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

 And that's just not true. 

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

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

Don’t listen to them.

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

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

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

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

Law & Gospel in the Christian Life

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

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

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

― Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh


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

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

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

Never Meet Your Idols

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

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

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

Idols Are Dangerous

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thief

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

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

Hope

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

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

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

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

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

My Story

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

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

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

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


-Chad West


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