Showing posts with label Christian Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Life. Show all posts
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Watching people on social media struggle to hold onto their prejudices and just plain wrong opinions, even after they’ve been devastated by truth, is a pretty interesting peek into the human mind, (and I like that sort of thing) but it’s also a really upsetting glimpse into the human heart.

There’s all kinds of psychological reasons we do that sort of thing. Fear of change, desire to be right, blah, blah, blah. But at the center of it all is our own sin. We want so badly to hold onto our beliefs that we are willing to ignore the damage they do to others.

Political beliefs are a great example of this… but I’m not stupid.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s that helpful to bring up any specific issue. Because you’re probably not to going to listen anyway. It's better just to love you. I know that may sound like a defeatist attitude, but bear with me. Because I’m not saying you shouldn’t say what’s true, sometimes… I’m just saying it’s not always… Just listen to these verses, okay?:

Proverbs 26:4 “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.”

Proverbs 26:5 “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

What, now?

That's super confusing. And it’s not even like those two verses are really far apart. They’re verses 4 and 5 of chapter 26.Right next to each other.

So, what does that mean then?

Does it mean the bible contradicts itself? Does it mean the writer of proverbs was drunk when he wrote this? Or just screwing with us?

I think it's much simpler than that (and much more complicated). I think it means that you should make sure you never give credence to a fool’s words by responding to his foolishness… unless you should.

Say That Again…

This isn’t situational ethics, or even like, whatever, man. It’s wisdom. It’s knowing when to speak and when not to.

Is it difficult? Yeah it is.

Is it frustrating that the bible doesn’t just give a one-size-fits-all answer to any problem. Yup.

But that’s not the world we live in, is it? It’s a complicated world of varied shades of interaction and meaning. It deserves thoughtful principles by which to live, not stark answers to every problem. Every problem just doesn’t have a stark answer.

You might say, Do not kill. That’s pretty stark, right?

First of all, why do you have to be so argumentative? Second, I’m not saying there isn’t truth, and sometimes very specific truth for very specific questions. But not as many as a lot of Christians might think. I mean… what if you’re saving someone else? What if your family is in danger? What if they really, really tick you off?

Okay, maybe not that last one. But my point is that, whether those situations actually make killing justified, or not, we can’t deny that the questions need be considered.

The Key to Understanding

There’s lots of biblical scholarship that helps, (and a lot that doesn’t), but there’s really only one way to get at the best possible answer to the complicated, weird problems we face every day and what our faith says about them.

Jesus.

We want hard and fast rules to live by. But, as much as we want it to, the bible doesn’t always do that. I think that’s why you sometimes end up with people who like to point out one verse, or one story to justify their odd, angry beliefs. The bible has to be taken as a whole, yes. But we’ve got to understand that Jesus isn’t just the cherry on top. He’s not only the culmination of thousands of years of story. Jesus is the very key to understanding everything else in the bible.

He's the surprise ending that changes the way we understand everything that came before him.

All our justifications for our prejudices and just plain wrong opinions turn to dust in the light of Christ’s love. Any belief that does damage to another seems wholly unlikely in the face of Jesus and his sacrifice. Any reaction or choice that doesn’t take into account the humility of God and his deep love for the worst of sinners, is turned away. The offensive nature of the Gospel is no longer in us and our anti-social beliefs, the offense is in Christ and his counter-cultural offer of love in the face of hate. It tears down power structures, undoes the grip of control and lays to rest our pride.

He is the answer to life’s complications. That doesn’t mean the obstacles we face will be any less complicated, it just means that we are not left in the wilderness without a clear direction to walk toward home.
4:18:00 PM
“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm’ (John 18:36).  I have to be reminded of this often, especially during election time. While I can be interested in the process, concerned about points of view, for or against voting for certain candidates, this isn’t my kingdom.

That sounds really un-American to say. Our faith has gotten so enmeshed with our nationalistic beliefs that we think the two are somehow connected. They’re not though. That’s counter-cultural. To say that you like your country, even love it, but that your allegiance is to another Country.

The thing is, that should make you a better citizen of this one. The reflection of your God’s love should make you a better friend, neighbor and part of your family.

But when we mix up our allegiances, thinking that God sits on some throne above our country specifically, we start worshipping war and politics, believing that protecting our earthly freedom is more important than love, that becoming wealthy is a god-given right, and hate is okay against those who are against the American values we hold dear.

That’s dangerous.
The thing is, God’s way seems dangerous to those people. Why would you give what you’ve worked hard for? Why would you love your enemies when that makes you vulnerable? Why would you dare die for those who are against everything you stand for? But that’s what it is to live the gospel; to be like Jesus.

It’s crazy. It’s upside down. It’s Life.


-Chad
12:09:00 PM
We make a lot out of the New Year. I’ve never really thought about it as an odd thing until this year. It was just what you did. You celebrated with friends, watched a ball drop (!) and screamed like a silly person at midnight. Then you make promises to yourself about how you’re going to do better this year, and hope like heck you actually follow through.

I think that’s the evidence that all the weird ball-worshipping, booze swilling hoopla comes from a desire for a fresh beginning. We’ll do anything for a new beginning.

A Stopped Clock

If you want to be realistic and overly rigid about it, there’s really no difference in December 31st and January 1st. It’s just another step down the road. Another sunrise like any other sunrise. But it’s symbolic to us. It’s the burning remains of all our bad choices and cruddy decisions finally sizzling to a stop and then wildly rising from the ashes once more. It’s that fabled fresh slate made whole cloth from an arbitrary date on a calendar.

A chance to forgive ourselves.

We tell ourselves that all that garbage happened last year—in another life. This is the new me. This is the 2016 me. 2015 me ate too much, drank too much, smoked too much and was a bit grumpy. But 2016 me is going to break the mold and finally reach those goals that seemed ever further out of reach every day until the clocked struck midnight.

Not to be a negative nelly, but you probably won’t. Reach those goals, I mean. You might! Hope springs eternal, and all that. And people do accomplish things. Dreams come true left and right. But what if they don’t? What if this year is just another uneventful slog through the calendar? Worse, what if life decides to give you a good old-fashioned punch in the gut? What if you screw up worse than you ever thought you could and face next year’s midnight shame-faced and tired again?

What if I told you that you didn’t need to wait until next year for a clean slate? What if I said that all your resolutions can swirl down the potty of good intentions and you could still stand absolved? What if there was some sort of eternal state of New Year’s, where the clock stopped at midnight and decided to stay there, right at the moment of your fresh wholeness?

A Different Kind of Water

Jesus came to a well and a woman was there. She offered to get him a drink of water and He said, “I’ve got water you don’t even know about. Water, that if you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again.”

So, the clock just stops. You’re in an eternally present new beginning. Everything’s fresh, new and forgiven. You’re clean. What do you do now? 

What would you do if you fully realized that you didn’t have to work for it? If you knew you were forgiven and couldn’t screw it up because every moment was New Year’s? Every split second was a new beginning? If you could get out of your own head and just trust that you weren’t going to die of thirst?

How would you live?

As a follower of Jesus, your thirst is eternally slaked. You’re forgiven. Clean. You live in the eternal Happy New Year. Now that you don’t have to worry about earning it, what are you going to do?
11:46:00 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

Watch this great interview with Stephen Colbert about his faith.

2:30:00 PM
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
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
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