Category Archives: Culture

stones for peace not outrage

Outrage made us sick; it cannot make us well

Think about your job. I’ll bet you accomplish a lot there. But are you outraged? Or do you just know what you need to do and you do it? Think about other areas of your life— family, friends, volunteer work, hobbies: there’s not one where outrage is held to be a necessary precondition for showing up and making a difference. Just the opposite: if you had a coworker who was constantly enraged, you’d be apologizing for him to customers, avoiding inviting him to meetings, wasting time cleaning up the unconstructive messes that he makes.

So, our nation has problems and we have to work together to fix them. The need is urgent. There is no time to lose. How would you solve a problem like that at work? Would outrage help? No, it would get in the way. The universal embrace of outrage is why things continue to get worse in our country instead of better. And I’m not talking about “them”, I’m talking about us.

The Bible has been teaching this wisdom for thousands of years, yet Christians have forgotten it. We are as outraged as anyone in today’s society. We quote a handful of verses in which Jesus was angry but we reject the overwhelming testimony of his life and the direct urgings of scripture. Consider:

  • A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger… The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit. (Proverbs 15:1-4)
  • You who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently (Galatians 6:1)
  • If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:18)
  • Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. (Psalm 37:8)
  • Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God… Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. (James 1:19-26)
  • Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared. (Proverbs 22:24-25)

There are hundreds more and I could go on, but if I do this post is going to be really boring.

We are being told that the weak medicine of peace and grace and love for our enemies has no power to heal. We are being told that strong medicine in the form of outrage and hate will make us well.

It isn’t true. That “medicine” is destroying us. We cannot become well by increasing the dose. There is a medicine with the power to heal. How sick must we become before we are willing to take it?

a great nation

“A great nation”… thoughts on inaugurals past and present

In a great nation, it once was said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Under the banner of making that nation great again, today it was said, “A nation exists to serve its citizens.”

In a book whose advice I value, it says, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant… just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”


To “the greatest generation”, these promises were offered: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” and, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

To our generation, this promise today is offered: “From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”

In a book whose advice I value, it says, “Those who love their life in this world will lose it… for friendship with the world is enmity with God.”

Oakland warehouse fire

What you can do about the Oakland warehouse fire

Looking at the “before” photos, the appeal struck me immediately: full of music and art, a collective explosion of shared creativity. Even when taking refuge in a ramshackle old warehouse with no building materials but old palettes, people are made in God’s image and will strive to create that which is beautiful.

While Jesus was having dinner, many tax collectors and sinners were eating
with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.

Reading about the people who lived there, so many were seeking a refuge. From whom? From the righteous of our day. From people who look just like me.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were
harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 

In my opinion, it was the kind of place that Jesus would have been drawn to like a magnet.

The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look at him!
A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”

If your heart is broken like mine, there is a lot you can do.

The poor

First, think about the plight of the poor. There are many charitable organizations dedicated to low-income housing that is safe. Especially if you live in an expensive area like California or New York, find one that aligns with your values and support it. Communities need diversity and people of all callings, yet many of those callings are not economically valued enough to pay particularly well.

The outcasts

The term “safe space” is much maligned nowadays, but the bottom line is we all crave acceptance and belonging, yet some of us are outcasts. People like that were drawn to Jesus, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not because he dropped the hammer on them, called them sinners, and condemned them to hell. They had plenty of that available to them already from the righteous and the pharisees; they can only have gone to Jesus for something else. Scripture bears this out, as all of his recorded encounters with such people are suffused with gentleness, blessing and grace.

One really good barometer of whether we are anything like Jesus is whether society’s lost and broken are equally drawn to us. Too often nowadays, the answer to that question is no. So if you lament that people are so far gone that they are willing to accept the many unsavory aspects of living in a dangerous old warehouse, instead of mocking their desire for a “safe place” they can feel accepted, why not become such a place yourself?

Come, you who are blessed by my Father… for I was a stranger and you invited me in.

Thanksgiving stress

Going full Martha: some Thanksgiving advice

Later today, we are going over to my cousin’s house for Thanksgiving. We’re bringing some food. See, we are inconvenient guests— my wife is gluten-free, and my daughter and I are both vegetarian— so it’s easy to feel like we need to go the absolute limit to keep our hosts from feeling imposed upon.

Thanksgiving as a holiday is complicated, and I don’t have space here to go into all the reasons why. (For example, my church this week hosted a 3-hour support group session for those facing difficult family situations at the holidays.) However, there is one source of stress that, in my experience, is often self-inflicted. More than any other holiday, I think, Thanksgiving tends to bring out the raging inner Martha.

