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

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

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

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

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

But it really is about love, you know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check. Do that to others.




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

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

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

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

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

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

I want that too.

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

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

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

So worth it.

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

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

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



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10:05:00 PM
“What is the author trying to say here?” I’ve heard that (and thought that) many times as a student. That phrase has ruined the fun of more than one book for many a person. The reason is because someone is trying to reduce the excitement, truth and downright joy of a book into a moral lesson. You ask most authors what they were trying to write about and they’ll tell you about the characters and the plot. Most authors don’t sit down to try and teach people a lesson. They just tell the story. The bible is much the same.

I was a really bad student. Looking back, I think it was basically due to my immense authority problem. I loved learning—I was always gathering up information about this and that—but as soon as someone told me I had to learn, I was scribbling drawings of superheroes in my notebook. I’m sure I’m not alone here. So, why do we do that?

The law ticks us off.

I grew up listening to the stories in the bible and, to this day, I don’t think I have a favorite bible story. I don’t have one that I recall fondly from my stay in Sunday School. They’re all neutral to me. That’s probably because they were always sold to me as some sort of moralistic puzzle. They weren’t just cool stories about warriors and miracles, they were grassy fields that I had to push through to find hidden meaning. I don’t recall them fondly because I probably never saw them as stories at all, I just saw them as work.

“What is the author is trying to say here?”

We want morals. We want David’s story of killing a giant to be about conquering that tough interview, getting through a Cancer diagnosis or our struggle with porn, with God’s help. We think of Noah’s story in terms of the bad people getting theirs and the good earning a place on the boat.

We never stop to think that maybe not everything has to have a moral, and that God is not one of the Brother’s Grimm. Perhaps all the stories collected in the bible aren’t to teach us how to be better people but rather that God is gracious and will provide a substitution, or that he’s just but has a stubbornly soft heart. Perhaps the bible isn’t just a book of stories from which we are to draw morals, but the narrative of a God whose love is greater than our sin, and is insistent upon our redemption.

In short, the bible might not (gasp!) be about us so much is it is about God. It’s a love story, but we’re the slovenly, cheating prostitute that he can’t help but love. He doesn’t, Pygmalion-style, teach us proper manners and how to pass as the highfalutin beauty as many of us think he does. No, we’re not to read into the Scriptures some formula to look, smell and act better. He comes to put our old selves in the ground completely, reviving us to newness. God’s story is much grander than some instruction manual. It’s the story of his pursuit of us in our evil, but it’s certainly not a story about how to be good.

The bible is the story of a patient Father who will not allow even death to stand in the way of his quest for his children. He will pass through death’s door, and kick it down for good, to be by our side. 
10:29:00 PM
God’s love is crazed. There’s nothing seemingly rational about the way in which God shows affection to his creation. When we talk about love, we throw all of these catches on, just to make sure nobody that doesn’t deserve loves accidentally gets some splashed on them. But, God, he turns the bucket completely over onto the undeserving and smacks the bottom.

I can’t help but think this is the kind of love Jesus is talking about when he says that all the law and the prophets can be summed up in a lifestyle of loving God and loving your neighbor. All of God’s commands are summed up tidily in the command to love. But not our kind of love. Not the kind that expects something in return or doesn’t give until it receives. It’s God’s love—the kind that breeds scandal and misunderstanding from those with their underwear on too tight.

Jesus told stories about God’s type of love. He talked about people showing up at the crack of dawn to work in the boiling sun getting paid a fair wage only to see the no-goods who showed up an hour before quitting time getting the same amount. He talks of parties where the important people are all too busy to show up, so anybody from any gutter, street corner or bar stool could come as long as they were willing. It’s crazy, upside-down, nutso world, where the least of these are the most of the these and the last in line find themselves getting first place while the first are standing on their tippy-toes just to catch a glimpse.

It’s a love that accepts us just as we are, soaking us to the bone with grace. Then we find ourselves whistling the tune. Doing a little jig to the music. Dancing and singing like we never thought we could. There is no comprehending the logic of God’s love. It doesn’t follow our broken rules. It sounds stupid to help those who can never help you back. It seems foolish to we criminals who worship justice. But to those who recognize that they’re withering away in this weltering world, it’s butter, baby. And it’s free.
8:55:00 PM
We lied to you. We sat in church every Sunday and we sang our songs and read from our Holy Book and forgot that you were out there, lonely and alone. We brought you booklets telling you how far away from God you were but left you hungry and homeless. We told you how hot hell was going to be for you but never told you that you didn’t have to work your way to Jesus.

