Your Fault is Showing!!!

Trying to appear as if one has it all together
shows that one does not have it together at all!

I firmly believe in grace!  The fact that there is nothing that I can do or that I can't possibly ever be good enough to earn it, is colossal!  But honestly, I do like to appear as though I have it all together, as though I don't need grace at all!  I much prefer it when people look at my life and think, "wow, he's a great dad/christian/salesman/preacher/husband/consignment manager/tech support/etc"! I want people to look in the windows of my life and see someone who is confident, and knowledgeable, and worthy of respect!  I am motivated by the praise others give me for my supposed competence!  I certainly don't want them to see a scared, broken, teetering-on-the-edge person.  The paradox here is that trying to appear as though I have it all together proves that I do not have it together at all!  My fault is showing, and it is embarrassing!

It's like that in church too, isn't it? What I find most challenging about some of our religious theology, is the supposition of complete understanding and the resulting appearance of moral and theological perfection. One believing that their understanding and application of specific texts is flawless with a resulting moral arrogance is repulsive to me! It is embarrassing, to say the least!  But it's not just about understandings and interpretations, it's about the accompanying attitude.  For years church members have fought in a battle over superiority of doctrine, and have steeled up their loyalty to one faction or another.  This has resulted in a body of hardened believers, intent on proving their position through attitude and action.  Moral superiority is the sword that is drawn, and doctrinal perfection the shield.  Members, convinced of their perfection, believing that they are right in their actions and stances, have alienated and cut off any form of child-like curiosity.  People, are asking questions but they are being relentlessly attacked because of it.  Lord forbid that one should challenge the archaic systems of religion with a simple "why?".  Funny (not funny "haha") that questions about how to "do" church or interpret the Bible cause so sharp a response.  The only reason that I can think of as to why questioning our position would cause such hostility is that we believe we have arrived at a place of complete understanding.  If I recall, there was a person in the new testament who was convinced that he was right in both his doctrine and actions. He believed his understanding and theology was better than the new found Christian movement.  He believed himself to be superior in all ways, a Pharisee of Pharisees!  Had Jesus been a liar, this man would have been right for his relentless persecution of christendom!  But he was not right! Until Saul met Jesus on the Damascus road he was convinced of the inerrancy of his morality and theology at the cost of Stephen and many other Christian lives!  It took a blinding to give Saul sight, a swift kick in the heart so-to-speak!

Jesus speaks to the Pharisee over and over about superficiality.  He accused them of being white washed tombs, clean outside, full of decay inside. He called them out for their superficial legalism and continual judgement on those around them.  When they tried to challenge Him, Jesus staggered them with words like "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God what is Gods!" and "let him who is without sin throw the first stone"!  He confounds their vast intelligence, and humbles their arrogance in His beautiful simplicity! So concise and accurate were His words and actions, that they had no way of convicting Him of wrong! They had to hire liars and false witnesses to get Jesus to stop, but even at His death He had the last word when the Temple curtain is torn in half from top to bottom!  Even more than that, Jesus opened the grave He was buried in and proved once and for all that He is indeed who He said He was!

Sometimes I just wish He would kick us in the butt the same way!  I wish He would come down here and call us out for our arrogance, for our legalism, for our judgemental stupidity!  Short of that, I'm not sure what will wake us up?  Lord knows I preached this change for at least 8 my 15 years with little-to-no success!  It MUST take God, Himself to break us and make us pliable and usable once again!  The beautiful thing here is that God has enough love for His children, enough grace for our painfully obvious faults, that even if we don't face this and change He can forgive! But at what cost are our swords drawn?  How many lives must be taken, generations must pass before we change?  I'd like to say that we won't wait for a Damascus road to break us, that we will embrace our imperfections and show the world that we are real, authentic, broken people.  Only then can God's power be made perfect in us!

Stop faking it...your fault is showing!

Here's the Church...Here's the Steeple!

Open the doors and see all the people!!!

I ended my last post with, "more on what that looks like in another article!"  What does a "baptized" church look like?  For me, baptism was a beginning.  I had read that my immersion was a death, that my old self would be dead and gone and I would be new.  It wasn't long before I realized that I was still me.  I had the same struggles, the same attitudes, and the same thought processes and desires. Not sure what I was expecting!  Maybe I thought that my personality would be altered somehow or that my outlook on life would be framed differently.  I certainly believed that my life would be better, and I would be happier but that was certainly not the case!  There were, however, some differences. For example; I felt a greater sense of purpose, like I had found a direction that was missing. I felt a new sense of belonging that I hadn't felt prior to my immersion.  But other than those changes, nothing else was really different. I still struggled with "fleshly desires", and I still felt hatred and anger and frustration and hurt.  I was still the same person, with only a few barely-noticeable changes.  So what was different?  I knew that I was saved by the grace of God!  I knew that no matter what I had done, was doing, or was going to do that God's grace was sufficient.  The water was only water, apart from getting wet the only change that occurred was in my soul! Almost imperceptible to any other person. I've been a Christian for 23 years, a minister for 15 of those, and the changes of my death, burial and resurrection are still well under way!  I guess I would say that I'm a work in progress.  

