Truth, Love, & Argument

    What’s your favorite hot take? 

     We’ve all got one. Like maybe you think that yellow Starbursts are the superior Starburst flavor. Or maybe you think the Beatles are overrated. Maybe you think that robots taking over humanity wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe you enjoy rush hour traffic. I, for one, will argue extensively for The Last Jedi as the objectively best StarWars film. I’ll do it. Mess around and find out. 

    The internet, in particular, is a factory for these kinds of unpopular opinions, to the point of becoming cliched. I’d argue that no particular platform is worse than any others; anywhere and everywhere discussion happens on the world wide web, you can bet on being inundated with countless of these spicy, spicy observations accompanied by “Why is nobody talking about…?” and, my personal favorite, “... But you’re not ready to hear that yet.” 

    Which raises the question: Who is our audience if not the people we claim to be addressing? It’s a serious question which requires our consideration and, ultimately, our full and honest answer,  but we’ll get to it later. You’re not ready to hear that yet.  

    The fact is that we’re innately attracted to unpopular opinions. Or, at least, to the ones which we agree with. There’s something kind of sexy about them, right? Or maybe it’s nobility. We respond to ideas that taste like dangerous honesty and inflexible integrity, and we want to be the kinds of people with the courage to share them — Perhaps to even think of them first. We want to be the heroes whom others gaze on with reverence, asking why we’d say something so controversial yet so brave.

     And you know what? While that impulse might be easy to judge if you’re so inclined, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There is courage in telling the truth when it’s risky. There is nobility in holding to your integrity, regardless of the outcome. As a chronic idealist/romantic, I am the last person who will try to persuade you away from those worthy pursuits. The problem at play is that we as humans will inevitably twist the best things we can be into the very worst, and then fail to see the difference once we’ve done it.

    I recognize this revelation falls somewhat short of a hot take. If you’re reading this essay, you’re online. If you’re online, you’ve been watching the same garbage fire I’ve been watching for years. Instead of approaching differences in politics, culture, and/or faith with caution and humility, there is a gleeful destructiveness that seeks to create the biggest conflict possible. The undercurrent of spite and stubbornness is evident everywhere, and from memes to comment wars to literal violence we have been reaping its consequences. Tensions have never been higher in my lifetime; maybe never in yours, either. It’s a mess, and we absolutely must stop looking externally for someone or something to blame if it’s ever going to get better. The call is coming from inside the house. 

    We’ve ruined it. 

    We’ve ruined meaningful conversation. We’ve ruined productive disagreement. We have ruined, in essence, arguing. We’ve forgotten how and why to do it, or maybe we never knew to begin with. All I can say for sure is that unless we learn, unless we own responsibility, we’ll continue shooting the work of the Kingdom in the foot until we all die out and God raises up a new generation to redeem what we were too stubborn to see. 

    There is a wider cultural conversation that could be had, to be sure, but this is not about that: Do me a kindness and turn off the part of your brain trying to pivot to all of the other groupings of people who are “Just As Bad.” Today, like most days, I am speaking specifically to the American Church. This essay is about rhetoric, relationship, and the biblical precedent for airing unpopular opinions. 

     Let’s begin with Ephesians 4.

     “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

      Ephesians 4:15 (NIV)

    For all of its bad press, I truly believe this is the best place to start if we’re going to commit to a more thorough understanding of what scripture teaches about communicating well, especially when we know what we have to say might be difficult to receive. That being said, for those who’ve grown up in church it’s possible that the mention of this chapter brings a cold tension to your chest that you can’t quite name. Perhaps it was wielded against you, or maybe you watched it used to cut down someone else. Maybe you’ve never witnessed its lethality in person, but the phrase still leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

     And yet, that’s what makes it the perfect source text. One of our greatest failings as the American church is our complacency with piecemeal biblical teaching. Not every message needs to be a seminary lecture, that would be neither necessary nor helpful. However, American Christians have formed a terribly bad habit of building powerful ideologies on the skeletal foundation of biblical bullet points taught to us by Just One Guy (whomever he may be), and if nothing else we’ve got to do better than that. Context matters, because what we believe and why we believe it matters.

So let’s have a look at the text, and let’s really look at it. 

There’s a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot lately. I’m not sure who said it first so I don’t know who to credit, but it’s a good one and I’m glad it’s going around:

    “Scripture can’t mean something to us that it didn’t mean to its original audience. It is for us, but it isn’t to us.” 

    This means that in order to avoid projecting inaccurate assumptions onto scripture, we have to have some understanding of genre and historical context. The book of Ephesians is a letter; so who were its intended recipients? 

     The church in Ephesus was planted by Paul, one of the first missionaries to non-Jewish people back in the first century - You can read about his time in the city in Acts 19, it’s a fun one. The main thing to know about Ephesus is that it was a massive Roman metropolitan center with an incredibly diverse population. Because of this, the local church was also incredibly diverse. The Jesus community there included Believers from every ethnic and socioeconomic background in a way that was completely unique to the time. When Paul wrote this church, his goal was to remind these different and even seemingly opposing demographics of the unifying nature of the Gospel, and to walk them through the way that looks when lived out in everyday life. 

