So this morning we’re talking about prayer, and rightfully so, Paul says we’re suppose to be ceaseless in it. Surely it’d be worthwhile to spend time talking about what the heck that even means. But instead I’d like to get back to the basics of prayer. So my question to add to our discussion this morning is this - Why pray? I mean seriously, why pray? What’s the use? Is Niche right? Is it just an opiate that makes us feel better? Is that what it’s all about? Ya know, telling Jesus what’s on your heart via some quaint and polite monologue? Or better yet, maybe it’s just another one of the fine tools we have in order to compete with a brother, so as to elevate ourselves as being more spiritual by speaking with the right, loving tone, and mixing together a few theological bangers with some pretty sounding words, and making sure to slide in every name for God any time we transition between thoughts.
Obviously I’m being sarcastic here. The reason I’m doing so is because we Christians find ourselves caught in the middle of a major theoretical problem when it comes to prayer.
You see, as Christians we hold to this idea that our God, is infinite in goodness. And we cling to the belief that our God is omnipotent and sovereign, that is, our God is all-powerful and able to bring about his will as he pleases: whenever, wherever, however. So why? Why pray?
I mean, if you think about it, it‘s a senseless endeavor. Can you really believe that infinite wisdom needs telling what is best? Or that infinite goodness needs an urging to do it? Can you believe that God ever really modifies His actions in response to our suggestions? Do you see the theoretical problem this raises? God doesn’t need you, or me; or your prayers, or mine. Neither does he need missionaries, or even medicine at that. He could convert any heathen, and heal any disease laden body in the twinkling of his eye.
Yet for some reason, “God,” in the words of Pascal, “instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” It’s a fancy way of saying God chooses to limit his power in such a way that the muscles and minds and wills, of you and I , are given the opportunity to cooperate in the doing of His will. And the truth in this goes beyond prayer. You see, whenever we act at all he lends us that same dignity of causality; it is the only reason we can cause anything. Therefore, it is not really any more or less strange to think that our prayer should affect the course of events than any others do. And get this - in doing so, we are not advising or changing God’s mind - that is, His over-all purpose. That remains. But our actions, and prayers will cause that purpose to be realized in different ways.
Along the same line of thought, C.S. Lewis says this, “For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly. He allows us to neglect what He would have us do, or to fail. Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to co-exist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work, “to wield our little trident.” Is this amazing process simply Creation going on before our eye? This is how (no light matter) God makes something - indeed, makes gods - out of nothing.”
It is my desire that every one of us here would come to not only know of prayer as some theological concept, but to truly know the creative power we’ve been given to challenge and change the human history until it conforms to the norms of the kingdom of God in such a way that we cannot help but begin enacting it now.
Which brings me to my last thoughts. (Couldn’t come up with any nice transition)
If you view prayer as some sort of machine, as if God is some genie in the sky, floating around, ready to grant your requests, I want to tell you your wrong. And if you’ve ever been down because what you pray for never comes to be, and you are lead to think, “dude, what’s wrong with me,“ as if it’s the faithful who have the greatest influence on the throne; I urge you to consider this hard quote I once heard -
“I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.”
It’s not a pleasant suggestion, and if those words don’t sit right with you at first consider this. In Gethsemane, Jesus requests of God to spare him from the peculiarly unpleasant death set before him is refused. Which raises the difficult question, “Does God forsake those who serve him best?“ There is a mystery here that takes far more courage than I have to explore, but I suggest that next time your prayers are granted you refrain from drawing any conclusions to your own advantage. For in the words of Lewis, “If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.”
Monday, November 8, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
From the mind of Jake Steedman
My guy Jake sent me this today. Simply beautiful thoughts just prior to re-entering life in America upon the close of a month in George, (insert country) Africa. (oops)
Last time in the hospital, last time at Kids Stop, last time on the streets. I see kids leaving from sick beds, people on the street able to light their own cigarettes and fend off people even when they have no hands or legs… life goes on in George without the righteous missionaries from Great America. People will be healed, protected and taken care of by God in one form of the other, by his will. The question is can the missionaries live without a George? Of course we can survive, even luxuriously, but can we truly live? We have lived right this last month, with the word of Mathew 25 at the heart of our worship. Can we continue to do so in our comfortable, secure, sheltered lives? Could I dare venture off to visit the sick, widowed, lame, destitute, hungry without the call of our coordinator? Have we not all been called by one mightier and with authority above all? “A short term mission fails when you think its over when you get on the plane home.” Let this journey not be in vain. Let this not be a fulfillment of our self-righteous endeavors to satisfy our guilty souls. May we find the radical call to reform our eyes, mind, ears and hearts to comfort the broken, bless the unblessed, and feed the hungry. Then may we see that truly we are being blessed by the unblessed, we will be comforted by the broken and fed the bread of life only given by our Lord, who was and claims to be disguised as one of the least of these. So after all, was it George who was blessed or who was in fact the blesser? “Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?” Thank you father.
Strengthen our so very weak flesh. May we find how to truly love. We could feed the stomachs of many and heal the injuries of the masses. We can visit the lonely and be with the broken, but if we have not love, we do nothing. May love set fire to our souls that long to truly live…which means to truly die! May we find peace, joy, fulfillment, blessing and life in the footsteps of Christ our mentor of death and life, blood and water. Open our eyes open our hearts and let love flow.
Last time in the hospital, last time at Kids Stop, last time on the streets. I see kids leaving from sick beds, people on the street able to light their own cigarettes and fend off people even when they have no hands or legs… life goes on in George without the righteous missionaries from Great America. People will be healed, protected and taken care of by God in one form of the other, by his will. The question is can the missionaries live without a George? Of course we can survive, even luxuriously, but can we truly live? We have lived right this last month, with the word of Mathew 25 at the heart of our worship. Can we continue to do so in our comfortable, secure, sheltered lives? Could I dare venture off to visit the sick, widowed, lame, destitute, hungry without the call of our coordinator? Have we not all been called by one mightier and with authority above all? “A short term mission fails when you think its over when you get on the plane home.” Let this journey not be in vain. Let this not be a fulfillment of our self-righteous endeavors to satisfy our guilty souls. May we find the radical call to reform our eyes, mind, ears and hearts to comfort the broken, bless the unblessed, and feed the hungry. Then may we see that truly we are being blessed by the unblessed, we will be comforted by the broken and fed the bread of life only given by our Lord, who was and claims to be disguised as one of the least of these. So after all, was it George who was blessed or who was in fact the blesser? “Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?” Thank you father.
Strengthen our so very weak flesh. May we find how to truly love. We could feed the stomachs of many and heal the injuries of the masses. We can visit the lonely and be with the broken, but if we have not love, we do nothing. May love set fire to our souls that long to truly live…which means to truly die! May we find peace, joy, fulfillment, blessing and life in the footsteps of Christ our mentor of death and life, blood and water. Open our eyes open our hearts and let love flow.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Luke 3:11
In the first story Luke and Matthew offer us after John the Baptist returns from his leave for solitude in the wilderness (Luke 1:80) where “the word of God came to him” (Luke 3:2) (…as he munched on crunchy grasshoppers and tasty wild honey), we find John preaching the necessity of true repentance - But only after he tells the crowd how it is, calling them a “brood of vipers”; hateful to God, and hating one another.
In verse 10, we then find the crowd responding to John’s words, asking of him “What then shall we do?” To which, John says, “Hey, if you want to live the kingdom, if you have to coats give one away, and do likewise with your food.”(v12)
Como say what?! Does he really mean that? …If you have two coats give one away, and the same with food?
Along these same lines, Basil the Great has this to say -
"When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not — should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute."
Or, in the words of Dorothy Day, "If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor." Should we not, then, return our stolen goods with humility, like a child returning a stolen candy bar to the grocery store clerk? Should we not cry out, in the words of St. Vincent de Paul: "May the poor man forgive me the bread I give him"?
In light of these words, giving to the poor is not charity, but simply giving back what was stolen. It is what is expected of us.
From John to Jesus, repentance is linked to redistribution. This is evident in Luke 19, when Zacchaus for some strange reason decides he wants to go to heaven. So he gives half of what he has away, and decides to pay back what he has stolen from people tenfold, to which Jesus says, “Ok, now salvation has entered this house” (19:9). Apparently, there’s a lot more to salvation that simply saying “Hey, I’m sorry. I am sinner.” It’s about repenting from our sin. (see Luke 13:1-5)
And apparently, as John and Jesus seem to suggest, part of our sin is holding onto all of our things.
You see, poverty was created not by God, but by you and me. (See Deut. 15:1-11. You should consider seriously studying this passage.) We are responsible for today’s imbalance that leaves unthinkable numbers of people dying every single day due to lack of basic human needs. We are the murders. We are the thieves. The blood is on our hands. Gandhi puts it this way, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.” And it because of this earthly reality of imbalance and the spiritual reality that we are all created equal that the way of Jesus is all about a radical way of sacrificial living for the sake of redistribution; for the sake of actually loving (which is in a Christian sense is primarily a verb) your neighbor as yourself. In other words, Jesus is telling us not to just talk about it all the time, but to actually love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our own. And to do it without limitations.
Jesus also tells us to embody a reckless faith that is dependent on God like the lilies and the sparrows, constantly in need of the Lords providence - making the most room for the transcendent as possible by not worrying about missing out, or being preoccupied with getting, which might be so that we can begin to respond to His giving. This vision of such a reckless faith is given to us in Matthew 6:25-34where Jesus tells us not to worry about three things: our food, our clothing (all image laden pursuits), and our shelter. I mean really Jesus? Because we worry about this stuff all the time... And food? The most basic need of life? Craziness.
Jesus says it’s the pagans nations, it’s the unbelievers, that strive after all these things. And I think the reason why we are to do differently is becayse when we live out this unconcerned recklessness, we are truly free to be preoccupied with God affairs, “seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness”.
