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
I’ve been running away from pain for a long time. 

When you live life like that, it--ironically--causes a lot of unintentional heartache. I've done some really stupid things to try and control pain—and none of them worked. Like I said, they only made things worse. I probably caused myself more pain by running from it than I would have experienced otherwise. Running away from pain affects everything.

3:06:00 PM
Watching Making a Murderer is an exercise in frustration. There are moments when you believe, without a doubt, that you have zeroed in on the truth. You shake your head, believing, that you’ve finally gotten that key piece of evidence that makes all the jumbled pieces shake into place. Then it all falls apart. The picture that looked so clear moments before is skewed and unsatisfying. It is a peek into the complexity, and injustice, of a fallen and broken world—no matter your final belief about the people involved.

It is a reminder of our inability to rightly judge another.

It is unfortunate that anyone has to be in a position to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty. But, without a system of justice, and those willing to put their lives on the line to uphold it, society would fall apart. I get that. But it is a flash of divine wisdom, I believe, that we would—when considering any life's future of those made in the image of God—consider any reasonable doubt must be fully accepted as that person’s innocence.

In criminal law, Blackstone’s ratio is that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".

I don’t think many Christians believe that at times.

Our ability to judge is severely limited by a) our own sinfulness, and b) our lack of insight into the life and motivation of others. Yet, even knowing that, I'm sure I'll judge some poor sucker before the day's over. 

Once we have been redeemed, we sometimes tend to fall into an ideology which tempts us to harshly judge those who “are as [we] once were” (1 Cor 6:11). Steve Brown often says that a cat will never sit on a hot stove more than once, but he’ll never sit on a cold stove again either. His point is that we sometimes mislearn lessons. 

That’s what I think happens to us as Christians.

Instead of realizing the simple fact that Christ saves sinners, of whom I am the worst (sorry, Paul), and offering the gift of free forgiveness we were given in Christ to others who are perishing in their sin, we instead see ourselves as better than them.

How dumb is that?

It’s like the story Jesus told about the guy who owed a bajillion bucks (I paraphrase) to the king in Matthew 18:21-35. The debtor couldn’t pay him, so the king ordered he and his family be sold to repay the debt. The man begged for mercy. Then, in a wild act of grace, the king felt pity and forgave the debt. THEN, the first thing this guy did was run out and grab a man, who owed him just a few hundred bucks, by the scruff of his neck and demanded repayment. This guy also begged for mercy, but the debtor had none and threw the guy who owed him a pittance compared to his own debt in jail until his debt was paid.

Do you see it? How foolish we are to point out the speck of sawdust in another’s eyes missing the two-by-four in our own? How ignorant of the mercy we’ve been shown when we hold back forgiveness because we perceive someone’s debt bigger than the one we owed.

Jesus’ parable shows that every sin against us is a pittance compared to what He has forgiven.

I don’t know if Steven Avery is innocent. That's not what this post is about. But I know that his story, as presented in that documentary, reminded me that my judgment is weak. That I don’t know the whole story of anyone’s life or how someone else has twisted it for their own purposes or filtered it through their own prejudices--even me.

All I know is that my debt is forgiven, and that my job is to love, not pass judgment on any and everyone (1 cor 5:12). Love, boys and girls, triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). Human judgment  itself is an exercise in frustration when it is done outside of the knowledge of God's grace in one's own life.
2:43:00 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
When asked about things like homosexuality, abortion, atheism, and the like, some Christians will go on about how those people are ruining America, or how God’s going to send fire down from heaven to judge those suckers soon, or how we need to pass laws to keep them out of, well, wherever it is we think they’re threatening us at the moment. But then if you ask those same Christians if God didn’t tell us to love everyone, they’ll say something which sounds more level-headed like, “Oh, I’m not saying I don’t love them. I love them. I just don’t agree with them.” 

It's like hearing a blue bird suddenly bark.

2:51:00 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn’t.

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

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

-Chad West
1:43:00 PM
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