     So how is he making those points? Let’s look at literary context next. Here’s how chapter four starts:

   “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

   Ephesians 4:1-6

   Paul begins this series of thoughts by reminding the Ephesians of his position as an incarcerated person and the reason for his incarceration, something he talks about throughout the letter to illustrate the surpassing value of the Gospel. He uses it here to urge the church to communicate with each other in good faith, and to work hard to remain on the same team. 

   He goes on to explain in verses 7-13 the way that God, through Jesus, gave the Church many different kinds of leaders and collaborators in order to build it up, the ultimate goal being that the body of Christ would be truly unified and reflect Jesus perfectly. 

    “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

    Ephesians 4:14-16 (emphasis added)

      Paul wraps up the chapter by reminding the Ephesian church of their pre-salvation lives, and encourages them to take off that old way of living like an old pair of clothes (verses 17-24). He talks about the natural outcome of the new life they have, and the way it should affect the way they treat people and live in society (verses 25-28). Lastly, he tells them that unkindness, spite, and bad faith arguments grieve the Holy Spirit, and reminds them to forgive as they have been forgiven (verses 29-32). 

     When we talk about “speaking the truth in love”, we are meant to understand it as a call to listen to each other, support each other, and assume the best of each other in the face of significant personal differences. Instead, this life-giving command is broadly used as a cover for moral bullying and rhetorical laziness. So what do we do? How do we get better? How do we ensure that we are not deceiving ourselves when we step out into the world, or just sit across from a friend, and open our mouths?

     How do we bring this principle out of the abstract and into our practical living? 

     I think we need to allow for the possibility that even though we may have known and agreed with all of the above, we still don’t fully understand it. I think we need to be willing to check the observable reality of our hearts and behavior against every single word scripture teaches, and then I think we need to check again; and I do mean, “we.” Even me. Even you. 

     The world needs God’s people to be loving, to be brave, and to tell the truth. But before we open our mouths, I would propose that we ask ourselves the following: 

1. Is it really truth?

2. Is it really love?

3. Is it really for me to speak it?

    We’re going to walk through each of those one by one, because that’s just the sort of party this is. 

To start, we need to establish a metric for truth.

    I recognize this is easier said than done, but let’s give it a go anyways. The first order of business is to make a firm distinction between tradition and orthodoxy; they are related, yes, but they are not synonyms. Tradition is, by dictionary definition, “a doctrine believed to have divine authority though not in the scriptures.”  Orthodoxy, coming from the Greek orthodoxía, means “righteous/correct opinion” and deals primarily with foundational theology that was generally agreed upon at the beginning age of the Christian Church. 

    Tradition is beautiful, comforting, and multi-faceted. It has names like Catholicism, Methodism, Lutheranism, Pentecostalism, Baptistdom, and so on. It comes with many sets of prayers, songs, and favorite stories. It may look to us like truth, because it introduced us to truth. But it isn’t. It’s just a way of engaging with truth, and if we put the cart before the horse in this we end up making ourselves very silly. That’s how we become all hopped up on denominational superiority, getting into flame wars about theology and losing friendships every time someone decides to leave our church for a doctrinally inferior local body. It’s bad. Stop it. 

    Orthodoxy, on the other hand, is the essence of the faith. Orthodoxy is not about granularity. It is not concerned with secondary or tertiary issues, and thus it most truly encapsulates what it means to be a follower of Christ. When Paul spoke about one body and one Spirit, this was what he meant. Whereas traditions will have statements of faith that contain dozens if not hundreds of articles, orthodoxy can be very simply summed up in a short set of ecumenical creeds. 

    You’ll notice we haven’t gotten into philosophy, culture, or politics. We’re not going to, because the purpose of this exercise is to identify the truth we can know. You might be very confident in your ideology. Good for you! It might be carefully considered and thoroughly informed by your faith. That’s awesome! I still don’t believe that means it falls under knowable fact. No, I’m not a relativist (I even wrote 3,262 words on why I’m not a couple years back.) What I am is open to the possibility that I don’t really know that much and will continue to not know that much until I die, and if I had to guess you don’t really know that much either. There’s just a lot to know. We can still talk about what we think, but taking what we think and dressing it up like something we know and then sitting somebody down and trying to make them agree with us just isn’t helpful. It’s a little megalomaniacal, actually. 

    Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, is the metric of truth for the believing person. We can make some decent guesses at all the other stuff, but our reasoning must flow from His character and His mission as agreed upon by the Church Universal. And no, this does not mean that the only thing worth getting into a flame war over is the Apostles’ Creed. It’s simply a matter of giving things their proper weight, and speaking accordingly. Just take some time, humble yourself, and be sure you understand what you’re talking about.     

    But once we are sure of the legitimacy of what we want to say, we are by no means ready to pull the trigger. There have been plenty of sound scriptural opinions blasted into the world that did far greater harm than good. In the absence of love, the highest wisdom and the sharpest insight is absolutely useless. If we want to speak truth, and if we want it to be heard, we must ask ourselves:

Do we have

an accurate understanding of what love looks like? 