But the thing is, if I were to say anything like this, or say the simple coat idea, to another Christian they’d surely think it’s a nice thought, but it’s likely their real thoughts are along the lines of, “Well hey man! It’s just a coat.” Why is that? I wonder if has to do with the fact that most of our lives we’ve been taught the moral things. Don’t drink, don’t to smoke, don’t have sex before marriage, and as long as we do these things we are free to spend our money as we want - to live comfortably and in abundance. Why? Because we’re doing the things Jesus said not to do! But the funny thing is,it seems to me that Jesus relatively didn’t have much to say about the “don’t do’s” in comparison with the “do do’s.” Yet, it is the typically evangelical occupation to lead people to the cross foot of the cross to lay down their sinful life, and rightfully so; however all too often we forget the very thing Jesus was most concerned most with, which is all that we’ve been given to pick up.
For me, redistributing my wardrobe and all of my other possessions was a very spiritual thing. And it continues to be as I continue to risk more, recognizing that I am surround by over-abundance, having way more than I need. And furthermore, it continues to be as I press on in ripping myself from my consumerist ways, filtering all my every day decisions through the lens of the ultimate goal of keeping not what I want, but only what I need to survive. If you think that sounds crazy then good. Maybe now you’re beginning to catch a glimpse as to why the Apostle Paul refers to himself as “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Corinthians 4:10).
In the early church we see a trend of them selling everything they have to provide for the needed within their community. Acts 2 they sell everything they have and give to the needy, Acts 4, Acts 15, Acts 18; it keeps happening. And the more people they meet they find, the more they get rid of. Apparently they were addicted to giving. Apparently they understood what Jesus meant when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)
And the more I give, the more I want to give. Almost as if there’s truth in these words Jesus spoke. Like the best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away. Simply put, giving is addicting. A friend Peter who lives on Skid Row cleans a few storefronts every morning (which most often entails the disposal of urine and feces) for some extra spending money even though he can make it on his social security and the provision of the missions. When I asked him why then he works and what he spends it on, he told me he gives it away, which I found totally peculiar, so I then asked why. He motioned me to come near, looked left and right, and then exuberantly whispered in my ear, “it's better than sex!”
It was once said that Mother Theresa didn’t care about nice things, to which she interjected, “Are you kidding me? Of course I do. I am a woman. But I’ve found something greater, and far more important,” referring to the people of her community in Calcutta. The people she needs to survive; just as Adam, though in the actual presence of God, (and not just in his presence like we talk about where you can’t see him, but presence as in walking side by side with God) yet was still lonely. We need each other, that’s all there is to it.
Don't have any sweet ending for this put two more thoughts...
In terms of the family of Yahweh, our community is worldwide. As Christians it is imperative that we attend to universal issues and withdraw our attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences.
And for us to create these scenarios where what we have we’ve earned, as if God was blessing us with it, is tragic because if anything it seems that our things tend to keep us away from God, who is mysteriously found in those people in need of what we have to give (Matt. 25).
In verse 10, we then find the crowd responding to John’s words, asking of him “What then shall we do?” To which, John says, “Hey, if you want to live the kingdom, if you have to coats give one away, and do likewise with your food.”(v12)
Como say what?! Does he really mean that? …If you have two coats give one away, and the same with food?
Along these same lines, Basil the Great has this to say -
"When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not — should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute."
Or, in the words of Dorothy Day, "If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor." Should we not, then, return our stolen goods with humility, like a child returning a stolen candy bar to the grocery store clerk? Should we not cry out, in the words of St. Vincent de Paul: "May the poor man forgive me the bread I give him"?
In light of these words, giving to the poor is not charity, but simply giving back what was stolen. It is what is expected of us.
From John to Jesus, repentance is linked to redistribution. This is evident in Luke 19, when Zacchaus for some strange reason decides he wants to go to heaven. So he gives half of what he has away, and decides to pay back what he has stolen from people tenfold, to which Jesus says, “Ok, now salvation has entered this house” (19:9). Apparently, there’s a lot more to salvation that simply saying “Hey, I’m sorry. I am sinner.” It’s about repenting from our sin. (see Luke 13:1-5)
And apparently, as John and Jesus seem to suggest, part of our sin is holding onto all of our things.
You see, poverty was created not by God, but by you and me. (See Deut. 15:1-11. You should consider seriously studying this passage.) We are responsible for today’s imbalance that leaves unthinkable numbers of people dying every single day due to lack of basic human needs. We are the murders. We are the thieves. The blood is on our hands. Gandhi puts it this way, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.” And it because of this earthly reality of imbalance and the spiritual reality that we are all created equal that the way of Jesus is all about a radical way of sacrificial living for the sake of redistribution; for the sake of actually loving (which is in a Christian sense is primarily a verb) your neighbor as yourself. In other words, Jesus is telling us not to just talk about it all the time, but to actually love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our own. And to do it without limitations.
Jesus also tells us to embody a reckless faith that is dependent on God like the lilies and the sparrows, constantly in need of the Lords providence - making the most room for the transcendent as possible by not worrying about missing out, or being preoccupied with getting, which might be so that we can begin to respond to His giving. This vision of such a reckless faith is given to us in Matthew 6:25-34where Jesus tells us not to worry about three things: our food, our clothing (all image laden pursuits), and our shelter. I mean really Jesus? Because we worry about this stuff all the time... And food? The most basic need of life? Craziness.
Jesus says it’s the pagans nations, it’s the unbelievers, that strive after all these things. And I think the reason why we are to do differently is becayse when we live out this unconcerned recklessness, we are truly free to be preoccupied with God affairs, “seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness”.
But the thing is, if I were to say anything like this, or say the simple coat idea, to another Christian they’d surely think it’s a nice thought, but it’s likely their real thoughts are along the lines of, “Well hey man! It’s just a coat.” Why is that? I wonder if has to do with the fact that most of our lives we’ve been taught the moral things. Don’t drink, don’t to smoke, don’t have sex before marriage, and as long as we do these things we are free to spend our money as we want - to live comfortably and in abundance. Why? Because we’re doing the things Jesus said not to do! But the funny thing is,it seems to me that Jesus relatively didn’t have much to say about the “don’t do’s” in comparison with the “do do’s.” Yet, it is the typically evangelical occupation to lead people to the cross foot of the cross to lay down their sinful life, and rightfully so; however all too often we forget the very thing Jesus was most concerned most with, which is all that we’ve been given to pick up.
For me, redistributing my wardrobe and all of my other possessions was a very spiritual thing. And it continues to be as I continue to risk more, recognizing that I am surround by over-abundance, having way more than I need. And furthermore, it continues to be as I press on in ripping myself from my consumerist ways, filtering all my every day decisions through the lens of the ultimate goal of keeping not what I want, but only what I need to survive. If you think that sounds crazy then good. Maybe now you’re beginning to catch a glimpse as to why the Apostle Paul refers to himself as “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Corinthians 4:10).
In the early church we see a trend of them selling everything they have to provide for the needed within their community. Acts 2 they sell everything they have and give to the needy, Acts 4, Acts 15, Acts 18; it keeps happening. And the more people they meet they find, the more they get rid of. Apparently they were addicted to giving. Apparently they understood what Jesus meant when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)
And the more I give, the more I want to give. Almost as if there’s truth in these words Jesus spoke. Like the best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away. Simply put, giving is addicting. A friend Peter who lives on Skid Row cleans a few storefronts every morning (which most often entails the disposal of urine and feces) for some extra spending money even though he can make it on his social security and the provision of the missions. When I asked him why then he works and what he spends it on, he told me he gives it away, which I found totally peculiar, so I then asked why. He motioned me to come near, looked left and right, and then exuberantly whispered in my ear, “it's better than sex!”
It was once said that Mother Theresa didn’t care about nice things, to which she interjected, “Are you kidding me? Of course I do. I am a woman. But I’ve found something greater, and far more important,” referring to the people of her community in Calcutta. The people she needs to survive; just as Adam, though in the actual presence of God, (and not just in his presence like we talk about where you can’t see him, but presence as in walking side by side with God) yet was still lonely. We need each other, that’s all there is to it.
Don't have any sweet ending for this put two more thoughts...
In terms of the family of Yahweh, our community is worldwide. As Christians it is imperative that we attend to universal issues and withdraw our attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences.
And for us to create these scenarios where what we have we’ve earned, as if God was blessing us with it, is tragic because if anything it seems that our things tend to keep us away from God, who is mysteriously found in those people in need of what we have to give (Matt. 25).
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Post Thoughts to Last Post
Post thoughts.
“God wants you to fall out of love with him. Because in order to be in love, you must first fall out of love.” . . .
There is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone.
A marital relationship offers a perfect parallel. Initially, a marital relationship is filled with intoxicating emotive highs, and a relationship with the father is most often no different. It’s initially highly emotive, and it should be. It is only natural for your emotions to get rocked should you begin to truly grip who God is and what he has done for you. It is a love like no other. It is a love beyond all reason. And upon first hearing word of this love, your insides should swell with devotion and your heart should erupt with thankfulness that’s impossible to contain. The kind of thankfulness that has the power to make Kimbo Slice lose all consciousness of self and for a moment become a child, dancing in the street with praise coming off the tip of his tongue like a trigger happy crack addict.
However, in a marriage and likewise with God, those emotional highs soon die down, become less intense and more infrequent. Not because the love isn’t there anymore, but because it’s maturing into something so much more. No longer is it a puppy love, or what I refer to as a crush on God.
This is the necessary falling out of love in order to be in love - a love that is not primarily an emotion, but an act of the will. In a Christian sense, love is primarily a verb. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, not by responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling, but by being willing to work for their well-being, even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end.