We’re sorry.

We pushed you away with our self-righteousness and then blamed you for staying there. We said ‘I love you in the Lord,’ but we betrayed you by never showing you His face. We ignored your questions until you just stopped asking, and then we said you had a hard heart.

We were wrong.

We never looked in the mirror. We never thought that it could be us. Until now. Now we see. Now, we know that we are no better than you. Now we know that we can’t change you and that we do not have to. We realize that if Jesus can change us, then we don’t have to stuff our religion down your throats. We hope our apology isn’t too late. We don’t always look like the God we serve.

But don’t judge Him by us.

It’s not about you and us. It’s about you and Him. So, go to Him. Ask God if He’s there. Ask Him to show you the Truth about this Jesus. Because Jesus is the only Truth, the only good, we have. The only one that matters.


(by chad west and chuck slocum)
4:53:00 PM

It's a book full of filthy words and controversial ideas that you might not agree with. But enough about the Bible, the book is called Disquiet Time and Cathleen Falsani is one of the editors (along with Jennifer Grant) of this quirky, beautiful, often empathetic collection of "Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels." I recently asked Cathleen a few questions and this is what she had to say:
You wrote a book about grace called Sin Boldly. I always like to ask: How did you first encounter grace, or was it a concept that was always there for you, as a Christian?
I think seeing and experiencing grace is something I was (and we all are) hard-wired to do from birth. I couldn't tell you the first time I encountered grace but I'm sure it was long before I had the language to call it "grace."
Reading Disquiet Time, to me, was a solitary experience compared to reading other Christian works. There was a different mouth-feel to it, if you will. I never felt like the writers were over-spiritualizing their experiences or hedging on their honesty. It was refreshing. To what do you contribute that type of honesty and freedom?
It was likely the result of a two-part invention: we (Jen Grant and I, as editors) offered them the total freedom to "speak what we feel, not what we ought to say" and the authors — each one of them — had the guts, courage, and audacity to take us up on it and actually write from the deepest places of their hearts and minds. To a person, they opened a vein and didn't self-censor. I think that made all the difference in the world.

Was there a piece in Disquiet Time that you felt explained, or explored, something in a new way to you personally? (For instance, your piece, Slut!, was an eye-opening look to me at the girl who would be called Salome.)
It's terribly difficult to narrow it down to one piece, but I can say there is one in particular that I keep returning to almost daily: Susan Isaacs' chapter "The Bible: Full of Sound, Fury, Sarcasm, and Poop Jokes." I adore Susan, her mind, sense of humor, and humble faith. It's the passage in there that talks about Jesus employing sarcasm — my native language — that gave me the gift of seeing his humanity in a different way, a facet I hadn't noticed before, and one with which I resonate deeply but long had thought (and been told by some of my coreligionists) didn't belong in the life of a Christian — particularly not in the life of a girl or woman trying to follow Jesus. Take that, naysayers!
One thing I see in Disquiet Time is a freedom to explore and question one’s faith. Why do you think it is that we’re so uptight about doing that as followers of Jesus?

In a word: FEAR. We're so afraid of "doing it wrong," of doubt and doubting, of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, questions-without-answers, and not knowing that we'd rather "fake it" than authentically, genuinely, honestly engage with scripture on its own terms and ours. It's as if we somehow believe God doesn't really know what we're thinking or feeling about what we read in the Bible (or anything else for that matter).
 
I always like to know what fellow writers are reading. So, what’s on your bedside table right now, Cathleen?

Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, The Soul of Rumi by Coleman Burks, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste by Lester Bangs, and Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver.
11:20:00 PM
We all have this place inside of us that we store it all. The socially unacceptable, the irreligious ideas, the things that would lose friends and uninspire people. Questions, worries and doubts that we know we can’t share, but ache to say. That place is quickly cramped and uncomfortable, tearing at its seams.

It’s hard for me to find a church. I want to, but when I go, I just end up leaving angrier than when I came. The judgment, the silly rules, the passive-aggressive jabs. It’s weird when you’ve been on the inside. You see things more clearly. Know all the abominable tricks.

Some friends and I got together the other night to talk about that. How we could maybe get that need met with each other. The Church without the junk. Well, not that kind of junk anyway—not the plastic kind. But full to the brim with the real deal. All those socially unacceptable, irreligious ideas. That was when I realized that’s what I’d been longing for all along.

The superficial judgment I felt in church, the rules I balked at, and the jabs that made me want to jab back weren’t the main things keeping me away. They were symptoms. They were walls that kept me from my soul’s need to unburden itself.