When I talk about the death, burial and resurrection of the church I can't help but compare with my own personal transformation.  What does it look like?  It is not much different than what it is now except for an internal, imperceptible change of heart! It is from that change of heart that the imperceptible grows over time and ultimately becomes apparent!  The problem lies in us believing that the change is instant and comes in the form of morality or doctrinal theology.  This is then compounded by personalities conflicting over opinion and programming under the presupposition that we have somehow arrived at our destination. Then, ultimately, the change of heart and soul is washed away by human nature, arrogance and relational discord. I've said it before that if we want the church's problems to go away, all we have to to do is get rid of the people! After all, the people are the most complicated part of this whole equation. 

ALL THE PEOPLE!

It is the mystery of the universe that many have spent their lives trying to understand. Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, William Glasser and the like have worked hard to figure out people.  Myer's Briggs, the Holland Codes, Jungian Typology, Socionics, HEXACO, DISC, Keirsey Temperament, HumanMetrics, etc...etc...etc. Oh, we've got it figured out!  A simple test and we know what kind of people we are, how we work, and who we interact well/poorly with. As long as we've been alive, we've been mastering exactly what this "human" thing is about! Bask in the enlightenment of our ability to understand! People! Introverts, extroverts, logicals, ethicals, sensitives, intuitives, aristocratic, timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, tyrannic, analytical, artsy, objective and subjective, rational and irrational, open minded, closed minded, arrogant and humble, ego, super-ego, id...ugh!  People! Psychology! Typology!

The word "Psychology" can be parsed out and extracted from it's origins.  It is derived from the Greek words "Psuche" and "Logos".  Very literally it means "soul of word" but can be simply translated as "a thing said of the soul"!  While there are arguments about this from differing personality types, it seems obvious to me that it is the desire of people to know how we work!  

So, what words would we use to describe ourselves?  The old sunday school rhyme goes "Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.  Close the doors and let them pray, open the doors and they've all gone away!"  With a few hand gestures, and the right meter this little poem pretty much sums up the most common perceptions of church. Open and Shut!  

The beauty of it is in the fact that we are all in the same boat, cut from the same cloth, made of the same dirt! One thing that we do know more than anything else, is that from the time of the Garden we have been hungry for something more.  We are looking for deeper meaning, and purpose!  We are longing for direction and value, and this because of the one and same human nature that we all possess!  No matter how we try to hypothesize and summarize the kind of people we may be, the truth can be reduced to this one simple thought; we are lumps of dirt!  

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that "God has set eternity in the hearts of people, yet from beginning to end we cannot fathom what God has done!"  2 Corinthians 4 says that we have a treasure inside of us that comes only from God.  In Genesis we're told that God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his creation.  That breath is in us!  That eternity is in us! We are all looking for it in everything we do!  Psychology, typology and personality tests are not necessary for us to know that we are lumps of dirt longing to understand the eternity that God has placed inside of us!  

The best part of all of this isn't that we'll ever fully understand it, but that we no longer have to!  We have been given a hope that fulfils our deepest human nature, that no matter how dirty, muddy, dusty we are God has given us a "treasure"!  

Now, if only we could stop looking at each other, judging each other like we should be more than lumps of dirt.  If only we could recognize that, as imperfect as we are, God has put in us something perfect!  Not based on our actions or morality, not based on our doctrine or theology, but entirely rooted in the truth that we are His lumps of dirt!

The Elephant...

"Elephant in the room" is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.

It is based on the idea that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not there have chosen to avoid dealing with the looming big issue.

Wikipedia


RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships are messy! (I know, "thank you captain obvious!!") There are two different kinds of relationships, "micro" and "macro". We range from individual interactions (micro) to societal norms (macro), and each of these have full impact on the other. There's a story in US history about two feuding families in the late 1800's; the Hatfields and McCoys. It is a famous, almost legendary tale that had national implications. The story stretches back to post civil war, and is inundated with tales of murder, hatred and jealousy. It is said that the feud started with a little more than a simple incompatibility between two immigrants, and was fuelled by civil war tensions. It came to a distinct head when Floyd Hatfield and Randy McCoy both laid claim to a "hog"! Hatfield claimed that the pig belonged to him and that McCoy stole it! A judge (who happened to be a Hatfield) ruled in favour of Floyd, which ultimately lead to his murder by two cousins of Randy! The feud continued on, increasing in its horrors, until the supreme court convicted the families. Life sentences were given to seven, and one of the primary instigators was given the death penalty and was executed by hanging in 1890. That death ended the feud but it was too late, it had already affected and changed an entire society. Death ended the feud...someone had to die to end it! Hmm...sounds familiar doesn't it? Relationships are messy, and a small infraction, a "hog", can lead to mass casualties and ultimately a change in an entire society that involves everyone!