In his book Screwtape Letters (letter VIII), Lewis (writing on an entirely other idea) suggests this process of falling out of love as one God intentionally initiates, and then defines true love as faithfulness. (Read the whole letter and you’ll find yourself extending the thoughts I’ve written into all kinds of other places.)
“He will set them [us] off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish… Our [Satan’s] cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
“God wants you to fall out of love with him. Because in order to be in love, you must first fall out of love.” . . .
There is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone.
A marital relationship offers a perfect parallel. Initially, a marital relationship is filled with intoxicating emotive highs, and a relationship with the father is most often no different. It’s initially highly emotive, and it should be. It is only natural for your emotions to get rocked should you begin to truly grip who God is and what he has done for you. It is a love like no other. It is a love beyond all reason. And upon first hearing word of this love, your insides should swell with devotion and your heart should erupt with thankfulness that’s impossible to contain. The kind of thankfulness that has the power to make Kimbo Slice lose all consciousness of self and for a moment become a child, dancing in the street with praise coming off the tip of his tongue like a trigger happy crack addict.
However, in a marriage and likewise with God, those emotional highs soon die down, become less intense and more infrequent. Not because the love isn’t there anymore, but because it’s maturing into something so much more. No longer is it a puppy love, or what I refer to as a crush on God.
This is the necessary falling out of love in order to be in love - a love that is not primarily an emotion, but an act of the will. In a Christian sense, love is primarily a verb. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, not by responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling, but by being willing to work for their well-being, even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end.
In his book Screwtape Letters (letter VIII), Lewis (writing on an entirely other idea) suggests this process of falling out of love as one God intentionally initiates, and then defines true love as faithfulness. (Read the whole letter and you’ll find yourself extending the thoughts I’ve written into all kinds of other places.)
“He will set them [us] off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish… Our [Satan’s] cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Sunday, May 16, 2010
"I just want to be comfortable"
You may not even be consciously aware of this, but if the Christian faith to you is a lifestyle you’ve missed what the faith is intended to be. Christianity is not a lifestyle. In fact I loathe that word lifestyle. It reminds me of that new movie out called the Joneses. That is a lifestyle. Christianity is not. It is a distinctive and radical call on a person’s life that should speak to the depths of who we are. And that call is scandalous in its particularity. In fact there’s a term called the scandal of particularity and it’s about Jesus Christ. And I’m sure many of you have heard, perhaps everyone here, of the audacity of the Christian faith to claim that one person who lived two thousand years ago is the only way to God. That’s the scandal. Yet somehow we know this scandal and somehow we expect that Christian life to mean something to us without giving it attention through meditation and solitude, allowing it to indwell in us, and it becomes a drag, remaining something outside ourselves.
Well it’s time for us, for you, to start paying attention. It’s time for us to wake up! We’ve been asleep too long!
Believe it or not, we are by nature idolatry making, carbon base life forms. We are prone to making idols of things. And maybe you’ve heard idolatry talked about in church, but sadly I think we all too often miss our most grievous form of idolatry, which is the way we idolize God. We have this tendency to objectify God by making him out to be a series of rules, as though he’s something we can control. Why? Because it is far more comfortable and easy to love something you can control . . . as bastardized a version of love it may be.
So we resort to Christian euphemisms and easy answers. We domesticate the transcendent. We tame God. So that in some way, we think we can ultimately control the outcome of our lives, as if God will somehow always be there to predictably do exactly what we want him to do. The problem with this is that the more we idolize God, that is the more we turn him into a object, the less able he is to love you. And the less able he is to love you, the less able you are to love him. And the less able you are to love him, the less able you are to love others. And the less able you are to love others; the less able you are to love yourself. And the less able you are to love him, self and others, the more of a shell of a person you become. It’s an eternal digression. And when we fall prey to this tendency of controlling God Karl Marks right! Religion becomes an opiate. It makes us feel better. Isn’t that what it’s about? Feeling better? No! In fact just the opposite. It’s about sacrificial living. Otherwise there’s no reason to live.
So we fall prey to this and Christianity then becomes something akin to afterlife insurance, allowing you to live effectively the same life as everyone else. And after a year at a Christian institute, I think this is the danger of any Christian school, that instead of being in the world but not of it, we become of the world but not in it. We entirely reverse the call. That’s the danger.
You’ve heard it said and maybe you’ve said it yourself, “I just want to be comfortable.” That sentence is the one sentence no Christian should ever say. That sentence, is the kiss of death. That sentence, “I just want to be comfortable”, you will hear it no place from genesis to revelation. No place at all.
Jesus didn’t say on the cross, “My God! My God! … I just want to be comfortable.” He didn’t say in the garden of Gethsemane, “Oh Lord, not my will but Yours ... just as long as I can just be a little bit comfortable. He didn’t say to the rich man, “sell everything you have and give it to the poor… well not everything, but you know as long as you’re comfortable. And go and follow me!” He didn’t say it to the disciples. And as far as I’m aware it is no where it Paul’s letters.
I just want to be comfortable is a euphemistic way of saying, “I just want to be lukewarm.” It is a substitution of an agreeable and inoffensive expression for one that offends and suggests something unpleasant. “I just want to be comfortable.” It’s not the message of God. It’s the message of the devil. Comfort is satanic.
There’s this quote I’ve come to live by that says, “God comforts the discomforted, and discomforts the comfortable.” Experience has taught me this to be truth. And should you choose to open yourself to suffering I imagine you too will experience the same. But should you choose otherwise, just know that if you find yourself comfortable in the faith, there’s a good chance you’ve stopped growing. “…I just want to be comfortable…”
You guys, God wants us to live lives of vitality, of courage, and of sacrifice. Just look at the people in the Old and New Testaments who we now consider the great followers of the Lord. Moses, called to lead his people and have a nice little chat with Pharaoh. Something no sane person would do, but he does it anyway, risking his life because God has asked it of him. So with unbelievable audacity he tells the Pharaoh to release the Israelites. He commands him to give up the majority of his economy. And he stutters. And then there’s David. Or how about Peter, or better yet, Paul, a once was terrorist against Christ until he was forever changed after an encountered God on the road to Damascus where he was told to preach to the very people he persecuted. Think that was comfortable? Or Noah, a guy who likes to get drunk and naked yet for some reason God choose him to bring forth his people. What was God thinking? Was he running out of choices? No! He wasn’t! Apparently God prefers people who sin boldly. Now please, listen close here because this could be misunderstood in the wrong ears. I’m not suggesting that you sin boldly… Martin Luther did! But I’m not Martin Luther.
But the thing is, apparently God has something to work with when we sin boldly, when we are people who don’t play it safe, when we take risks for his sake. God doesn’t know what to do with people that are comfortable. He doesn’t know what to do with people who are lukewarm…well actually he does, and it’s rather disturbing.
In the fabulous book, “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, Screwtape, the senior devil is writing to his junior devil, Wormwood, on how to damn his patient. That’s what they call each person. And again, and again, and again, they’re trying to damn their patients unto hell. And constantly Screwtape is saying to Wormwood, “NO! Don’t do anything dramatic. The slow and gradual road to hell - no sign posts, no sudden turns, nothing tragic; that’s what we want! Have them say things like, ‘everything in moderation.’ That’s what we want. Have them go to church and sing songs, and you know, have them say things and feel things as much as they want.”
In fact, C.S. Lewis had this picture of sin and it was three concentric circles. The outside circle was your feelings, the second circle was your thoughts, and the inner circle was your will. And Lewis suggests that the devil will kindly clear the way for us to lay down our lives at the foot of the cross. “Let them give the outer circles to God, their thoughts and their feelings. Just absolutely let them pour it on! Lay down your lives at the foot of the cross. Fill your thoughts and feelings with those of God! Admire and worship Jesus!” . . . Preaches the devil. “Applaud what he taught and stood for” . . . goes the devil’s chorus! “Just please oh please,” he cries so sweetly, “just don’t goes as far as to do what he did. Don’t take his radical words seriously. Don’t learn that you’re called to live by faith, and to suffer, and to die for the sake of Love.” In other words, just don’t figure out that all the devil wants is your will. He only cares about what you do. Not what you say, not what you think, not what you feel, but what you actually do.
And so Screwtape is constantly giving Wormwood fabulous advice about how to turn people away, and I can almost wonder if God would prefer someone who says things like: “I want to be filthy rich, I want to live on a beach in Malibu, I want to have lots of money and be famous and have people adore me.” Because at least then there’s a chance that they will hit the wall. Realize they’re completely broken and fall to their knees and be redeemed. But comfortable? You could die comfortable and never be redeemed. That’s the problem with comfort. It’s like long, slow, euthanasia. It’s a good, slow death. And you die long before you ever hit the grave.
In the scriptures, Paul calls us, the body of believers, the New Ishrael. In Hebrew the word Ishrael literally means: “Ish”, human; “Ra”, fight; “El” God. It’s rather fitting considering our human condition and that’s why Jacob’s name was changed to Ishrael when he wrestled with God. So we are the New Ishrael and the implications are so deep.
(This one’s for you Sam) Guys, this is like the spiritual UFC! We’re supposed to wrestle our way, to God. Sanctification, or call it the process of conversion, the process of conforming your will to God’s, is very unpleasant. It’s the process of learning to how to let God love you and it’s the single hardest thing for any Christian. Not how to love God better, but how to let God love us better. That’s way more costly. It’s hard! And it should be difficult. It’s supposed to be. You were called into difficult living. But at the same time, it will rock your world. And I’m not talking about feelings, it can and will rock your feelings and that’s fine and good to some extent. But it’s a terrible disease to think that Christianity is all about having your shit together and being happy because sanctification will rock your world in ways you don’t want it to rock your world. He will literally clean your house, which includes your wallet; turning your ideals on their head.