In my relationship with God, I found freedom. I found permission to tell the truth, because a) God’s not fooled by my self-righteous act, and b) God loves me anyway. It was no wonder that I wanted that from the local gathering of fellow Christians that I attended: The freedom to share the unshareable.

It’s only unshareable because we’ve so spiritualized our churches that we can’t actually be honest with one another. We have to fake it. I don’t want that anymore. Frankly, I don’t need that anymore. It makes me soul sick. (There’s a vast difference between loving correction and nitpicking, moralistic narcissism.)

Our hearts yearn to be heard without fear of judgment. Our souls feel tight and cramped in the phony religious box in which we’ve allowed ourselves to be placed. True worship flourishes in raw truth. When we dump our doubts and fears out on the floor, a warm, wet mess for all to see, and watch them shrivel and die in the light, a song of praise finds our tongues.

Our deepest hurts lie hidden because we refuse to acknowledge that others can bear them. We refuse to acknowledge that they even exist so—like unseen plaque in our arteries—they build up like a dam, threatening death to our faith and fellowship.

To openly hurt, to stand naked for all to see, is no easy feat. It takes Gospel guts. It takes a full knowledge of God’s love for us, and that he has paid for our sins. That Jesus’ death wasn’t a band-aid, but the full cure.

To have those that accept us with no judgment as we stand before them, every blemish visible, is a gift beyond measure. In Genesis, God looked at his perfect creation and said something was missing. He said, it’s not good for man to be alone. Was that an accident? Did God forget to add a dash of self-sufficiency? Of course not. We were purposefully made to need others.

That need is where our desire to be heard comes from. It is the very reason we have that place in us that we store it all. We’re waiting for someone who will listen. We’re waiting for open ears and open hearts. It’s the only thing that will allow us to shrug off that burden.

So, watch.

Listen.


And don’t just unpack. Look for opportunities to take part in the wonderful, filthy business of helping unpack the pain of others also.




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10:38:00 PM

They keep telling me I’m forgiven. A choir of trumpet-wielding Angels could sing the message to me in three-part harmony and I'd tell them I'd have to think about it. But sometimes it sneaks up on me. The message finds its way through the maze of pride in my crinkly brain and sets up shop. Then I wonder why I ever questioned, what I ever thought could be better than full acceptance based on the work of another—Jesus himself.

That lasts about a day. 

It's a vicious cycle.

I start wanting to do something in return. That's not a bad thing, mind you. That's where it should come from--a response of love to an act of ultimate love. We love him because he first loved us, and all that. It's the part where my perfectionism starts me rolling back down that hill, Jack and Jill style. Then I need to hear the gospel all over again.

Vicious.

I know, I’m neurotic. But that’s what makes sense to me. It seems illogical for me to be less than perfect, even if I’m loved no matter how badly I screw it up. Because then I feel like I’m just phoning it in. I'm taking advantage of God's grace. But then I fail and fail and fail. I feel like one of those ropes that dogs tug on, and there’s a bulldog on both ends and neither will let go.

Really vicious.

That’s been a recurring theme in my life since I became a Christian. God tells me to trust him, and I'm like, "No, I totally got this, man." I feel like Rocky in that first movie—where he lost—getting knocked down by the bigger, stronger, faster and better boxer of my own sin. Eyes swelling shut, I keep getting up. My pride won't let me do anything less. I get a few good punches in and the bell rings. Sweet mercy. I can call a day. I can say I’ve had enough. Where’s that towel? All I can think about is rest (and maybe those few good punches), but when the next round starts, I find myself rising, stumbling toward failure. Bell after damnable bell, I fight, until I'm done.

But I don’t win Apollo Creed’s grudging respect. I don’t get the girl. I don't get an adoring crowd. I get nothing. I’m bloodied and beaten and I’ve lost. Because I tried to do it myself.

All that said, I admire the irrational need I have to be perfect. I see it as some misguided outcome of my sanctification. A twisted desire to move more quickly into purification. So it’s a go… What’s that? It’s pride? –Laughs dismissively- It’s not pride. It’s just…

Crap.

Yeah… it's pride.

Here’s the thing: I do know we're not capable of achieving perfection. It’s literally like thinking that if you try hard enough you can fly. And I’m not using hyperbole. No exaggeration here. I mean that. Literally. Because, if you’re like me, you don’t always fully grasp that this is exactly how far we are from achieving perfection.

Not possible.

But I still try to do it alone.

