Back in the day, when I was eager and thought it mattered, I used to subscribe to a number of theological journals. Among them was Interpretation a theological publication of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. I enjoyed reading through the thoughtful essays and the ‘between text and sermon’ section near the back of each month’s journal. Each month covered a different topic ranging from exploring a different book of the Bible to serious theological propositions.

Last week I was perusing through some of my back issues and one in particular caught my eye. It was the April 2000 issue titled “Forgiveness and Reconciliation.” This was perfect given that my wife and I are currently praying and exploring how we can be forgiving people in some areas of our lives we believe need healing and reconciliation. Forgiveness used to come easily, but for some reason during the last year or so of my life, I have found it easier and easier to bear grudges and withhold forgiveness–especially towards brothers and sisters in Christ. I confess my weakness and failure in this regard.

This movement has been a terrible burden. It has made it difficult to worship. It has made it difficult to pray. It has made it difficult to think. It has made it difficult to study the Scripture. It has made being a man, husband, and father difficult. It has made relationships in general very, very difficult because in that place, that place of unrest and unforgiveness and bitterness, I found myself building protective walls–cutting off others so as to avoid all possibility of being hurt. I’m not offering excuses. I am saying that at the root of all that I have struggled with for the past year is, most likely, a terrible spirit of grudgery and unforgiveness.

If you have carried any such burden in your life, ever, at all, then you know full well the weight of the burden. Then that preacher at the church yesterday took out this gorgeous Katana, reached back, and drove it straight into my heart, without showing the slightest remorse: “When people love Jesus, they will love each other.” Why do preachers do that?

I have been living in that place; it is a cold, cold place. And I did all I could to douse the warm fires of the Spirit of Jesus with my own bitterness. Now the reservoir is empty. There’s no water left to quench the Spirit. Once again, I am undone, out of options. Jesus has cornered me and given me no other option. And it is that preacher’s fault. I think he is wise to allow us to use up all our water. It helps us realize that we have no other option but to forgive. It is also his way of loving us back into his arms. It is his way of saying, I’m not letting you go that easily. It’s his way of forcing us to name our sin and deal with it through prayer.

In the first essay in the journal from that month, Crafting Communities of Forgiveness, L. Gregory Jones who, at the time at least, was dean of Duke University Divinity School, wrote:

Could it be that in the capacity to discover what it means to be forgiven and to forgive depends on the richness of one’s communal habits, practices, and disciplines? Could it be that forgiveness is less a matter of the will and more a miracle that we discover by being found, and struggling to participate, in the practices of grace-filled Christian communities? (131)

In other words, the very thing that I needed in order to cultivate forgiveness and grace as a habit of my life, the very place where it was going to happen, was the very community I had cut off (or cut myself off from) in the first place. Forgiveness was ‘easy’ when I was firmly ensconced in the life of the church and rubbing shoulders with other people who were also practicing, but when I moved out of that place and began living among the Philistines–a people among whom grace and forgiveness is neither practiced nor prized–those things became more and more difficult and far more complex in practice. What I learned is that I am utterly incapable of being as forgiving as I had once imagined myself to be. That’s humiliating and humbling.

So, I have learned that I need the church (that is, the people of Jesus) far more than the people of Jesus need me. Jones concludes:

The questions raised earlier may now be stated in declarative form: the capacity to discover what it means to be forgiven and to forgive depends, in part, on the richness of one’s communal habits, practices, and disciplines. If we want to be faithful in our witness to God, then we ought to focus more attention on cultivating and crafting communities whose practices are marked by the crucified and risen Christ and bear witness to the eschatological work of the Holy Spirit. For, in so doing, we will discover with even greater power the active receptivity that makes it possible for us to learn the painful yet redemptive process of embodying forgiveness in faithful communion with God, with one another, and with all creation. (134)

Forgiveness is hard work best done within the community of God’s people–even when the forgiveness involves ‘all creation’ (that is, those who are not a part of the community). I believe we should be able to practice forgiveness in the church, but I wonder why it is so hard to do so? Why do I find it so painful to go to the people, the community of the crucified, and speak of forgiveness and grace and love?

Forgiveness is different and difficult for the people of God because it requires humility. We may end up having to ask for forgiveness before we ever dare assume the right of being forgiving.