A quick recap for those who don’t know the story: Jesus was coming over; there was a ton of work to do. Martha was running around the house completely frantic to get it all done; Mary blew it off and just hung out with him in the living room. Jesus said, “Mary’s got it right.”

For those of us celebrating with family and friends today, don’t forget that the main point is to celebrate with family and friends. If the turkey gets dry or the wine runs out or the napkins are paper, it couldn’t possibly matter less. In a real sense, it couldn’t possibly matter less.

So, as for our Thanksgiving: last night we could have driven ourselves late into the night, cooking & cleaning in a never-ending loop to manufacture all our own specialty food. But we didn’t. It’ll be OK; Thanksgivings have plenty to eat.

Instead we got to a point where it was close enough. Then we went to bed early, read a story with the kids, watched part of our favorite Christmas movie, and fell asleep in each others’ arms. In that moment, I truly knew what it was to be thankful.

 

P.S. Apologies to those who thought this was going to be a post about Martha Stewart.

Where does it end?

Where does it end?

It is the day after the election, 2016. As predicted, one of the candidates won.

There is no redemption, no repentance, no rejection of the nastiness with which this campaign has been conducted on both sides. Nobody made up their mind to do better or differently next time. If anything, we will see everyone trying to do even more and out-nasty each other even worse the next time.

It is a sad day for those of us who value civility, decorum, peace. Regardless of the outcome, it was always going to be. This is a time for those who want war. Where will it lead?

How horrible to each other can we consistently be before we reach the breaking point? At what point does it become meaningless to say which of the two roosters “won” the cockfight? At what point have we sunk so low that the ugliness and the nastiness consume us? If the only way to defeat nastiness is by being even nastier, then where does it end?

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”
Proverbs 14:12

The love and offensiveness in freedom

The love and offensiveness in freedom

Today, America celebrates our freedom, and rightly so: it’s worth celebrating. Yet on this day, we would do well to remember that freedom is more than speaking, assembling, worshiping, and bearing arms. It has a cost. It’s not a license. It’s offensive.

Freedom has a cost

Freedom is never free. When we think of the cost of our freedom, many of us think of those who have fought for it. My family lives in a community with a strong military presence, so the everyday price paid by those who defend our country is never far from our minds: families separated by thousands of miles; spouses and parents and siblings for whom gnawing dread is a permanent companion, scars both mental and physical that never fully heal.

Yet even so, many of us aren’t actually free, for there are other kinds of bondage than political. We are bound to past mistakes, to toxic relationships, to self-destructive behaviors, to addictions of every kind.

From these demons, too, there is a way to be free; there is also one who has paid the cost of that freedom:

Freedom isn’t license

True freedom is limited in all kinds of ways, from preventing infringement on the freedoms of others to the Janis Joplin lament that “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose“. Those who make the daily sacrifices of marriage and parenthood know only too well how freedom, voluntarily surrendered in love, can be to our good. The self-sacrifice of our freedoms in love is very near to the heart of the Christian message:

Freedom is offensive

People like to mind the way that other people live. Always have. We want other people to act and think as we do; disagreement can cause interpersonal friction, so in one sense, it can seem easier if everyone is the same. Yet if we do not want to be told how to live and what to think, we must grant others that same grace. Scripture bears it out:

As Christians, we must not be offended when others exercise the same freedoms we enjoy. We must not confuse our national freedoms in the Constitution with our God-given freedoms in love. 

When we say destructive words that damage others, we must not take refuge in “freedom of speech”.

When we advocate violence against our enemies in defiance of scripture, we must not take refuge in “the right to bear arms”.

When we become the oppressors who would deny the freedoms of others, we must not take refuge in “freedom of religion”.

In all things, we must be more like Christ. We are not acting in his name when we insist on our own rights. We would do much better to seek ways we can sacrifice for the good of others, and especially those who offend us most.

50 dead

50 dead. Let’s keep being America.

I woke up this morning to the news— 50 dead, worst mass shooting in US history— and in my mind I could already hear the spittle-stained shouting to see who could respond in hate the most.

Gun advocates, gun opponents, the Muslims, the gays: All will be vengefully and vociferously hated by angry voices of popular and social media for days to come.

I wish my own quiet voice of peace could be louder.