I want to add a but. Yeah, I know it’s impossible, but It doesn’t hurt to try. No, it doesn’t hurt to try. Not at all. Not if you love being mentally and physically drained, feeling like a failure and finally running away because you can’t go on anymore.

That’s the other option. Seriously.

God didn’t come and live a sinless life and die a sinner’s death as some sort of backup plan. Drastic measures highlight a drastic need. That need is ours. While what God wants is perfect, it can’t be done by us. It had to be done for us.

But I still try to do it myself. 
And, so, for the billionth time I will, with a sour stomach and aching head, go to God and ask him what he wants me to do. How I can please him. Maybe I'll listen this time when his reply to me is the same as the one he gave to those who asked in John 6:28-29: “Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’” 

Apart from him. I can't do it. And that hurts.

So, while my ego is left shredded on the floor at the knowledge that even my good works are like filthy rags (Is. 64:6), he goes on, trying to get me to see the hope in this: John 15:4: “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

My will. My strength. Worthless apart from him. (John 15:5)

BUT... 

When I let him love me, in that love I find myself changed. You will too. You’ll find that you love more and forgive more easily. You’ll have strange bouts of patience and find yourself giggling at inappropriate times. Because, as a branch, you got nothing. But when we're connected to the Vine, we grow and produce good fruit.

It’s not guilt that guides us. It isn’t shame that pushes us toward the finish line. It is love that constrains us. (2 Cor. 5:14)  Stop putting all your energy into yourself and start putting your trust in Jesus. Anything else...

Impossible.

But, with God…





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10:31:00 PM
Check out this new post on Dropping Keys' website: "My pipe-dream is now a reality," where Kimm Crandall talks about the big changes taking place there. ow.ly/FasJZ
8:45:00 PM


A pastor acquaintance of mine once came in and collapsed into the chair across from where I was sitting with another friend. He looked at us and said, “I’m done. I don’t want to be a pastor anymore.” He was tired of wearing the masks. I told him, “Don’t play the games,” but I wasn’t that religious about it. I think he thought I was joking—or that I was crazy (I get that sometimes.) But I was deadly serious.

Church should be the place where sinners gather to lick our wounds and encourage one another with the Gospel. Instead, church is a costume party, and everyone’s dressed as the best person there. As someone has said, it truly is the most dishonest hour of the week. There have been plenty of times that I felt like I could be more honest with the gas station attendant than with my congregation.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of playing games.

I’m a sinner, and not just in the winking way we acknowledge that before other Christians. I’m corrupt to my core. (You too, by the way.) I sicken myself with the things I do and think and say. Most moments of most days I doubt my worth and would probably corrupt myself further just for a moment of your acceptance and friendship. My neutral gear is to run away and hide. Things get hard, I’m not going to seek you out, I’m going to be in a hole, feeling sorry for myself. I’m getting better, but not because of trying harder.

Grace frees you up. Before, it was all about keeping rules and looking good. No matter what was going on inside, I needed to keep up appearances in front of the lost, because that was my witness. And I didn’t want to send a poor soul to a fiery eternity in Hell by not always pretending everything was great, did I? There was so much guilt I couldn’t stand it. And all that smiling and pretending only served to either convince people we were lying (because some can see right through our masks) or that there was no way at all they could be good enough to come to God (because they believed our lies.)

People used to come up to me as a pastor and talk about how great my marriage, life and relationship with God must be. I would often just laugh. But sometimes I just couldn’t let the compliment pass and I pretended like it was true. Then I’d spit out some nonsense about praying more or studying the Scriptures more diligently. While they were applauding me, I was tumbling down the mountain of a crumbling marriage and church.

I did so many things wrong that I can't even begin to recount them all. But I won’t pretend to erase it, because of the Gospel. It’s important to me to stand up and say I'm screwed up, because very few people do. I’m good at the religious game. I could slip into that role and play it like a champ. To be clear, I’m capable, but not able. The longer I was in that world, the more I realized that playing the game—while it would give me longevity among certain Christians, as well as admiration—was downplaying the Truth.

The gospel saved my life years after the Good News of Jesus saved my soul. I had a high view of my sin and a low view of the gospel. I would sin, and find myself ashamed before God once again. I couldn’t imagine that he was so patient that I couldn’t out-sin his grace. Could it have been that I just had a high view of myself? How foolish was I to think that I could out-sin God’s love? Writing those words, words that once brought me to my knees in fear and shame… Now they make me want to dance in giggling joy at the silly idea of out-sinning God’s ravenous love—the core of the Good News.



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10:45:00 PM
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