Let me end with a question or two.

First, why do you think it is easier for us as Christians to forgive those who are not Christians than it is for us to forgive other Christians?

Second, how do we promote such a practice in our communities? Jones, in his essay (which explores this idea by explicating the letter of James) suggests that through the practices of singing, truthful speech, praying, anointing, confessing, and engaging in mutual admonition within the community, we learn to promote this practice. “…part of the gift of Christian life is that we do not learn to do any of them alone.” His idea is that in the practice of such things we learn to be a community of grace and forgiveness. What do you think?

Third, does such a community exist? Can the church be such a place?

Tags: forgiveness, grace, unforgiveness, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Church, Discipleship

Tags: community, forgiveness, grace, Holy Spirit, Jesus

I watched a movie today that was thought-provoking. Reading about it afterward, though, was even moreso.

The Other Side of Heaven is the story of John Groberg (Christopher Gorham), a Mormon missionary in the 1950s. There’s really not much that’s overtly Mormon in the movie — the vast majority of what’s shown and said fits into traditional Christian beliefs.

On a side note, this DVD is a product of Walt Disney Home Entertainment. One has to wonder how many tens of thousands of RPMs Uncle Walt is hitting in his grave that his name is associated with a film that gives any kind of credit to God.

Shortly before graduating from BYU, Groberg declares his love for Jean Sabin (Anne Hathaway) and asks for her to wait for him while he is on his missionary assignment. The movie is peppered with letters between the two of them; the letters don’t drive the plot much, but examine the thought processes that each of them is having during Groberg’s time away.

Groberg is sent to the Tongan islands where he ministers for approximately three years. During a large part of his assignment, he is paired up with a native (Joseph Folau) who acts not only as his interpreter (until Groberg learns the language), but also as a fellow worker in ministry.

Anyone with exposure to missionary work (even if it’s just hearing the guy who showed up at your church with a slideshow) will not find much of what Groberg faces to be surprising. Rather, much of the story lies in the relationships that he builds with the people of the island on which he works. There are events throughout the movie that drive the story forward — it’s not all character-driven, but there’s not much that’s earth-shattering here. Still, the movie (and the trials that Groberg faced) is challenging to any Christian who’s up for an iota of self-examination.

What was surprising was the virulence of the reaction to the film. As is my wont, especially with movies that are based on true stories, I went to teh interwebs and read reviews after viewing the movie. I expected that there would be criticism from many reviewers, some of which might be deserved, but some of which would simply be in adverse over-reaction to a film about faith. But the majority of the criticism that I saw wasn’t so much about the occasional hokeyness or seeming over-simplicity of the movie, but a near-anger about the ideals behind it — a reaction for which a word like “knee-jerk” just doesn’t suffice.

Now granted, some of it was just downright stupid. A couple of writers complained about how Groberg was imposing American/Western values onto the Tongan culture. If you actually pay any attention to the movie, you will recognize what a laughable accusation this is. The only scene in which Groberg confronts (in a negative manner) the culture to which he is ministering is when he tells a couple of men that theft, bribery, and fornication are not the “privilege of the higher class”, despite the fact that their culture dictates otherwise. Further, Groberg’s appeal is to faith, not to some idealism that he brought with him from Idaho.

But some of the other criticism was more thoughtful — though ultimately wrong. One writer that stood out in particular noted that the movie flies in the face of today’s “moral relativism” (his words), clearly implying that the latter was a good thing. His thoughts around that were admittedly well-constructed, but all based on that sad misconception.

The whole thing got me to thinking — from where did these violent reactions come?

Granted, moral relativism is rampant in American culture these days. On my more carnal days, I want to punch someone in the throat if they say “all paths lead to God”, not so much because of the error of the concept as the fact that I’m sick of constantly hearing it. Or we could go with a tired conservative/Christian phrase and note that the “Hollywood elite” (and even its critics) are probably at the vanguard of such a belief system. One could even refer to how the enemy blinds the eyes of the unbeliever and attribute even the stupid reactions to this phenomenon. But all of that just defines the problem.

