Giving Up What God Didn't Promise

I attended a church service a year or so ago during which the pastor spent some time illustrating ways Christians misrepresent Christ and the Gospel. He explained how Christians sometimes claim that if you come to Jesus, you will have happiness and contentment. Then someone comes to Jesus, and their family member dies in a car accident, and they reject him. Sometimes Christians claim that if you come to Jesus, you will be blessed with wealth and security. Then someone comes to Jesus, and a financial crisis takes everything they have, and they reject him.

The pastor explained: Christ never promised these things. He promised mercy, grace, and a relationship with him. But he also promised that this broken world would bring us suffering and persecution. When Christians make promises in the name of Christ which Christ never made, they set up new believers for disappointment and despair.

This much I've been taught before, but not in this way. It struck me that there is one particular false promise that I've bought for a long time. And every time God doesn't make good on this promise I've attributed to him, I'm left with disappointment, confusion, and often anger.

I believe God promised me that if I came to him, he would make the world make sense. He didn't, and it doesn't.

Now I didn't expect God to give me a reason for everything that happens, or to fully reveal the inner workings of the human condition, or give me a bankable answer to every spiritual question I have. But I'm starting to realize that deep inside me I expect God to provide a cognitive, cohesive belief system. A basic set of ideas which fit together in such a way that the world can be intellectually approached without fear of contradiction or complete confusion. I know that God is truth, and that he created this world, and therefore somehow my gut has concluded that if I follow him I will find a sublime coherence.

But I've looked in the Bible, and this promise isn't there. At no point does Jesus set a pile of philosophy texts on the ground in front of five thousand onlookers and promise, "Follow me, and all this will fit together."

I understand why Christians think it's there. Throughout the modern age religion has been accused of lacking any semblance of intellectual integrity. We have been accused of being sheep, of lying to ourselves, of believing in contradictions we pretend aren't there. We are accused of choosing fairy tales (dangerous fairy tales, at that) when plain and simple facts are laid before us. We want to defend ourselves, and to a certain extent we should. God is the creator of all truth and knowledge and we should seek this truth diligently and passionately. He has revealed much to us and he has even more yet to reveal. Belief in Christ is not a conceptual balm for the simple-minded.

Still, this world is full of mystery. There are many things God has chosen not to reveal, though sometimes they grate against my desire for truth and justice. God has given me himself, his son, and I am charged to let that be enough.

Image: TheOtter

Quotes: Frontier, Mystery, and Problems that Do Not Disappear

"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier, and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed." Howard Macey via Melissa Guthrie

"The ideal mystery is one you would read if the end was missing." Raymond Chandler

"God offers a way to live with questions that do not have answers, and problems that do not disappear." Del Glick

Fred Rogers, My Hero

I am one of those people who tries not to let cynicism run so deep inside him that he no longer has heroes. And one of greatest heroes is Fred Rogers.

I grew up on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, as perhaps you did, and his ever-present voice of assurance in my young life still gives me confidence in my place in the world. Just the way I am.

As an adult I have found a few videos and articles that have solidified my belief in the extraordinary goodness of Fred Rogers, a man for whom grace was a way of life. I wanted to share them with you.

1. My favorite piece of creative non-fiction, an article about Mr. Rogers by Tom Junod titled "Can You Say... Hero?" (I know it's long. After you've read the first two paragraphs I promise it will be very hard to put down.)

2. CNN's fifteen reasons Mr. Rogers was "the best neighbor ever."

3. Mr. Rogers' speech after receiving a Lifetime Achievement award at the 1997 Emmys, a beautiful display of humility and kindness and truth:



4. Mr. Rogers goes to Washington and convinces the Senate not to cut funding for PBS:



5. Mr. Rogers' farewell speech, which I just can't watch without crying:



Thank you so much, Fred.

Quotes: Socialism, Generalizing, and Beethoven's Sonatas

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."  John Steinbeck

‎"I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care." Dave Barry

"Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years." William F. Buckley

Top 5 Things That Have Recently Blown My Mind

1. In countries as widespread as Brazil, Rwanda, Turkey, and the United States, researchers have found that rises in soap opera viewing are correlated with lower fertility rates, more rights and responsibilities for women and girls, and increased stickiness for messages about public health.

2. A prominent historian in California has gathered compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan's surrender and ended WWII. If this is true, it raises provocative questions about the morality of the atomic attacks and the concept of nuclear deterrence, a cornerstone of global military strategy.

3. The United States military owns and operates a secret robot space plane.

4.  The first openly gay presidential candidate from a major political party in American history is running right now. He is a Republican.

5. In 1941, a Japanese pilot who participated in the bombing of Pearl Harbor crashed his damaged plane into a small Hawaiian island. Assistance given to him by three local Japanese immigrants (which included freeing him, arming him, helping him take hostages, and helping him burn down a villager's house) may have influenced the creation of Japanese internment camps in the United States.

Waiting

How then should we live?

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

If this ball of hate and pain is headed for destruction, if almost everything we encounter here is irredeemable, if we have been rescued from a perpetual downward slide which still remains around us, if the only hope for anyone in this life is salvation when it's over—then we do our best to help others be rescued from sin. We serve the poor because Christ did. We spread the word so when Christ returns, there will be many to greet him. We are waiting on God.

O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of hell thy people save
And give them victory over the grave

If this ball of hope and promise is headed for redemption, if almost everything we encounter here is redeemable, if we have been called into a perpetual renewal which is all around us, if our hope in this life is to see God's kingdom come—then we do our best to remake the world. We serve those who are in need, we fight for justice, we battle oppression because God has instructed and enabled us to join his ongoing work. God is waiting on us.

O come, desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind
Bid thou our sad divisions cease,
And be thyself our King of Peace

Rejoice, Rejoice
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel

Image: Pedro Moura Pinheiro
This post draws on a recent sermon by WCF senior pastor Del Glick and this previous post.

Why did he come?

Why did he come?

Some say he came to free us from sin. They say this world of ours is corrupt beyond repair, and he came to give us hope that one day all its fear and pain and evil would be purged by fire, and through his sacrifice we would be welcomed into a new one, where there would finally be peace. Now ye need not fear the grave: Jesus Christ was born to save.

Some say he came to redeem the world. They say his ministry was an example of how to live in ways that daily bring his kingdom to earth through his power, his peace, his justice, his grace, his mercy which makes all things new. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

Some days you leave the house and enter a world so marred by sin and evil that you cannot believe good could exist in such a place. Death eats at everything. The Bible delivers a message our society has forgotten: we are irreversibly prone to evil. In the turmoil of our time, fear is pervasive and commanding. We hope for Christ's return.

Some days you leave the house and enter a world so full of promise you believe you can see the hand of God reworking the soil. You find hope in community, in service, in humility, in signs of life. We hope for the redemption of our world.

Often it seems he can't have come for both. Either the world is head to hell in a hand-basket or heaven in a slow cooker. This is the tension of already but not yet resurrected fallen man: A world where there is hope and there is no hope. A person who is damned but sanctified. A savior who was God and man.

Image: Lehigh Valley, PA

Johnny Cash – "Ain't No Grave"

Courtesy of the intriguing Johnny Cash Project.