And I can understand why some of you, trust me I was there too, who don’t understand this think it’s hip to be rebellious. You know, go smoke hookah, and want tattoos. But you know what I’m talking about, you do your thing. You do whatever you can to show that you’re over or not really into this Christian thing. I mean maybe you think it’s so kind of neat and whatever, but really? Come on. I’ve got life to live man! I’ve got halo to play, and flicks to watch, chicks to bang, ganja to smoke and time to waste, people to impress, things to buy.
Well I tell you what, if it was all about being nice, and being behaved, and well mannered, I’d be sick of it too! I have no interest in that. But if I’m going to follow Jesus Christ - a man who grew up no different than you and me, walked the earth, said some really funky and extremely threatening things, only to persecuted for it and die a peculiarly uncomfortable death, and then defy the grave on the third day – Como say what?! Man there’s nothing uninteresting in that at all. The way of Christ, the gospel way of life if you will, is utterly radical. Just listen to him as he equates your thoughts with the very action itself. Go! Sell everything and give it to the poor! To live is to die, to die is to live! Consider your life worthless for the sake of others! Love your enemy!
Faith is either radical or it’s nothing at all because Gods love is overwhelming and you don’t respond to God’s love with a moderated, “Oh ok, yeah, ok, sure.” It’s either radical or it’s nothing at all. The Christian faith is not open to a mediated response. You’re either all in or all out. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t doubt or are always happy. In fact, the deeper you go in your faith, the more you will embrace doubt as your ally.
Yet so many of us have managed to dumb down the gospel; to gentrify it. And by many of us I mean the vast majority of all American, self-proclaimed Christians, including pastors. America has turned the gospel into a moderated Christianity.
So get this, you will never leave the faith because you’ve disproved it; you’ll leave the faith because you’ve grown tired of it. We fall back into sin and materialism not because of some dark impulse, but because we’re just tired. We’re tired of believing if you pray from something, somehow it’ll happen (which in case you are unaware, is not how things are). So you know, we pray for someone to get better and then they die. Or to take it home, you pray for your mom who’s battling cancer, and then she dies. Or we commit ourselves to prayer about our parent’s relationship and then it breaks off and they hit you with news of a divorce. And we pray about something we’re suffering from or struggling with and it never seems to get better. And at some point, if we’re honest with ourselves, and we’re not distracting ourselves with the endless little gadgets we all have, we become tired, it’s a spiritual exhaustion that causes us to wonder what‘s the use, and ask, “is this really all there is?” Because it feels so often like a lifestyle – something voguish and superficial. It’s almost as though it’s a club. Or if you go to younglife on Monday nights it quite literally is, as the name suggest, a club where we all get together and play a few games and then wink wink, nod nod, yeah!, Jesus Christ is great, mmhmm. Isn’t that fabulous? Yeah! God is good… All the time.
Sin, is spiritual exhaustion. And sin is not naughtiness, it’s tragedy. Sin is not naughtiness. It’s tragedy. This idea isn’t supported by any moral base arguments; you can’t get or not get this. It just has to soak into one’s psyche. It’s tragic. It’s tragedy. And too often I think we give sin a bad name because we tend to think otherwise.
So often we hear things like, “don’t sleep with anyone before you’re married. Don’t objectify women and look at them lustfully. Oh, and pst! Now I know this is awkward and embarrassing and everything … but don’t masturbate!
Do you see what I mean? We generally treat sin as thought it’s naughtiness. But it’s not naughty to do any of those things. It’s tragic! Why? Because it breaks down the whole purpose of what it means to be intimately connected with God and other people.
So back to C.S. Lewis’ idea of sin. We give God our hearts and our minds, yet somehow our wills are still tied to sin. This past semester a professor told me, “if you want to know what somebody believes, watch how they live. Don’t listen to what they say. Watch how they live. Chances are you won’t see too many people jumping off two story building just to sort of test gravity. We all believe in it. So we don’t do it.” So you want to know what you believe? Watch what you do. Watch how you live. That’s what you believe.” Faith is manifested in action.
You guys, if we want to learn how to live the life we were created for, if we want to live the way we are, then we have to take God out of the little boxes we’ve put him in. We have to stop fooling ourselves that we’ve got God figured out, as though he is some little thing we can just put on the shelf over here and not pay attention to, or at least only when we feel like it. Or, maybe it would be more realistic for me to say that some of you just need to find a box to put God in the first place. But in either case, we have got to recognize and embrace the mystery of God. And by that I mean all that we do not, and will not, because we cannot understand or completely explain and rationally make sense of. And once you’ve got that, once you come to terms with the fact that the mystery of the Christian faith is not one you solve, but one you meet; and once you realize that you can’t control God or throw out easy answers to difficult questions; then you have to start paying attention. And not just Him, but to yourself and others as well.
So if you get anything out of this, get this. You have been called into difficult living. It’s the world that wants you to be comfortable, not God! God wants you to live a life of vitality. He wants you to have a life that has meaning, and purpose, and substance, and direction. Your friends, your family, the vast if not the entire majority of the people you interact with, or see on TV, or listen to on your ipod’s want you to be comfortable. Jesus Christ doesn’t. And it’s not because he’s a kill joy. It’s because it’s the only way to joy. And if you are among those who think the Christian faith is about behaving and being sweet and well mannered and nice and all of those things, I am here to tell you that that’s wrong! That’s not what it is. If you ever grow tired and spiritually exhausted out of boredom of the Christian faith because it means you don’t understand it. It means it has quite gripped you yet. It means you haven’t yet gone beyond having a crush on Christ and you need to get over it because you can’t actually love something until you’ve fallen out of love with it. This is going to sound weird guys, but God wants you to fall out of love with him. Because in order to be in love you must first fall out of love and falling out of love in a relationship means it’s just about to get real.
So in the end, we are all going to get burned. The question is whether or not we will let the Gospel burn us up here and now and then heal, or whether we will opt to burn in the fire of hell. So here’s my question to you, and I’m ending on this - Will you simmer in a moderated faith of comfort for the rest of your life, or will you suffer and live sacrificial lives for the sake of others and in doing so actually be a servant of the gospel?
Monday, April 26, 2010
why I disdain most modern christian music
We live in the spiritual third world. Like the economic third world, we too are dying of starvation. Oddly enough, the economic third world has the very thing we are starving for - spiritual reality. What I mean is that in the west we tend to downplay the effect of evil forces, as though it is just some theological concept. We hold this tendency because the devil does not often manifest himself in blunt and obvious ways, true spiritual reality is withheld from us. In my opinion this is possibly the greatest trick he has ever played.
This western reality stands in direct contrast to that of the economic third world. Where the majority knows beyond a doubt that evil forces are not only active, but also personal, because overt spiritual warfare is commonplace.
It is this that we are starving for and in order to satisfy our unfulfilled desire we substitute emotionalism. That’s not to say that a deep spiritual experience cannot and will not involve emotions, but I’m afraid we tragically confuse the two, equating one with the other.
In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis depicts human beings as three concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his thoughts (or intellect) coming next, and finally his emotions (or fantasy). With this in mind, Screwtape, the senior demon, advises his junior tempter, Wormwood, “You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy [God]: but you must keep on shoving all the [God-like] virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable [evil] qualities inwards into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of coarse, mean what the patient mistakes for his Will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy [God] calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from Our father’s [the devil] house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there”
In other words, Lewis suggests that the devil will kindly clear the way for us to lay down our lives at the foot of the cross. “Fill your thoughts and feelings with those of God! Admire and worship Jesus!” . . . preaches the devil. "Applaud what he preached and stood for," goes the devil’s chorus! . . . "Just do it without caring about the same things," goes his silent refrain. "Adore his cross! Lay your life and sins down! . . . Just do it without picking up your own cross." “Please oh please,” he cries so sweetly, “just don’t goes as far as to do what he did. Don’t take his radical words seriously. Don’t learn that you’re called to live by faith, and to suffer, and to die for the sake of Love.” Como say what!? Really? Why would he do such a thing? Because he, like Lewis, knows all to well that when all is said and done, the way we live - whether our Will was aligned with Love, is all that matters after grace.
It is my belief that we are totally confused as to what this Love even looks like. Which is a bummer, because apparently Jesus thinks our understanding and embodiment of such Love is rather important, treating it as nothing less than a matter of life and death.
Frederich Buechner says this, “In the Christian sense, love is not primarily as emotion, but an act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling. You can as easily produce a cozy emotional feeling on demand as you can a yawn or a sneeze. On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well being even if it means sacrificing our own well being to that end . . . Thus in Jesus’ terms, we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. In fact liking them may stand in the way of loving them by making us overprotective sentimentalists instead of reasonably honest friends.”
You see we have to reorder and reform our view of love because love is not primarily emotion. No, far from it. God’s love, the love of Christ is a redeeming love that is primarily palpable and tangible. And for us to love is to join into His worldwide project of redemption (almost as if we believe the radical things Jesus said).
So with these ideas in mind - this reformed idea of love and the discussed scheme of the devil, I want to use them as a lens through which to view modern church music.
I intentionally call it church music because I’m afraid calling our music “worship” is terribly dangerous as it is unintentionally causing people to leave the faith because they don’t understand that singing “worship” music isn’t true worship.
Beuchner says this concerning worship, “To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for him that he needs to have done – run errands for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for him that you need to do – sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.”
Praise music falls under the second category of worship mentioned because it’s something we do for ourselves. And in light of the C.S. Lewis quote previously discussed, such singing is in itself meaningless because it is pure thought and emotion. David Crowder follows suite saying it is at best “ritualistic and provoking of God.”
What lies beneath Crowder’s comment is the acknowledgement that true worship is found in the way we live. In the words of Beuchner, this is when we serve God by doing things for him that he needs to have done. And in the words of Lewis, this is when we conform our Will, or our desires, to his. Essentially they are all expressing the same idea: true worship is Love (as Beuchner describes it), counting one’s life as worthless, and joining in the suffering of Christ in order to tangibly further the well being of others. Any other form of worship - the things we do for him because we need to are only meaningful in as much as they translate into true worship.