And, to be sure, there are those who name Christ who have Americanized/Westernized their faith. On top of that, many of them have romanticized earlier times in our country, as though no sin (or anything else bad, for that matter) occurred in America before 1963. And so when other Christians try to shake off this baggage and attempt to not preach “another gospel” (which is what adding to the gospel message is really all about), they are soundly criticized — often to the point of the outright denial of their salvation — by the Hugh Beaumont faction of Christianity. Sadly, such screeching is often very loud and that’s what a lot of unbelievers see Christianity as being. But I think even this is an over-simplistic analysis of the situation.

I can’t shake the feeling that, as Christians, we’re missing something even broader. What that is, though, is beyond me.

“What they* taught they expected the church to believe and preserve.”

–John RW Stott, The Message of Ephesians, 107

*’They’=the apostles

Let me begin this post by first showing you a couple of passages of Scripture that I believe fit very well together. First, from the Gospels; second, from Paul; third, from the book of Hebrews. Notice how all three passages speak to the the same ideas, peace, reconciliation, oneness.

“The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”–Mark 15:38

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace…”–Ephesians 2:14-15

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”–Hebrews 10:19-22

All three of these passages, in their context, speak of something that happened when and because Jesus died. He ripped and destroyed and opened. I like these verbs…they are action words par excellence. They speak of the violent nature of the problem he encountered. There were real, significant barriers in the way of peace, reconciliation, and oneness. They also speak to the way he saw them: these were not chicanes that stood in the way that could be spoken to nicely or dealt with in counseling or massaged out of existence. Rather, these were real chicanes that needed ripped, destroyed, and opened. They required a death in order to be destroyed.

They were real strongholds we erected. They separated us from one another, from God, and from God’s kingdom. But because he died, because he did something, the way was opened up, hostility was destroyed, peace has been made, and one new people have been created. This is the action of God. Peterson rightly notes, “When we are pulled into the action, it is God who pulls us in. We acquire our identity not by what we do but by what is done to us” (Practice Resurrection, 117). This destroying, ripping, and opening is God’s action, not ours. We just get to be a part of it and enjoy it. Still, we do play a part in their perpetuation even if the action rests solely in God’s hands.

I’d like to leave it at that. I’d like to leave it with a very simple: God made a way where there seemed to be no way. God opened up what we had closed. God ripped apart that which we sewed together. God destroyed that which divides us and enabled us to be one again. I find this refreshing and encouraging and it gives me hope. There are a million ways we humans try to ‘come together’ and ‘make peace’ and ‘live as one.’ And not one of them ever works. In Jesus, however, and because of his death, all those things which previously kept us apart have been destroyed.

There is only one way we will be one, at peace, and reconciled: In Jesus.

Warning: Bleeped out language in the clip.

I bought this book for my wife. I wasn’t sure if I would read it or not. I’m glad that I did. Ed Dobson is on the short list of preachers who’s sermon’s I’ll listen to over and over again. When he talks, or writes I want to listen.

This book has taken some serious criticism, from people who don’t like the style to the more vapid, aggressive fundamentalist. Of course, the criticisms are also leveled at the author
He’s criticized for being in an airport, for praying the rosary, and for listening to an iPod. He’s called a heretic and a cretin. Spawn of Satan was probably thrown out somewhere I’m sure. He voted for Obama!

God forbid a man trying to live like Jesus wrestles with his conscience and votes accordingly. It’s not important if I agree with Ed that voting for Obama is what Jesus would do. What matters is that it is evident in this book that Ed loves God and wants to serve Him. Ed wants to continue to love Jesus in the midst of a disease that would have caused most of us to shrivel up like a prune left on the dashboard of a locked car in the middle of August. Most of us would have quit and died.

Not Ed. He delved deeper into his faith. He pushed himself to explore what he believes and how it impacts his life.

This book is full of fantastic applications that Ed either learned or was reminded of through his journey over the course of this year. In one chapter Ed reminds the reader “Whenever I think that what I am doing qualifies me to be in a closer relationship with God, I am arrogant.”

In a world that seems to be divided along the very lines of who qualifies to be in a closer relationship with God, Ed has the guts to put it out there for everyone to see how he wrestles with his own relationship with God. I don’t really know Ed. He preachers at our church now and again and we had a stretch where he preached regularly. I wish that I did. I have the feeling that he’d be a fun guy to have a beer with and ponder the Scriptures with. I’m sure that I wouldn’t agree with him on everything but I’m also pretty sure that would be all right with him.
I’m sick of the battle between, “The way it always was, is the way it must be” and “What if we’ve gotten it wrong for the last 2,000 years.” What makes Ed’s book and teachings to poignant is his ability to value our heritage and to look at with a fresh perspective.
Buy this book, read it, you’ll enjoy it.