TOO BIG TO TALK ABOUT

Isn't that the way it is today? Something that starts out on the micro scale, an incompatibility between two people, grows into an unreasonable tension and ultimately the demise of a whole community/society. In fear of that destruction, the "Elephant-in-the-room" becomes too big to talk about. Individuals skirt around the behemoth in hopes that it's big, grey, wrinkly, tension will just disappear! Frustrations and hurts become grudges and vengeance! Passive aggressive comments are made to vie for position around the mammoth until everyone has their semi-comfortable (or at best, mildly tolerable) place. This mildly tolerable place is found usually after someone finally gives up and leaves and rarely ever from addressing the actual problem that plagues them. It's too big to talk about!


TO BIG TO IGNORE

I am amazed at how often this happens in churches. Historical strain on age old relationships or differences in theological opinion and attitude lead to communities filled with casualties. The longer those feuds are carried out the more bodies (aka. people leaving) pile up. I don't know about you, but a community of hostility is not where people are looking for life! Isn't that the journey of all people? I don't know a single person on the planet who is not looking for something that fills them with life! How much life is there in a church that can't move beyond their history, tradition, or sacramental theology?


With the demise of Christian Colleges, a fair number of churches, and the resignation of pulpit preachers (self-included) it seems a fair assessment that there is something wrong with our church society today! Throughout my 15 years of ministry, I had spent a lot of time and energy trying to pinpoint exactly what the problem is. I always knew there was something wrong, but from inside the church my perspective was filtered. Now that I am sitting on the back pew, no longer concerned about which way I'm allowed to step to avoid the elephant, I feel a sense of clarity. If our goal as Christians is to bring people to the living water, to show people where life can be found, then we can't be naive about our age old problems. There is not much life in a church too consumed by the casualties of the past. This is too big to ignore!


A CLEAN BREAK!

So what is the solution? It seems to me that, on the micro level, God knew this would be a problem for us individually. He knew that we would struggle with life, fall flat on our faces, and fail over and over again! He knew that, given the option, humanity would choose to "eat-the-fruit"! We've been in a place of want since the Garden of Eden, the difference now is that our want is fully satisfied in Jesus! Before we, as humans, come to the realization that all of our searching for life is in vain without Christ, we are famished! But God, through Jesus Christ, breaks us of ourselves and shows us the "way, truth, and life" we are searching for. We then die, are buried and are then, and only then resurrected to a new life! The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just an history changing event, it is the perfect metaphor for what we as a people require for our insatiable hunger! New life requires a clean break from the old!


Our personal relationship with God is on the micro scale, us and Him; but what about our community relationship with Him? Perhaps we haven't taken immersion to the next level yet! Maybe the death, burial and resurrection of Christ applies to the church the same way it applies to the individual parts of the body! What if the "Old Man" in the church is our history, baggage and elephants? The only way a church can offer life to the world is to be fully alive in Christ! The only way to be fully alive in Christ is to die to self, be buried with Christ, and to be resurrected to new life! It seems to me that the church needs to repent and die! New life requires a clean break from the old! It's time for a hangin'!


A lot of people were afraid when Western Christian College shut it's doors. We were concerned that the legacy and tradition would vanish, that all of the hard work would be forgotten or done in vain. People worry about the future of our children without the school. Fear was all over it's closing, and is still around now that the school is gone. I met my wife at Western, and unlike that Hatfields and McCoys, our relationship began with compatibility. We have become a society all our own that has impacted our community (hopefully in good ways), the churches that we have served, and the people we have connected with along the way. Our beginnings were in Western's history, and I dreamt of sending my children to be part of that legacy as well. But those emotional attachments to the school were not enough to keep it from closing. We don't want to forget, we don't want to put to death the things that have had a bearing on who we've become. Or maybe we don't want to trust that God can raise the dead on a macro scale as well as a micro one! Maybe it's time to trust that God can raise the church!?!


WHAT ABOUT OUR NAME?

What holds us captive from doing this? Fear! We are afraid that if we die, if we shut the doors and put to death the programs and sacraments that we will lose what we have and who we are. Isn't that the idea? Isn't that what God has called us to in baptism? But Rolland, if we close the doors, if we start over what if we lose who we are? What if the name we are trying to make for ourselves is compromised? What if we never come back together? Fear! Fear of loss, fear of hurt, fear of identity crisis, fear. Fear is not a good enough reason to keep a sick society on life-support. It is not a good enough reason to pretend that the problems of the past will have no bearing on today if we ignore them. It is not a good enough reason to draw swords and murder over who owns the theological "hog". Fear is not a good enough reason to stay-put in our mildly tolerable corners, and not address the problem. It cannot paralyse us, or inundate our thinking so that all we have left is a tense battle where we are vying for position around the elephant. That kind of church is uninviting, hostile and toxic. Ouch! People are hungry for life, we are hungry for life! The good news is that God can resurrect us!




Perfect love drives out fear! If we understand that God is love, that His love is shown in Jesus, and that Jesus death, burial and resurrection is our only way to that love, then maybe it's time to concede! Maybe it's time, as a church society to put to be put to death, buried and resurrected! Maybe it's time to dream bigger and believe more deeply in the power of the King!


(more on what that looks like in another article!) Thoughts are welcome!