I’m not a big one for naming and shaming. I feel like it separates more than it helps. So, speaking in general terms: there are a lot of jerks being lifted up as religious idols who claim Christ and talk a good game, but do some really crazy, un-Jesus-like junk.

As a follower of Jesus, a former pastor, and someone who works within a fairly large ministry, I meet a lot of “famous” religious people (I put famous in parentheses because outside of our Christian circle, honestly, nobody really cares). What I’ve discovered after a junk-load of idol worship is that I tend to trust people who don’t look all that ”religious” on the outside, but in whom I regularly see the love of Christ, rather than those who talk a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo (no matter how accurate) but act like jackholes.

I went through a lot of letdowns to get to that point. I’ve seen the dark sides of a lot of holy rollers and it’s not pretty. I walked away from the religious scene for several years because my idols (including the church) let me down. And that’s all I’m trying to do here: save you a lot of heartache from holding up television stars, politicians, and so-called religious professionals as the high water mark.

Idols Are Dangerous

I’m not talking about penny ante sins, or one-time moral muck-ups. I’m talking about ingrained evil. Continuous, non-repentant behavior like belitting women (or anyone!), showing disdain for the poor, racism, slander, narcissism, greed, etc, etc, etc. Often, people are really good at hiding that stuff, and can talk a good game, but the folks we hold up as religious royalty are often pretty obviously loco. So, why do we idolize them? It's because they have something we want, or are something we want to be, and we can’t see past our idol worship. So we defend those sucker’s, bad behavior and all.

Our problem is that we want a king. We want someone else to do the hard work of sanctification so we can emulate them. We want them to wrestle with the difficult sayings of Jesus so we can just implement what they say. We don’t want to think, because we’re busy, and thinking is hard. And I totally get that. But it’s still a really bad choice.

When you put anyone on a pedestal, don't be surprised when they dropkick you on the way down.

Your pastor, your favorite television show personality, political candidate or best friend isn’t perfect, and, no matter how holy they seem, are certainly not worthy of your worship.

By way of full disclosure, I screw up on a minute-by-minute basis, commit all of the sins I said those guys above do, and I’m such a jackhole that I’m not even sure you should be reading this blog! But I do know One who you can put your faith in that will never let you down, lead you astray, or say insulting things about your sister (Although, your sister…). He’s the only one that actually deserves our cheers and praise.
1:19:00 AM
I was talking with a friend today about the past. Not our past together, I mean the past. The dark places. The places with teeth. The dank, malodorous dungeons that we store our worst memories. The memories that are so bad we either pitch a tent there because we can’t look away, or turn from, close our eyes, put our fingers in our ears, and try to forget they happened altogether.

I’d had a really rough week, so this conversation hit close to home. Without going into a lot of detail (you’re so nosy), the experience I had is something that not only hurt a lot, but was one of those experiences that had happen so often you start losing the will to fight.

Thief

Like my experience, some bad things like to come back every so often to remind you that they’re still around. Others are so wicked and awful that they only have to happen once to make their sick point. Still others are attached to people we love or are supposed to love us, and every time we see them it’s like a poke in the eye.

All this stuff upends us. It changes us and confuses us—causes us to make poor decisions based on anger, fear or just plain ignorance. It causes us to doubt God’s love. It makes us bitter.

Hope

When my friend and I were talking, she brought up a really bad experience she’d just had, but said that—in general—she was moving in a positive direction. While she’d lost a lot, she had a lot to save and repair too. That God had provided her with so much.

Genuine trust and hope in the midst of pain. Why didn’t I think of that?

This opened something up in me. Like finally getting a stubborn spy glass to turn, and seeing the horizon come into focus. Perhaps it was… hope.

I had been so focused on all the bad, when there’s so much good in my life too. Often, God is standing right next to us and we just don’t look that way.

I’m bad about that: being so angry at the past for stealing so much that I waste the present.

My Story

In C.S. Lewis’, The Last Battle, Aslan the lion and the children find a group of dwarfs in a tight circle, facing one another, claiming to be in the dark, in a “pitch black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.” But it isn’t dark, and Lucy encourages them to “look up, look round, can’t you see the sky and flowers—can’t you see me?” She then picks some wild violets and puts them under one of the dwarf’s noses. He flinches, berating her for sticking filthy dung under his nose.

I don’t want that to be me. But, sometimes, well, that’s me. Perhaps I fear that any good I accept as reality would take away from my desire to feel bad for myself. So, I don’t see the good on purpose, like those stupid dwarves.  

“They will not let us help them.” Says Aslan. “Their prison is only in their minds.”

Yeah, the past can be painful. And that pain is very real, and we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist any more than we should forget the goodness in our lives. But we can’t let it own us. We can’t let it define our reality. We have to, as Steve Brown says, kiss our demons on the mouth. And, if we allow him, God will define our reality with love—for Him, for others, and for ourselves—not regret.


-Chad West


photo by Justin Locke, Nat Geo Creative
10:36:00 PM
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