Unless we come to recognize this and articulate this often and well, then the church will continue to see people walk out the doors, never to return to the faith because this overly-sentimental ride we offer never fails to grow stale.
I call it a ride because the music has taken on this form that draws out intense emotion through dramatic builds and emotionally driven lyrics to manipulatively draw out emotion. Consequently, people listen to the music and go to the shows (which are just that), or sing in church (which can also be just that), where they are hit with an emotional high within a super-spiritualized atmosphere. This leads to the assumption that God is in the music. And often He is. As Lewis states, “God will set us off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to us, with emotional sweetness…But sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from our conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves us to stand up on our own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.”
My point here is that our musical practices are playing into the hands of the devil because by glorifying this initially stage of His presence through our music, this emotional sweetness, we’re crippling ourselves for the time when God withdraws, leaving us to stand on our own legs to carry out his duties. (Or worse yet, it’s causing us to miss this reality of our calling as disciples to “carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.” The greatest worship, the most threatening to the evil one’s cause is that which comes from a human who “looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” In the best sense, we are called to suffer and die (see January 26 post).
Maybe a re-read of the Lewis quote from above is necessary to fully let that sink in. Or maybe you’re already beginning to catch a glimpse of how the “worship movement” is playing a vital role in nurturing us into over-sentimentalists, causing our tragic modern day misunderstanding of Love and in effect, leading us to miss the unbelievably demanding cost of discipleship.
The culture associated with the “worship movement” is lending a great hand in this subtle process as well. For one, it’s turning people away because the language we use, this funky-feeling-west-coast-spiritual talk, has in a sense become an inside language. We’re attracted to this spiritualized jargon, this bland speech of pop psychology and self-help that is “thoroughly comfortable and satisfyingly unchallenging”, filled with heavy weight theological words that we can’t understand and Christian euphemisms, because it gives us this sense that we’re closer to God than we really are. It’s a form of therapy, in place of mystery. It gives of this sense that we’re “in” (as if being in was what it was even about.)
Furthermore, our not of this world language is repelling, and it’s perpetuating a club mentality because it is not accessible to the believer and non-believer alike. This is why some churches have developed “seeker-services”, adapting “worship” for those who are struggling to accept the Christian scene. In response, we must learn to incarnate our language in the five senses, focusing on earthly things as Jesus did and furthermore we have to stop using these Princeton review theological bangers that even the highly thoughtful struggle to comprehend because it’s a form of idolatry, a way of making God small and manageable. (See Kathleen Norris’s book, Amazing Grace. “God Talk”)
The ultimate consequence of our club-mentality is that it puts the church at a disadvantage by greatening the chasm between us and the very people we’re trying to reach. This problem is being further perpetuated by the way we sing songs. To be plain and simple, it downright freaks people out. But hey, who I am to judge how people sing? Can’t any style of singing, whether it is highly charismatic or whether it is extremely reserved be completely empty? Yeah, totally, but try and move beyond this with me and look at the greater picture. Only then will these thoughts and those above hold any real significance.
Maybe you too have experienced this, but rarely do I not step in a white people’s praise session and encounter this off-putting awkwardness and downright weird environment filled with self-consciousness caused by one guy trying to look more spiritual than the next. It’s an ugly competition that’s so far from the heart of singing praises to our Lord. I’m really not sure what I mean to propose by this, but if looking spiritual is what we’re after, like we’ve found God in the music, or like we have this super sweet crush on Jesus, then I’m afraid we’ve entirely missed the life Jesus called us to live and instead have found the life he warns against.
To continue on the theme of missing the point, I’m afraid the Christian music culture tragically looks entirely too much like culture. For the most part I’m referring to our image making pursuits aiding in materialism. In short, it’s causing us to further disregard the core message of the bible that turns the social logic of consumerism and materialism upside down for the sake of Love. Which then leads to the terrible recognition that the bible clearly seems to suggest we’re forsaking our own lives in doing so.
So my purpose in this is not to deny the place of music, or to deny that God can be found in it, or to entirely denounce any connection between emotional experiences and the spiritual. My purpose is to re-examine our musical habits in the church, recognizing that there are no black and white answer here, and in that tension seriously consider the subtle, yet unimaginably significant and dangerous effects of our practices.
This western reality stands in direct contrast to that of the economic third world. Where the majority knows beyond a doubt that evil forces are not only active, but also personal, because overt spiritual warfare is commonplace.
It is this that we are starving for and in order to satisfy our unfulfilled desire we substitute emotionalism. That’s not to say that a deep spiritual experience cannot and will not involve emotions, but I’m afraid we tragically confuse the two, equating one with the other.
In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis depicts human beings as three concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his thoughts (or intellect) coming next, and finally his emotions (or fantasy). With this in mind, Screwtape, the senior demon, advises his junior tempter, Wormwood, “You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy [God]: but you must keep on shoving all the [God-like] virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable [evil] qualities inwards into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of coarse, mean what the patient mistakes for his Will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy [God] calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from Our father’s [the devil] house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there”
In other words, Lewis suggests that the devil will kindly clear the way for us to lay down our lives at the foot of the cross. “Fill your thoughts and feelings with those of God! Admire and worship Jesus!” . . . preaches the devil. "Applaud what he preached and stood for," goes the devil’s chorus! . . . "Just do it without caring about the same things," goes his silent refrain. "Adore his cross! Lay your life and sins down! . . . Just do it without picking up your own cross." “Please oh please,” he cries so sweetly, “just don’t goes as far as to do what he did. Don’t take his radical words seriously. Don’t learn that you’re called to live by faith, and to suffer, and to die for the sake of Love.” Como say what!? Really? Why would he do such a thing? Because he, like Lewis, knows all to well that when all is said and done, the way we live - whether our Will was aligned with Love, is all that matters after grace.
It is my belief that we are totally confused as to what this Love even looks like. Which is a bummer, because apparently Jesus thinks our understanding and embodiment of such Love is rather important, treating it as nothing less than a matter of life and death.
Frederich Buechner says this, “In the Christian sense, love is not primarily as emotion, but an act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling. You can as easily produce a cozy emotional feeling on demand as you can a yawn or a sneeze. On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well being even if it means sacrificing our own well being to that end . . . Thus in Jesus’ terms, we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. In fact liking them may stand in the way of loving them by making us overprotective sentimentalists instead of reasonably honest friends.”
You see we have to reorder and reform our view of love because love is not primarily emotion. No, far from it. God’s love, the love of Christ is a redeeming love that is primarily palpable and tangible. And for us to love is to join into His worldwide project of redemption (almost as if we believe the radical things Jesus said).
So with these ideas in mind - this reformed idea of love and the discussed scheme of the devil, I want to use them as a lens through which to view modern church music.
I intentionally call it church music because I’m afraid calling our music “worship” is terribly dangerous as it is unintentionally causing people to leave the faith because they don’t understand that singing “worship” music isn’t true worship.
Beuchner says this concerning worship, “To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for him that he needs to have done – run errands for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for him that you need to do – sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.”
Praise music falls under the second category of worship mentioned because it’s something we do for ourselves. And in light of the C.S. Lewis quote previously discussed, such singing is in itself meaningless because it is pure thought and emotion. David Crowder follows suite saying it is at best “ritualistic and provoking of God.”
What lies beneath Crowder’s comment is the acknowledgement that true worship is found in the way we live. In the words of Beuchner, this is when we serve God by doing things for him that he needs to have done. And in the words of Lewis, this is when we conform our Will, or our desires, to his. Essentially they are all expressing the same idea: true worship is Love (as Beuchner describes it), counting one’s life as worthless, and joining in the suffering of Christ in order to tangibly further the well being of others. Any other form of worship - the things we do for him because we need to are only meaningful in as much as they translate into true worship.
Unless we come to recognize this and articulate this often and well, then the church will continue to see people walk out the doors, never to return to the faith because this overly-sentimental ride we offer never fails to grow stale.
I call it a ride because the music has taken on this form that draws out intense emotion through dramatic builds and emotionally driven lyrics to manipulatively draw out emotion. Consequently, people listen to the music and go to the shows (which are just that), or sing in church (which can also be just that), where they are hit with an emotional high within a super-spiritualized atmosphere. This leads to the assumption that God is in the music. And often He is. As Lewis states, “God will set us off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to us, with emotional sweetness…But sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from our conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves us to stand up on our own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.”
My point here is that our musical practices are playing into the hands of the devil because by glorifying this initially stage of His presence through our music, this emotional sweetness, we’re crippling ourselves for the time when God withdraws, leaving us to stand on our own legs to carry out his duties. (Or worse yet, it’s causing us to miss this reality of our calling as disciples to “carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.” The greatest worship, the most threatening to the evil one’s cause is that which comes from a human who “looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” In the best sense, we are called to suffer and die (see January 26 post).
Maybe a re-read of the Lewis quote from above is necessary to fully let that sink in. Or maybe you’re already beginning to catch a glimpse of how the “worship movement” is playing a vital role in nurturing us into over-sentimentalists, causing our tragic modern day misunderstanding of Love and in effect, leading us to miss the unbelievably demanding cost of discipleship.
The culture associated with the “worship movement” is lending a great hand in this subtle process as well. For one, it’s turning people away because the language we use, this funky-feeling-west-coast-spiritual talk, has in a sense become an inside language. We’re attracted to this spiritualized jargon, this bland speech of pop psychology and self-help that is “thoroughly comfortable and satisfyingly unchallenging”, filled with heavy weight theological words that we can’t understand and Christian euphemisms, because it gives us this sense that we’re closer to God than we really are. It’s a form of therapy, in place of mystery. It gives of this sense that we’re “in” (as if being in was what it was even about.)