There can be no question that this was a hate crime. How, then, can we possibly prevail if our only response is further hate? Martin Luther King Jr put it best: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Even as Trump’s poll numbers will surge in the coming days, even as millions of peace-loving American Muslims will endure one more round of excoriation as the nation’s whipping boy, what I long for is a warm and gentle voice of reason to lead us through the madness.

That voice exists. But it is not shouting. It is saying, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It is saying, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” It is saying, “Fear not.”

For all her faults, America has sometimes heard that voice before: when she wrote guarantees of basic rights unheard of in a day and age of autocratic monarchy, when she became a home for all of us former cast-offs yearning to breathe free, when she struggled to cast off her own inner demons of slavery and oppression.

In this historic moment, let us hear it too.

It has been said that the correct response to terrorism is militarismtorture, extermination. It has been said that we must think only of the extremists, that whether Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists, or 9/11 terrorists, the peaceful majority are irrelevant.

My question, then, is this: when our nation of 300 million lashes out in anger against our enemies, sweeping the innocent into the mix, where will our peaceful majority be? Will we speak or be silent? Will we risk our own lives to stand up for the innocent, or be those left mumbling “orders are orders”?

When our collective wrath takes us down the only path that wrath has ever known, will our peaceful majority pass the test that so many others in history have failed? Or will we, once again, be irrelevant?

Ideal Church

All I want in a church is…

My wife and I broke up with our church in January. We had been there for three years, and it’s not what you think. We have never been church “attenders”. We have never been the people who demand that we be served with a product that is to our liking, or we will take our business elsewhere. We invest.

This was our second church in the past ten years. During that time, my wife started a MOPS group and served for two years as its director. I did a yearlong pastoral ministries internship. We both started and led small groups.

Here’s the problem. You have to believe in your church.

You have to believe in the gospel that they preach.

For me, there are two “must haves” that I used to assume all churches had: room for the Holy Spirit, and grace for one another.

Room for the Holy Spirit

We live in a secular age, and through the power of human effort we have accomplished a lot. It is tempting to “do church” the same way. We make a plan, we set a budget, we track our progress, we achieve our goal! God’s kingdom is advanced.

Here is the problem. In none of this are we experiencing God. Some religions work fine that way, because they consist of a list of dos and don’ts, principles to observe, rules to follow. Some people treat Christianity as one of those religions. But it is not.

“I am the vine and you are the branches,” says Christ, “so long as you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Christian faith is not a system, it is a relationship, a window into a larger world, and like Luke Skywalker vs. the training droid, you cannot connect to that larger world while remaining fully in control.

Grace for one another

All churches claim to have grace. Some even name themselves after it: a Google search for “grace church” comes back with over 100 million hits. It all sounds good, and you can go to those churches for a long time before you realize where the grace is limited.

Maybe grace is available to you…

To my mind, limited grace is no grace; it smacks strongly of loving only those who love you.

My dream

Last week at Starbucks, my wife and I ran into a dear old friend from two churches ago. We were delighted to see her, and all of us nearly made ourselves late catching up. Since we are “between churches” right now, we asked her where she is going. Turns out, she is also “between churches”, and I spent a few minutes sharing my vision of a Spirit-filled, grace-filled church. “I know, right?” she agreed, “I’m just not sure that a church like that exists anymore.”

Deep down in my heart, I believe it does. The word of God assures me that out there, somewhere, there are former pharisees and former “sinners” who have found true redemption. Somewhere there is a church of all of them.

Somewhere, meeting together, are those who have recognized their own imperfections too deeply to ever exclude others for languishing in imperfection; whose faith in their own power is limited by the memory of a time that only a power greater than themselves was able to restore them to sanity.

Somewhere on Earth, there is an echo of that great church, a multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language, praising God together.

I am praying to find that church. All I want in a church… is that.

April Fools' Day secret

Of deep dark secrets and April Fools’ Day

My family loves April Fools’ Day. It’s a classic day of lighthearted pranks, what with the biscuits that look like chocolate chip cookies and the purple food coloring in the toilet tank. We are tricking the people we love and it’s all in good fun, but on this day, I can’t help stopping to reflect, just a little, about the deeper questions of truth and untruth.

When does a prank become a “little white lie”? When does a little white lie become a deep, dark secret? And what is the harm of a deep, dark secret anyhow?

What’s the harm?

The truth has become a slippery commodity in the 21st Century. There is almost no claim you can’t support with a little creative Google searching. From global warming to GMOs to gun control, whatever side you are on, you can find experts to back you up. The result is that many of us have simply thrown up our hands. “You believe your ‘truth’, I’ll believe my ‘truth’, and they will both be equally ‘true’.”