“You were created to become like Christ.”

–Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, 171

I’ve been thinking about taking up my cross, denying myself, and following Jesus. A lot. It’s a horrifying thought—sacrifice myself, deny the very impulses that give life to my hands and feet, follow someone I have never seen, heard, smelled, or touched. It’s all there…and in case I have any doubts, the one voice I do constantly hear is the one that says, “Yeah, He’s right.”

I constantly reply, “I wish He wasn’t.”

In his book After You Believe NT Wright explores what it means to be a Christian—a follower of Jesus. Early on in the book he poses a question (and provides an answer) which essentially defines the content of the remainder of the book. He writes,

‘How should I behave?’ contains two significantly different questions within it. First, it refers to the content of my behavior: In what way should I behave? In other words, what specific things ought I to do and not to do? But second, it refers to the means or method of my behavior: granted that I know what I ought to do and ought not to do, by what means will I be able to put these things into practice? […] Interestingly, Jesus seems to have given both sides of this question the same answer: ‘Follow me!’ This is both what you should do and how you should do it. (14)

And how do we follow Jesus? By taking up the cross and denying ourselves—necessary precursors which must be recognized, accepted, and in place before we ever take our first step behind him. Wright goes on, “The theme is stark and challenging: in order to develop Christian character, the first step is suffering” (177). I heard this while listening to some older music last night. It’s an old Petra song called ‘Hit You Where You Live.” This short lyric stands out to me as one of the best lyrics Bob Hartman ever wrote:

The evidence leads to conviction
When we don’t live everything we say
There’s got to be a crucifixion
We can live dying everyday

A crucifixion. It’s not original to NT Wright or Bob Hartman or any of the other hundreds of writers who have dragged their arms across the paper, pen in hand, and dared to etch these words into the fabric of their heart. I know why I sing them and write them and repeat them: to remind myself, constantly, that this is the life I was chosen for and that I chose. Frequently this life makes no sense and oftentimes God’s silence is deafening. He’s there; he’s not there. The road up Calvary, surrounded by thousands of people, is a lonely road.

The idea was original with Jesus and picked up on by those who dared drag their cross around the Roman infested Middle East. Peter said it. Paul said it. John said it.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. (Romans 12:1)

He also wrote and, worse, I assume, believed and, worser, expected those who read his writing to also believe:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who love me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

I could go on and on and on and on quoting this author or that author and demonstrating unequivocally that we are, as disciples, called to the crucifixion driven life. (Well, we are also called to the Resurrection Driven Life too, but one is necessarily a result of the other; and the other necessarily a precursor to the other; I’ll leave it up to the Holy Spirit to teach you which is which.)  But the fact is, regardless of how many people say it or how eloquently they say it, no matter how poetically it is written or how much it is romanticized, this life, this life of self-denial, cross bearing, and Jesus following is not for the faint of heart. And there are times when I am sick of it; tired of trying.

I know what you’re thinking:  that is rather anti-climactic. I’m sorry to disappoint you.  I’m sorry if the perception of the Christian life we sometimes give off to those around us goes something like this: “Oh, I found Jesus and now my life is set! I can smile all the way to the bank! I can rest easily at night” and that that perception, however well intended, is decidedly, emphatically, wrong. I’m sorry if you have been misled to believe that dying is meant to be, uh, fun.

It’s hard. I’m not crying about it. I am pointing out that sometimes, all the times, this life—this learning to live the Jesus life—is terribly confusing. I’ve come to believe that it (this crucifixion driven life) has nothing to do with whether or not I succeed or whether or not I actually contribute to the world or make a so-called difference. Frankly, I believe this crucifixion life is the most personal aspect of our lives and it is, to be sure, the one place along our walk where God most loudly announces his love for us. Love.