Furthermore, our not of this world language is repelling, and it’s perpetuating a club mentality because it is not accessible to the believer and non-believer alike. This is why some churches have developed “seeker-services”, adapting “worship” for those who are struggling to accept the Christian scene. In response, we must learn to incarnate our language in the five senses, focusing on earthly things as Jesus did and furthermore we have to stop using these Princeton review theological bangers that even the highly thoughtful struggle to comprehend because it’s a form of idolatry, a way of making God small and manageable. (See Kathleen Norris’s book, Amazing Grace. “God Talk”)
The ultimate consequence of our club-mentality is that it puts the church at a disadvantage by greatening the chasm between us and the very people we’re trying to reach. This problem is being further perpetuated by the way we sing songs. To be plain and simple, it downright freaks people out. But hey, who I am to judge how people sing? Can’t any style of singing, whether it is highly charismatic or whether it is extremely reserved be completely empty? Yeah, totally, but try and move beyond this with me and look at the greater picture. Only then will these thoughts and those above hold any real significance.
Maybe you too have experienced this, but rarely do I not step in a white people’s praise session and encounter this off-putting awkwardness and downright weird environment filled with self-consciousness caused by one guy trying to look more spiritual than the next. It’s an ugly competition that’s so far from the heart of singing praises to our Lord. I’m really not sure what I mean to propose by this, but if looking spiritual is what we’re after, like we’ve found God in the music, or like we have this super sweet crush on Jesus, then I’m afraid we’ve entirely missed the life Jesus called us to live and instead have found the life he warns against.
To continue on the theme of missing the point, I’m afraid the Christian music culture tragically looks entirely too much like culture. For the most part I’m referring to our image making pursuits aiding in materialism. In short, it’s causing us to further disregard the core message of the bible that turns the social logic of consumerism and materialism upside down for the sake of Love. Which then leads to the terrible recognition that the bible clearly seems to suggest we’re forsaking our own lives in doing so.
So my purpose in this is not to deny the place of music, or to deny that God can be found in it, or to entirely denounce any connection between emotional experiences and the spiritual. My purpose is to re-examine our musical habits in the church, recognizing that there are no black and white answer here, and in that tension seriously consider the subtle, yet unimaginably significant and dangerous effects of our practices.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
a random reflection on a night
My experiences have shown that Christian circles (or call them “communities” since throwing around that word like we understand what that means seems to be the in thing) have this tendency for conversation to think ourselves as great, and speak of heavenly things. As inherently good and necessary and exiting it is to shade our eyes with our hands and gaze up into the sky to watch what is happening (That which we can’t see happening. That which is beyond our comprehension), we first and foremost have got to drop our heads and realize who are we to even look up there? (One only hopes God is more touched and amused than irritated with our study of him and his ways.) All I mean to say is that I think we have to begin seeing ourselves as lowly and speak more and more of earthly things. By earthly things I mean the passions of the soul – the temptations we struggle with one a daily basis because in the end when all is said and done, this is what really matters.
Lately I’ve been wondering if the reason that we are tempted to focus on heavenly things is because we get to this point that we are no longer committing the “major” sins. Take sex for example. It’s like we become so comfortable knowing that we aren’t physically active that we become desensitized, unaware that the pool of non-physical sexual transgression that we once playfully waded in has since pulled us under, with the water now rushing into our lungs. It’s like we create some imaginary mental chasm between having casual sex, and thinking and being entertained by the very same thing as if they “aren’t a big deal.” It’s thoughts like these that the evil one loves, because unlike us, he never seems to forget that Jesus equates the thoughts of our hearts with the actual crimes, making anger, insult, and belittling tantamount to murder, and lust to adultery.
C.S. Lewis describes sin in terms of a slippery slope, emphasizing that the devil has figure out long ago that tragedies are far less effective than little sins that we pass without much a thought as no big deal. He’s so right. We have this tendency to dumb down sin. Like it’s naughty. But sin isn’t naughtiness, it’s tragedy. This idea isn’t supported by any moral base arguments; you can’t get or not get this. It just has to soak into one’s psyche.
Tonight I’m bummed and frustrated because I was with a group of committed guys that just weren’t thinking and passed off some “small” sins as anything but tragic. That said, I recognize we all do this daily and I’m probably more guilty than most, but tonight I just couldn’t see things as anything less than tragic. So I spoke out and said “this isn’t right.” Somehow I even managed to do this tricky little task in a totally un-abrasive way. What affect my words had, who knows. What I do know is that the responses of those who I later expressed my frustration with didn’t really seem to get me. I take that back, they understood my logic was good and that what was being said and done was not right, but I got this vibe that they thought I was taking things too far. Like I was forgetting to be graceful and being too judgmental (which is probably more or less an effect of our culture of tolerance).
But I wasn’t judging anyone. When God says that judgment is reserved for me alone, he’s talking about salvation. I didn’t come anywhere near to condemning anyone tonight. In fact, I firmly believe that every one of those guys will go on to do great things to further the gospel with their lives. No doubt about it. By saying I don’t think something that someone is doing isn’t right is not judging someone. If anything, it’s a form of grace.
It’s like we all want to love Jesus, but when someone goes as far as to strive for radical, un-compromising commitment as a thoughtful follower of Christ, we think they’re weird and begin to whisper the attractive message of the evil one to “chill out”. Just try and be a uncompromising, committed and thoughtful Christian, it’s terribly hard. And if you’re feeling especially daring, try and do it on a Christian college campus. Soon enough you’re likely to find yourself becoming rather unpopular.
Tonight I’m feeling some holy rage and it’s brought these dead bones of mine back to life. If only I could live with such passion every waking moment, fully embracing the beauty of such radical commitment in response to an all-consuming love for the One to whom we owe everything.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
High Sierra semester application essays
1. Why do I want to participate in the High Sierra Semester?
I want to participate in the High Sierra Semester because I’m addicted to nature. Ever since I was young, keeping me inside proved rather challenging, and even before I entertained any kind of thoughts oriented outside of the typical all-consuming “me, me, me!” (A reality I am daily trying to shrink and shift out of), I can remember having this mysterious feeling that there was something different about the great outdoors. Like for some reason I felt more alive and more myself under open skies, or looking at glorious scenery, a beautiful sunset, or experiencing the pounding of waves, or just watching the way the rain comes down. I now recognize that “something different” as the very fact that praise is inherent in creation. It’s the very fact that I am found by a holy and transcendent God, whose glory is made evident throughout creation. And it’s obvious whether you’ve read Psalm 8 or not - we tell the glory of God by our very existence. It’s completely unavoidable. It’s just up to us to choose whether we will amplify and be moved by it or not.
It’s become a habit of mine ever since gaining the knowledge of His transcendence, to discover and rediscover God’s greatness by living with eyes wide open to see the imprint of the Creator in creation – from the most mundane parts of it to those that leave you gasping for air, because it never fails to bring me back to life. It’s at times like these, when I know beyond a doubt that I am found by the living God that my insides swell with devotion and my heart erupts with thankfulness. A thankfulness that reminds me who to praise, and in doing so, it brings me to an awareness of who I am, in light of who He is that is sometimes so present and vivid that it is impossible to contain. Surely this is a truth that goes beyond creation alone, but through creation it became clear to me that the best thing to do for Him is to embrace what he does for us.
So all that is just to say I am way stoked on the idea of living in the High Sierras for a semester. And from talking with High Sierra Alums on campus, I can’t think of any better way to study than by getting away from the business of life here in LA. Also, I’ve only heard great things about Dave Williams(Dr. Baloian dubbing him the best kept secret at APU), and knowing the Bobby Duke will be there next semester –I’m left with no reason why not to go.
2. What does it mean to be a Christian Scholar?
The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
First off I think this quote is hilarious, and secondly, it profoundly affected me over the past year because at the time I came upon it, it completely resonated with my soul as I was just began to seriously question what it would look like if we decided to really follow Jesus. It all started after hearing a friend tell me with great intensity and sincerity in his eyes that he’d given up Christianity to do just that, follow the way of the cross. At the time, I wasn’t exactly sure what a devoted Christian even looked like. So I searched all over to find a Christian in my life and shortly thereafter it almost began to seem like sometime back we had largely stopped living Christianity and started studying it.
Even as this underlying, not-so-beautiful truth of Christian scholarship was being made know to me, I too found myself becoming a victim of Christian Scholarship as I began bible and Christian thought classes for the first time. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but both of my professors for these classes at some point in time confessed how good of a thing it is that we students don’t have the opportunity to follow them home and see how they live because they quite frankly “suck at living out” what they know as the way of Christ. (No knock on my profs. It’s not like I’m exempt from this condition either)
So in regards of Kierkegaard’s quote, I’m not sure I totally agree with his belief that it is directly the church’s invention for the means of continuing our un-sacrificial way of life, but I understand what he’s getting at. Moreover, I believe there is a whole lot of truth in it, and it might just go something like this. . .
Christian Scholarship is a necessary and inherently good thing. I mean, what are we without knowledge of God and his ways? The problem is that ultimately, God isn’t concerned with what we know; he’s concerned with how we live. The scriptures call this true worship and we hear a whisper of this in Romans 2:13 where it is said that it is not those who hear and therefore know the law that will be considered righteous, but those who do it. Considering this, the problem with Christian scholarship is that it so often develops a separation between belief and action, as the pursuit of God-wisdom somehow seems to appease the conscience that knows we will be held accountable according to our understanding of Gods purposes (Luke 12:47).
. . . And then I wonder why we even want to know and understand so much because we will never know enough and what we do know will unclear and half-baked at best. Meanwhile we can’t fulfill the simplest of commands and love God and neighbor to their fullness. Why not just focus on that and nothing else?
