Reform & Revive

10.17.2007; 14th and E. Carson, Pgh, Pa (if i wasn’t a calvinist, i’d hate women)

even among your heart’s great durress, you want to scream, shout and dance (huh?!) in your joy. this all-consuming joy that only shows its face in those dark hours. it’s those days when you are brought so low that there is only one to be reached out to, and in that great distress, that horrible despair, even, is the one who ordained that misery - those weaknesses - to fight for perfect glory. and in that is the great comfort.

five months ago in this very coffee shop, you scribbled down those words about all things being made new - from Death comes Life, right? right. and in these tragedies (or so we see them) lie our daily-mini-deaths. and borne out of those deaths are new mini-lives. and in the redemption from that death, to this life - what joy!

in deepest despair one cries out - and in that cry, there is sustinance - that greatest joy.

what foolishness: to look to the grandest times of sorrow + suffering with the strongest sentiment of nostalgia + yearning. don’t you taste redemption? it is near. and in fact, it is here. suffer again; there is no fear.

death begets life. sorrow begets only the purest of all joys.

and here you are, young + naieve. what grand tragedy have you endured? you are a fool to write such ugly words. you cannot fathom the heart-break of the most awful tragedies. how can you so boldly proclaim that you yearn for them? in those most tragic of kingdoms that you have found yourself (though they know nothing of the depths of some - or most, for that matter!) always sustained by the power borne of such weaknesses.

if you must boast and delight in anything, delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. when you are weak, then you are strong.

Portable Bible-study with Mark Driscoll in the back seat of a VW Jetta:

I am often left thinking/wishing that I could go back in time, just a few months, just to December, and make a few little changes. Maybe I’d re-read the email I’d sent out to all of my friends in early November which declared Pittsburgh to be the center of the Universe and that everyone I knew should move there and that I’d never leave. Or maybe I’d take a hint that after a few different sublets fell thru in Richmond that maybe I shouldn’t just up and leave - at least not yet. But no, I was persistent. I was gonna fight for this one, no matter what the cost and January 7th was the cut-off date.

That hasty decision still haunts me. That hasty decision still brings tears.

If I’m being honest, if I could take it all back, I would. I never would have moved, despite all the riches that moving there provided. If not moving would have spared my this physical and psychological pain, I’d take it back without thinking. I lay here facing mounting medical bills and am generally in pain all of the time. It’s almost impossible not to think about. It’s most-of-the-time overwhelming and the first question that comes to mind is “why”?

Why did I have to meet So and So and move to Richmond?

Why didn’t I see a doctor sooner?

Why can’t life return to normal, you know, like it was in the fall, when everything finally smoothed out?

Everything was designed for my losing. Even my comfort.

A few weeks ago, two of my dearest friends in the world were visiting from Illinois. The morning before they left we had coffee at Prince Street and talked about the “problem” of pain. Why does pain, in many cases, point one to Christ and in others, drive some from him? Why am I given the grace to see the joy in this misery, when I’ve seen others choose against that joy and rail against God? A few nights later, in Pittsburgh, I met a girl named Charis (Greek meaning Grace) who’d recently come to the States to have hip replacement surgery. She is younger than me. Not only had she just had a hip replaced, but she’d previously had two organ transplants and just by looking at her it was obvious she was ill. I don’t know all of the details of her situation, but she is presumably in more difficult circumstances than I, but there she was, playing Dutch Blitz with the girls from her Bible study. Smiling.

Jesus moves on us to change us. He really will show us that everything was designed for our losing. My comfort’s been ripped out from under me and in nearly constant misery, I have to fight for joy. I have to lean on the grace of God to show that my joy is in Him and not in my comfort or any other temporal thing; this is hard and usually not evident from my exterior behavior. And, to be honest, I hate the reality of this. Why can’t it be different? But that’s the wrong question. If, as part of its mission, the church is to serve, and if I am part of the church, it is most certainly my job to serve, and if, in this pain, I develop perseverance and hope and joy, then down the road, it is my job to help someone else find those very things in the midst of pain and suffering as well.

The better, real question is: Why NOT me?

Am I seriously charging this topic like some stupid ram who must slam its head into another? Apparently, yes. And this, obviously, is going to take to life probably several posts over the next few weeks (probably months). I am just about to finish up the third and final book in Brian Mclaren’s A New Kind of Christian Trilogy: The Last Word and the Word After That in which he deconstructs the church’s teaching on the Doctrine of Hell for only the past 2,000 or so years. In essence, and this is probably slighting the book too much - but I’ll take that liberty for now, the church’s tradtional position on Hell is that it is a hole in a sinking ship and that much of what Jesus taught about Hell was not that it was a literal destiny for the un-repentant; rather, it was a rhetorical device using the common understanding of the contemporary Greek/Roman culture’s view of the evil-dead (which was built upon Mesopotamian and Egypitian views) to try to spur the Pharisees onto repentance of a different kind: social justice. Now, let me be clear here, the Bible is replete with statements about justice in the here and now, and, in fact, I am quite blown away by how quickly we gloss over such commands, ignoring something God and the inspired writers considered so vital, but that is not the point of Jesus’ teachings on Hell. Rather, it seems that Jesus is using culturally understood metaphors to describe a real place that he wants no one to go to; doesn’t the Bible somewhere say that God wants all to come to repentance? Thought so.