This works fine for things like, “Is it better to shop at Vons or CostCo?” because really either way will work. It works less well for questions like, “Do cigarettes cause cancer?”, and even less for, “Does the third rail cause death by electrocution?”

Bottom line: some things are true whether we like it or not. There is an inescapable reality to confront: in the natural world, in the choices we make as a society, and— most importantly— in the personal choices we make in the course of our day-to-day lives.

Secrecy is a red flag

Scripture says, “People loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” That is a litmus test. If our “truth” is a harmless one, we can generally tell because we’re happy to talk about it. I have a friend who loves shopping at CostCo and will talk at length all the great deals on 12 pounds of nutmeg.

On the other hand, suppose we find ourselves thinking, “Well, I shouldn’t tell him about that, it’ll only upset him.” In my experience, more often than not, such omissions are motivated more to hide my own shame than out of any genuine concern for others.

I heard a public service announcement once that said, “When you’re lonely or sad, it’s always there for you… If alcohol is working for you, maybe it already owns you.” But it is just as true for every form of addiction, whether shopping or food or gambling or pornography or drugs, or anything else that the Bible warns can hold us captive. What fuels the addiction is the secrecy and shame. It may seem ridiculous, but all of us recovering addicts can relate to the plight of “the tippler” from The Little Prince: “I drink to forget… to forget that I am ashamed… ashamed of drinking.”

And the truth shall set you free

Scripture offers one prescription for those of us in the throes of self-damage or self-destruction: start by getting rid of the lies.

  • When he [the devil] lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
  • But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No” be “No.” Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
  • Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin… Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

As we joyfully trick the people we love this April Fools’ Day, let’s spare a moment for some internal spiritual house cleaning, and see if we can find some ways we are “tricking” them that may be not so joyful.

Other recommended posts:

pro-gun mom with son

Pro-gun mom shot. Where is our compassion?

This week, the news broke about a vocally pro-gun mom who was accidentally shot by her 4-year-old son. It is axiomatic that, in today’s American society, for the next two weeks, the Internet will be alive with horrible cruelty towards her (the worse because she survived). All I can think of is that hospital room somewhere, filled with those heartsick for the recovery of their mom, their wife, their daughter. 

Friday, her family publicly stated that the incident does nothing to change her stance on guns; I imagine that will be a source of much scathing derision as well. All I can do is remember bad things in my life that were partly or wholly my own fault, few of which occasioned a wholesale abandonment of my worldview.

Does my compassion means I am pro-gun myself? On the contrary. But if our sympathy’s reach is so short that it encompasses only our friends, then what good is it?

Compassion is not agreement

It happens that there is much about this woman I don’t agree with.

  • I don’t agree that owning a gun would make me safer. I’ve never had an experience where I wished guns were involved; I’ve had several where I was grateful they weren’t. But nothing about that prevents me from understanding the opposite perspective.  
  • I don’t agree with the tone of her past published remarks on Facebook. Some of them, to my ear, sound sneering, condescending, mocking. But nothing about that makes me want to abandon my core values and retaliate in kind.

I cannot help thinking, what if our situations were reversed?

Bad things happen

Something bad happened to her because of what she believes, but bad things can also happen to me because of what I believe. There are situations in which I could become the poster boy for those who want to mock the “stupidity” in failing to own a gun. In a worst case scenario, I could find myself powerless to protect innocent lives.

None of that, if it happened to me, would make me go out and buy a gun. Life is a gamble, and everyone still loses sometimes. I have educated myself as best I can, and of the various imperfect options, I have chosen one that I can live with. Pro-gun Christians argue that scripture permits self-defense, but at the very least, it runs wildly contrary to the example of Christ, which we are repeatedly urged to follow:

I would hope that, come the worst, people who disagree with me would understand that I lived my life as I did out of sincere conviction and accepted the consequences of my choices, just as Christ accepted the consequences of his and as, I’m sure, this mom accepts the consequences of hers.

No place for ungrace

People go skydiving and break a leg. People go swimming in the ocean and get stung by jellyfish. People cross streets and get hit by cars. We make choices every day and those choices sometimes go horribly wrong.

If we will not show compassion and grace in those moments, who are we? There is no part of your being at fault excuses me from my humanity. No good ever came of gloating or bullying. The Bible teaches, “Do unto others as you would have done to you.”

Which of us, in our darkest hour, beset by tragedy of our own making, would have others come around us in scathing condemnation and judgment? Be kind. Be loving. Be Christlike.