Maybe more often than not, a Christian scholar is someone that’s obsessed with comfort.
3. What makes Christian Community unique?
I believe the only thing that makes Christian community unique is the cross. Thoughtless, I know, but when it comes down to it, I really think it is the only defining aspect. I mean, name any and every value or characteristic of Christian community, whether it be the economics, forgiveness, love, compassion, freedom, laughter, acceptance, or whatever else, and you’re sure to find other communities that fully embrace the same. On the flip side, name any negative and dark aspect that is technically not suppose to be part of Christian community as though it’s only associated with others, and you’re sure to find it if you look hard enough.
Community survives on love. And eventually love requires forgiveness, which as we all know can get rather tough at times. Without these interdependent things of love and forgiveness, community dies. And without a collective hope in something greater, the death of love eventually follows. Still, Christian community isn’t unique in this framework that collectively focuses beyond self. In fact, there are loads of faith communities that believe in something or someone greater. And even though I’m not educated on world religions, I imagine a few of them also have a God that functions much like the God of the bible and loves his people.
So what then, if anything, really makes Christian community unique? It’s the terribly mysterious beauty of the cross - a symbol of torture, signifying that God became man (something totally unique to Christianity), lived a rather peculiar life, died in a particularly unpleasant way, and forgave his executioners. The implications of such are deep enough for a scholar to drown in, yet shallow enough for a child to wade. It is in the magnitude of this love,the death of Christ that goes beyond all reason, that Christian community becomes unique because no other community has so great a love that enables them to truly love each other and therefore, truly function as a community.
I want to participate in the High Sierra Semester because I’m addicted to nature. Ever since I was young, keeping me inside proved rather challenging, and even before I entertained any kind of thoughts oriented outside of the typical all-consuming “me, me, me!” (A reality I am daily trying to shrink and shift out of), I can remember having this mysterious feeling that there was something different about the great outdoors. Like for some reason I felt more alive and more myself under open skies, or looking at glorious scenery, a beautiful sunset, or experiencing the pounding of waves, or just watching the way the rain comes down. I now recognize that “something different” as the very fact that praise is inherent in creation. It’s the very fact that I am found by a holy and transcendent God, whose glory is made evident throughout creation. And it’s obvious whether you’ve read Psalm 8 or not - we tell the glory of God by our very existence. It’s completely unavoidable. It’s just up to us to choose whether we will amplify and be moved by it or not.
It’s become a habit of mine ever since gaining the knowledge of His transcendence, to discover and rediscover God’s greatness by living with eyes wide open to see the imprint of the Creator in creation – from the most mundane parts of it to those that leave you gasping for air, because it never fails to bring me back to life. It’s at times like these, when I know beyond a doubt that I am found by the living God that my insides swell with devotion and my heart erupts with thankfulness. A thankfulness that reminds me who to praise, and in doing so, it brings me to an awareness of who I am, in light of who He is that is sometimes so present and vivid that it is impossible to contain. Surely this is a truth that goes beyond creation alone, but through creation it became clear to me that the best thing to do for Him is to embrace what he does for us.
So all that is just to say I am way stoked on the idea of living in the High Sierras for a semester. And from talking with High Sierra Alums on campus, I can’t think of any better way to study than by getting away from the business of life here in LA. Also, I’ve only heard great things about Dave Williams(Dr. Baloian dubbing him the best kept secret at APU), and knowing the Bobby Duke will be there next semester –I’m left with no reason why not to go.
2. What does it mean to be a Christian Scholar?
The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
–Soren Kierkegaard
First off I think this quote is hilarious, and secondly, it profoundly affected me over the past year because at the time I came upon it, it completely resonated with my soul as I was just began to seriously question what it would look like if we decided to really follow Jesus. It all started after hearing a friend tell me with great intensity and sincerity in his eyes that he’d given up Christianity to do just that, follow the way of the cross. At the time, I wasn’t exactly sure what a devoted Christian even looked like. So I searched all over to find a Christian in my life and shortly thereafter it almost began to seem like sometime back we had largely stopped living Christianity and started studying it.
Even as this underlying, not-so-beautiful truth of Christian scholarship was being made know to me, I too found myself becoming a victim of Christian Scholarship as I began bible and Christian thought classes for the first time. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but both of my professors for these classes at some point in time confessed how good of a thing it is that we students don’t have the opportunity to follow them home and see how they live because they quite frankly “suck at living out” what they know as the way of Christ. (No knock on my profs. It’s not like I’m exempt from this condition either)
So in regards of Kierkegaard’s quote, I’m not sure I totally agree with his belief that it is directly the church’s invention for the means of continuing our un-sacrificial way of life, but I understand what he’s getting at. Moreover, I believe there is a whole lot of truth in it, and it might just go something like this. . .
Christian Scholarship is a necessary and inherently good thing. I mean, what are we without knowledge of God and his ways? The problem is that ultimately, God isn’t concerned with what we know; he’s concerned with how we live. The scriptures call this true worship and we hear a whisper of this in Romans 2:13 where it is said that it is not those who hear and therefore know the law that will be considered righteous, but those who do it. Considering this, the problem with Christian scholarship is that it so often develops a separation between belief and action, as the pursuit of God-wisdom somehow seems to appease the conscience that knows we will be held accountable according to our understanding of Gods purposes (Luke 12:47).
. . . And then I wonder why we even want to know and understand so much because we will never know enough and what we do know will unclear and half-baked at best. Meanwhile we can’t fulfill the simplest of commands and love God and neighbor to their fullness. Why not just focus on that and nothing else?
Maybe more often than not, a Christian scholar is someone that’s obsessed with comfort.
3. What makes Christian Community unique?
I believe the only thing that makes Christian community unique is the cross. Thoughtless, I know, but when it comes down to it, I really think it is the only defining aspect. I mean, name any and every value or characteristic of Christian community, whether it be the economics, forgiveness, love, compassion, freedom, laughter, acceptance, or whatever else, and you’re sure to find other communities that fully embrace the same. On the flip side, name any negative and dark aspect that is technically not suppose to be part of Christian community as though it’s only associated with others, and you’re sure to find it if you look hard enough.
Community survives on love. And eventually love requires forgiveness, which as we all know can get rather tough at times. Without these interdependent things of love and forgiveness, community dies. And without a collective hope in something greater, the death of love eventually follows. Still, Christian community isn’t unique in this framework that collectively focuses beyond self. In fact, there are loads of faith communities that believe in something or someone greater. And even though I’m not educated on world religions, I imagine a few of them also have a God that functions much like the God of the bible and loves his people.
So what then, if anything, really makes Christian community unique? It’s the terribly mysterious beauty of the cross - a symbol of torture, signifying that God became man (something totally unique to Christianity), lived a rather peculiar life, died in a particularly unpleasant way, and forgave his executioners. The implications of such are deep enough for a scholar to drown in, yet shallow enough for a child to wade. It is in the magnitude of this love,the death of Christ that goes beyond all reason, that Christian community becomes unique because no other community has so great a love that enables them to truly love each other and therefore, truly function as a community.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Skid Row
So I just got back from 24 hours on the streets of Skid Row with the Jonah Project (jonahproject.org), and I am presently recovering, or if I’m true with myself, I’m more like in a slow progression of “un-recovery” as I re-enter my pathetic daily process of finding the fix for my addictions that have been awaiting my return to the world and way of life that I claim as mine. In this moment I feel like I know nothing at all, other than this overwhelming notion that the past day didn’t just drift by my life. No, you see the past day drifted into my life in a way that has rattled and changed – in a way that will continue to sneak in and subvert my current living as I continue to find myself coming to life with vivacity and freedom, with the sparkling, flammable stories of the people of Skid Row dancing in my soul, bringing me to a divine place where I am found melodically shouting, “I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive! . . . ,” as the tears spill down in believing unbelief.
Now that I’m back on campus, everyone is eagerly asking “DUDE! How was it man?” and I quite frankly don’t have a freaking clue how to respond. Partly because everything happened down there, and mostly because words just don’t have enough potential to make it real what it’s like to lie, vulnerable on the cold pavement of such a hostile area, with the aroma of piss filling the air around you; or what it’s like when you realize just how fragile life is 20 yards from a deadly shooting; or (as the saying goes) what it’s like to get high on the Holy Spirit while belting praise songs with a friend who is desperate for Jesus, but addicted to heroin; or what it does to your heart when you witness a woman walking down the street national geographic style yelling, “sex!, sex!” - or what the contrasting sensation is like to truly encounter the love and grace of God through a prostitute blooming with a long lost sense of beauty, simply because you offered her a pink rose. . . It is in the darkest of places that we find the greatest of Light.
So although I and 11 other friends from school didn’t go to Skid Row for the experience, it is our experiences that allow us make sense of our ultimate goal of being the love of Christ. What follows are glimpses our personal experiences, and just maybe, together we’ll begin to answer the question of how it was.
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So I spent Friday night on the streets of Skid Row. Twenty-four hours of love with the Jonah Project (jonahproject.org): what an experience!!! To be honest, I've been having a really hard time communicating to people what that time was like. It’s just a completely different world on those streets. It’s one of those things that you have to experience; and I STRONGLY encourage you to experience it. But I know that what you want to hear is how my time on Skid Row was. So, even though I fear I will do a miserable job at communicating my experience, I'll give it my best shot.
After a couple hours on a few buses we arrived at our meeting place as the sky was getting darker. My first images of Skid Row were of dark figures and shadows filling the streets, the sidewalks, the parks...everywhere. I had no idea what was going on. It was like there was some kind of event that was going to start. Homeless people EVERYWHERE: hundreds of them. I didn’t know who was there with the Jonah Project and who was homeless. I knew no one there except the 10 others from APU.