Why is this such a big deal? I don’t want to and won’t be one of those Christians who is obsessed with the Doctrine of Hell yet at the same time I believe it is a vital Doctrine, one that must be examined (and even questioned), but not deviated from the reality of. What bothers me (here bothers is synonymous with “makes furious”) is that we, now, have many of our own (or so-called own) throwing out the doctrine because they claim that just as no human father would inflict such unbearable punishment on his child, neither would God. The problems with that analogy are many, but the most glaring is that when your theology moves in such a way that it is overtly and uncompromisingly anthro-centric there is little concern left for the justice that God himself deserves. In saying that it’s not loving or just for God to deem the unrepentant to eternal torment (as Revelation and other Scriptures describe) the focus has been placed on mankind and what should be done to them rather than the importance that God in his holiness deserves justice more than any of his disobedient-peon-creatures. Also (and I am going on the offensive against the Emergent-types), there is this mega-theme that runs throughout the Bible called wrath of God, which by sheer tonnage of verses (over 600) far outnumbers those which speak of God’s love, grace and mercy combined (I just stole the last sentence from Mark Driscoll and now that I’ve cited him, it’s no longer stealing). This is not something that can simply be maneuvered around to make us all feel warm and fuzzy in our state of blatant disobedience. To ignore this is to ignore what God wants us to know about himself and sadly, that includes a real Hell and a real eternity.

Jesus spoke about Hell more than anyone in the Bible (eleven times, if I count correctly) and it wasn’t simply a rhetorical tool - it was a severe and loving warning: Don’t go there.

(All this and we’ve not even talked about a verse — so much more to come).

It’s funny, not ha-ha funny, but ironic funny that the very thing I’d meant to address last night was not really the thing that I ended up addressing. Somehow, I ended up walking down that “god-shaped-hole” argument (which I won’t deny as valid, but that most certainly was not the direction I intended to head). I suppose when making the argument that materialism promises functional saviors you end up toeing that line.

Bygones.

‘ “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.’

- I Cor. 6.12, ESV

Despite the fact that Paul here is addressing sexual immorality, the lesson he is teaching can be provided and applied for a larger context. Nothing material (or even immaterial in this world) will enslave us if we are to lose ourselves for Christ and the Gospel. In the freedom of the Gospel, we are given responsibility to use and enjoy the blessings of God while at the same time not allowing ourselves to become slaves to them. This sounds right and good, and it is, but as with all-things-sanctifying, application becomes the difficult part.

Previously, I talked about the fictional-messiahs that we create to be our fictional-saviors from our fictional-hell (oh, there’s a fun topic — soon to be addressed, by the way). Fictional-messiahs present themselves in all forms and in the end, they are nothing more than idols that enslave us. They enslave us because they promise salvation from whatever fictional-hell we’ve deemed ourselves needing salvation from.

What is it that you cannot, will not, and must not live without?

You’ve just named your fictional-messiah.

Let’s be honest. Well, how about I’ll be honest? I’ll be twenty-eight in just under two months and for as long as I can remember there’s nothing I’ve wanted more than to find a girl, get married and settle down (and as I inch towards thirty, it seems as though the pressure to find those things is ever-increasing). I’m looking for salvation in a relationship and a career. Not only will those two things not save me, they make terrible gods (messiahs). One will fail me, sin against me, hurt me, etc and etc (and vice versa); the other will ultimately end when my physical or mental capabilities are no longer what they once were. Not only will both leave me utterly frustrated and disappointed at times; they will also at some future point cease to exist. Where is my salvation then? What will I cling to when the spouse dies or when the career ends or when the house or apartment is too much for me to keep up with? Who will save me then? Who will save me when my messiah has failed me? (Do I/we not see the foolishness in this?).

Everything was designed for my losing.

I love cigarettes, coffee and chocolate. On many days I am enslaved by the latter two, and on others by the former-first. Last night, I was thoroughly restless and in that state between semi-consciousness and deep sleep, I had this terrifying dream that I was diagnosed with lung-cancer despite the fact that I almost never smoke anymore. That put to rest my desire to smoke from this point forward, but on that day when I am bored, and nicotine kisses my toes, will I abuse my freedom (and more-likely my health) or will I realize that they are just one more thing that are designed for my losing? (Much of the same can be said for coffee and chocolate abusing my health and my wallet and this begs the question: Am I a good steward; a faithful servant, or have I enslaved myself to something else, something other than the Authentic Messiah who offers life (and salvation) to the full).

Everything was designed for my losing. Will I lose it?

Ask yourself the same.