It’s hard to believe that God loved us so much that He gave His one and only Son. It’s even harder to believe that He loves us so much that he requires us, as part of the plan, to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Jesus. It’s hard to believe that he loves us so much that he calls us and when he calls us, he bids us come and die. It’s hard to believe he loves us so much that he is bound and determined to rid our lives of all that destroys us, of all that fails to bring glory to his name, of all that does not bear his image. “We are being recreated in the image of our Creator,” Paul wrote.

And some can say this with a smile and a Hallelujah! But Paul and others know the truth that that which lives inside of us is dark and must be murdered and that the darkness wages war, a bloody, violent, aggressive war, a counter-offensive, and that it seeks to maintain its strongholds at all costs.  It’s hard to imagine that God loves us so much that he not only points out what the strongholds are and where they are, but that he also leads the charge against them.

Love.

There is no hope for me, you realize this, right? It is simply impossible for me to believe in this God, let alone purposely decide every day to deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Him, right? And, let’s be honest, the cross I am called to bear is not a hangnail or a splinter or a crank boss. The cross is an instrument of death. It is the very means God uses to unwrap and undo self-sufficient humans.

I saw the fruit. It was good for food. It was desirable for gaining wisdom. It was pleasing to the eye. So I ate. The fruit became my cells, my tissues, my organs, my systems, and my being.  Now I have to throw it up and my insides must be turned outside. I must be undone.  (I think it much easier to sit around pots of meat and leeks and vegetables in Egypt, but don’t we all?) Who can rescue me from such a life? Who can fix me? Who can bring life out of death? Who cares so much about my life that he is willing to let me die (forces me to die?) in order that I might live? I can’t do it. I have no power.

Christians, then and now, are the only persons on the face of the earth who worship a crucified Savior—to all appearances in every and all cultures a rejected, humiliated, and failed Savior. [...]

These are background observations for understanding why what I am calling ‘acquired passivity’ is so difficult for us to take seriously and then embrace—and why it is absolutely necessary to embrace it if we are to accustom ourselves to living in a world characterized by the grace of God, for ‘by grace you have been saved.’ There are no other options. It’s grace or nothing. There is no ‘Plan B.’ (Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, 93)

Follow Jesus.

“But Lord,” I say, “I don’t know where I am at or where we are going.”

And his reply?

“Well, Jerry, if you are following Jesus, does it matter?”

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

“Evil cannot be overcome by calling in the intimidating principalities and powers as allies.”

–Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, 264

On the trip with my son this summer, a circuit from Vegas to the California coast, up to Canada, and down the Cascades back to Vegas (4,300 miles total – on a rented car ), we had a good deal of time to talk and also time to catch up on a number of podcasts (since I’d stopped listening to sermon podcasts in March to try and go through the Bible).

As we were headed north, we caught up on about 6 months of Mars Hill Bible Church sermons – with a number of good discussions along the way (particularly in regards to the series on Jonah).  Then, in Seattle (as chance would have it), we switched to Mars Hill Church (Seattle), and caught up on most of the 2010 sermons (Driscoll’s a little long-winded, so we didn’t make it as far as we did with MHBC), which are all in Luke (and will probably still be in Luke for the next two years).

[Side note: A past PPP writer and I were discussing this a couple of weeks ago, and his comment - which made me laugh a little - was "I can't imagine either one of those churches would be all that pleased with your ultimate listening choices..."]

When we got home, Zan asked my son what he thought of the different churches’ teaching (she prefers Driscoll’s more blunt expositional style).  He said that, while he learned a good deal from both (and from my interludes, explaining what “systematic theology” is, and a two-hour-long foray through the history of the church from 33 A.D. to the present, with a modern focus on the Restoration Movement churches), he thought that MHBC’s challenged him to think and reconsider how to live, based on what he believed.   However, he also thought, though, that MHC did a better job of getting across the basics of what Christians believe. (Which then brought about a discussion about how you can’t really know the character of a church community unless you’re part of it, since a community worship/teaching time is only one hour out of the week.)

I will say, though, that – podcasts aside – 4300 miles of driving and 19 days of camping allow time for a lot of learning, a lot of laughing, and a lot of discussion.  And – in a big thank-you to the PPP community – I can honestly say that if I’d never started writing here and interacting with the other writers and commenters, I would have been so much incredibly poorer in both understanding what I believe, and in knowing how to talk about it.

Thank you all…