Much of that first night was just absorbing what was going on around me, in this place so completely different than anywhere else I've ever been. My first impressions of Skid Row were of faceless people. I didn't know any of them. All I saw were bodies moving around in the dark. They weren't people to me yet. They weren't stories. They were just scenery that I was observing as if through a window.
And as I looked through this windowpane, I saw things I had never seen before. Money and drugs exchanged right on the sidewalk. Prostitutes trying to get attention on the street corner. I saw two guys fist fighting like I've never seen before, throwing punches that left each other bleeding from the mouth. I saw a lady in the middle of the street bare-breasted yelling "Sex! Sex!" I was a few blocks away from a shooting that turned out to be fatal. I saw an old lady who asked someone in our group to take her picture and then proceeded to hang her boob out from her shirt.
All of this I saw. But it didn't affect me too much (which I think was largely because of God's protection). But, like I said, I felt as if I were looking through a window into this world in need of so much love.
But I didn’t go completely unaffected. Because, when I think about it, it did affect me. It made me feel sad—so sad.
I could sense loneliness. Hundreds of homeless. All in one place. Yet all lonely. It was heart breaking.
That night we got in small groups and just walked the streets. We talked to some people. We handed out tracts. We had a worship session in front of the "Midnight Mission". (It was really actually pretty powerful when a 13/14 year-old kid from our group stepped up and starting playing/singing worship songs as a group of homeless gathered around him). We had another jam session with this really cool homeless guy named Chas (short for Charles; pronounced “chaz”). He played blues on an old beat up guitar and I joined in with my harmonica.
Chas was one of the first people I actually got to know. I learned his face. I heard his stories. He became a person to me. His story is a mixture of pain and questions and addiction, and yet there is in him a light that shines through it all as if maybe there is hope for a life of complete freedom.
He lived the life that almost all my college-friends and me are living now. He went to college. He had a double major. He graduated. He was engaged. Then one day he got in a car accident with his fiancée. She was killed and he fractured two of the discs in his back. During the process of healing they put him on heavy pain medications. He got addicted. Now he's a heroin addict.
He loves Jesus (and like I said, you can see the light shining through him). But he just can't get off of heroin (or off the streets). He's trying though. Today he is going to some 21-day rehab program and he's hoping this can finally get him off.
What an amazing guy though! I slept right between him and Blair that night. He would tell jokes and make us all laugh. I went to sleep with the smell of his cigarette drifting over me and the blues playing in the background.
And so slowly, the faceless shadows became people with stories. Chas was probably the one I got to know best. But there were others. Bob (who complained how no one could remember his name. "I mean comon! BOB! How could you forget Bob?!"). Peter (probably one of the most generous people I've ever known: he's homeless and yet he gives away $20 a week to whoever he feels needs it most). John (who either couldn't remember his past or didn't want to remember it; which made me really sad). David (who came to Skid Row to try to preach the gospel and share who God is, but who is now getting sucked into the black hole of drug addiction). Bruce (a friend of Chas' who is also trying to get off of heroin). These are no longer faceless people to me. I can now attach stories to each and every one of these faces.
On Saturday we continued to walk around and talk to people. We also spent a lot of time hanging out in Gladys Park. There was always a pickup basketball game going on. I played a few b-ball games and caught on to a few of the nicknames that everyone had: Groove, Gentle Jimmy, G-man, Unknown, Black, Solo. There were old men huddled around pic-nic tables playing dominoes. There was always loud hip-hop/rap music blasting away. There were semi-sober people dancing to the music. This park was the center of activity.
Patrick, the guy who heads up the Jonah Project, was talking to me about how down at Skid Row there's simply nothing to do. (Literally there's not much else to do than get drunk, get high, or have sex.) And so the park is such a cool place because it actually provides stuff to do and is a place with an active and positive atmosphere.
On Skid Row, almost everything is a free handout. All you have to do is stand in a few lines to get 3 free meals a day. (And not just meals, people were handing out Dove chocolate bars, Sunny-Delight juices, and other snacks). Stand in a line a bit longer and you can get a bed in one of the many Missions. Whereas people in many third-world countries are working their butts off to try to get their next meal, pay their next bill, provide for their relatives; people in Skid Row are working there butts off just to try to get their next fix.
Bruce panhandles on a freeway exit. Some days he makes as much as $110. But he's not using that to get himself off the streets. $20 of that goes to his regular dose of heroin fix. That's $20 a day!
I feel like people on the streets have a sense of entitlement. That they are at the bottom of the social latter, have nothing to give to society, and so therefore they deserve to get free handouts. And along with that mentality is a huge lack of responsibility.
Anyway, I have a lot more thoughts on this...but I'm still working them out. And I don't want to bore you with ramblings. Hopefully I've rambled enough to give you an idea of how my Skid Row experience was like.
-Skyler Russel
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My mind was blank at I entered the streets of Skid Row. A friend of mine looked at me after about 15 minutes and asked what I was thinking about. I couldn't even speak. People standing in the streets, dirty, uncovered, and most looking cracked out. Who would have thought a third world country existed in downtown LA where just a few blocks away there seemed to be an invisable wall between this country and the the world we live in daily.
Eventually as the whole group stopped and we had no idea what to do. So, a few people, including myself, walked over to a group of people standing in the street. I began a conversation with a beautiful man and began to listen to him. He was an ex-military, ex-heroine attic, and ex-lover. As he began to tell his story of his days on heroine I began to see God in his face. He talked about how he would help people by getting them this earth escaping drug and how he wanted to feel their pain, so he himself took sport to the drug. He provided a tent on the street for prostitutes who just wanted a break because they were tired. A tent. The only means of protection those girls had against the world they lived in.
Next I talked to a woman who told me God had sent her to us to be prayed for. I prayed for her and literally felt something pushing in my chest. After prayer I looked at her and she began to tell me her story. Her ex-husband is currently looking for her to kill her. Kill her for her money she is receiving from the government. She's homeless! She had been a nurse and worked with people in rehab. I was shocked and even as I write this I get goosebumps.
How had I been so sheltered my whole life from reality. There are people in danger on the streets every night while I laugh and hang out casually with my friends. Ultimately I was mad. These people know more about bible and faith and what it means to truely only have Christ as their provider and in no way shape or form have I ever experienced literally living off of Christ every day of my life. I still don't know what to think about my experience at skid row. There are honestly no words to describe how I felt or am still feeling about the experience. Ultimately it has shown me how ignorant I am of the world and my own faith. I Suck.
-Emily Rich
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So I just got back from doing this thing called 24 Hours of Love with The Jonah Project. One word: incredible. Essentially what we do is go spend 24 hours, 6 pm Friday to 6 pm Saturday, in Skid Row with the homeless there (if you aren’t aware of what Skid Row is, it’s an area in LA super concentrated with homeless people. They basically all get pushed into that area). We lived the life of a homeless person for 24 hours – no food except for handouts and a couple clif bars we brought, slept on the sidewalk, etc.
First things first. All of us from APU (about 11 in total) got together at around 3 o’clock to meet each other and get ready to head out. I had the pleasure of meeting some incredible people and praying with them. We then proceeded to go for 2 hours on a few buses to Skid Row. When we got there at about 6 pm we were greeted almost instantly by Patrick and his wife, the heads of The Jonah Project, (jonahproject.org. Check it out.) and some of his buddies including an awesome guy named Jedi, Brandt Russo from Adopt-A-Jesus (Check it out.), some guys that were traveling through the area with Enoch Magazine, and a few other incredibly welcoming and godly people with an incredible heart for the homeless and to share the love of Jesus.
We got together, prayed, and then Jedi basically took us for a tour of Skid Row. The amount of homelessness there is incredible – I’ve never seen so many people concentrated in one area living and sleeping on the streets, sometimes without even a blanket. Needless to say it was an eye opening and almost surreal experience, with our group sticking out like a sore thumb (both a bad and good thing, I think).
We were then basically told to just go off and talk to people – build some relationships. I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking to a beautiful woman named Mari who had recently come to CA from Mexico. Got some Spanish practice there… I have forgotten a lot. It was really enjoyable to be able to talk with her and communicate with her (on a super basic level) in her own language.
We then just basically walked around talking to people and handing out water, food, and blankets until like 1 or 1:30 am. I had the pleasure of meeting one Joel Jordan, a brother from Louisiana just passing through Skid Row who knew Patrick. We had the joy of finding out we listened to (and could sing and play on guitar) a lot of the same bands and songs. Enjoyment ensued.
After getting to chat and pray with a ton of people, all while at first feeling a bit awkward and learning a thing or two about the life down in Skid Row (we were definitely outsiders, and could feel it. This was a really great thing to some people and a really bad thing to others. There was both love and animosity towards us, but definitely more love. Which is encouraging), we set up sleeping bags and blankets on the sidewalk and headed off to bed. Although before that we got to meet a guy, one Charles “Big Friendly”, with the most radical biceps I have ever seen. Especially on a skinny, tall guy.
I was so tired and in deep sleep that while some of our buddies that we were with who stayed up all night talking to people and handing out food and blankets met a man named Russell who was very sick. They brought him back to our little area and (apparently) paramedics came and took him away. This all happened about 10 feet from me, but I had no idea until I was told in the morning because I was so tired.
We woke up at around 7 or 7:30 and handed out donuts and water to people. We then moved our way to Gladys park, a local park area with a basketball court and some chess and domino tables and such. This seemed to be where a lot of people hung out during the day. It was fun to hang out and watch some basketball and meet some people there. At around 10 o’clock I heard 7 gun shots and saw a big group of people about 100 feet off scatter and run and get down and who knows what. The reactions varied from getting down on the ground repeating, “is it over?! Is it over?!” to complete nonchalance, acting as if nothing had happened. It turns out a man got shot in his leg and ended up bleeding out and dying. That’s just life down there, apparently. It blew me away how some guys continued playing basketball as if nothing at all had happened.
-William Cook
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