    For this step of the exercise, we can begin and end with 1 Corinthians 13. 

    “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

    1 Corinthians 13:1-3

    Again I say: Our best, devoid of love, simply does not matter. I don’t care if you’re a champion debater. I don’t care if you’ve won awards for your persuasive essays. I don’t care if your content has thousands and thousands of likes from people who already agree with you. In the original Greek, the word for “clanging” is ​​alalazó, and a more direct translation is literally “to raise a war cry.” It’s the sound an enemy hears. It’s a threat. If you have no love, real love, no one who needs to hear you is going to listen. 

    It’s easy to get this wrong. I am earnestly praying as I type, and edit, and type again that I am not getting it wrong. The fact is that the world can smell it on us when we’re missing this essential quality, even as we may think we’re doing just fine. Please listen to me when I say that charitable works and vague goodwill are not a valid substitute for the kind of love that the Gospel requires of us. In fact, that insufficiency was in many ways the root of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees in His day.  

    I learned something recently that seriously impacted my perspective of the gospel stories. Apparently, Pharisees in the early 1st century were, generally speaking, a stand-up group of guys. Like really nice people, the kind you’d want living in your neighborhood and teaching your kids. To some of you it may seem pretty obvious, but growing up on church plays and little bible animations I’d always known Pharisees as mustache-twirling villains who hated the poor and spat on sinners for entertainment. I was definitely surprised to hear the opposite, but it makes sense if you consider the nature of their law; Leviticus 19, in particular, can be best summed up as “Be a good human.” 

    We (read: I) may have had the impression that Jesus was a renegade running around shocking snobs with His message of common decency, but that just wasn’t the case. The ancient Jews were intimately concerned with the welfare of their neighbor, and thus Jesus inherited a heritage of niceness and doing-the-right-thing. So why did He constantly pick fights with all of those nice, scripturally-literate, church-going folks?  

    Because just as religion is one of the most effective inoculations against faith, niceness and charity are some of the most effective inoculations against Gospel love. We think we are good people because we tip 18% and smile at the waiter, but that’s not nearly enough. Jesus understood that, from the first words He spoke announcing His ministry in Luke 4 to His last moments bleeding out on the cross, and everything His said or did in the middle underscored that point. 

    “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

    1 Corinthians 13:4-7

   When you examine your feelings toward the person or group you feel you should speak to, how does it line up with this standard? Do you have patience towards the tired, hurting souls you consider under the banner of “the world”? When you think of those whom you disagree with, is your heart kind? I mean truly kind, not just self-righteously concerned with converting those outside your camp to a More Correct way of thinking. We’re talking sit-and-have-a-meal, listen-to-their-story, care-about-their-life, cry-over-their-hurt kindness. We’re talking Jesus kindness; the kindness He, incidentally, shows you and me. 

    Something happens to us when we allow the patient, kind, hopeful love of Jesus Christ to overflow into our perception of those outside our camp. We find that we will no longer tolerate nastiness and disrespect aimed in their direction, especially from those inside our camp. Love does not dishonor others. We find that we are less concerned with our moral superiority than we are with being a safe place for broken people. Love is not self-seeking. We find that instead of being set off by every remark that contradicts our worldview, we are no longer fragile. Love is not easily angered. We find we are able to let go of our preconceptions and meet each conversation with optimism and a desire to understand. Love keeps no record of wrongs. 

    The natural outcome of Gospel love is the miracle of good faith. 

    I keep using that term. I want to make sure we all know what that means in this context: 

    Good faith is primarily a legal term for acting in honesty, fairness, and lawfulness of purpose, coming from the Latin bona fides, but it can also mean a fair-minded approach to argument. It bears mentioning that in the classical Roman usage, bona fides is always mutual; today, for our purposes, it might be most accurate to say that the natural outcome of Gospel love is the miracle of assuming good faith. 

    Proverbs 18:2 says that “fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.” So what does wisdom do? What does love do? The last step of this part of the exercise is to ask ourselves if we have a fair understanding of the position we disagree with. In fact, if you’re already in the middle of discourse it can be helpful to repeat back to the person you’re talking to what you think they’re saying in the fairest terms possible, and give them the opportunity to correct you. This is called steel-manning (straw-manning’s benevolent twin.) 

     I’ll be bold here. If you can’t argue an issue convincingly from the other side, you probably have neither the intellectual understanding nor the heart posture to address it. We must be willing to believe the best of those who hold positions we disagree with, and that includes the reasons why they hold those positions. We must be willing to set aside our certainty, step into their shoes, and try to wrap our brains around the way they see the world. To truly love, we must deeply know. 

    But here’s the thing. 

    We might have our facts flawlessly straight. 

    We might love so deeply we cry about it in the shower (just me? okay.) 

    There is still one more thing to consider, and it might be the most important one of all. Before we open our mouths, before we get involved, before we attach the name of Jesus to our opinion by association, we have got to ask ourselves: 

Do we really have the platform to say this thing to this audience at this time?   

         Why should they listen to you? No, really. Why? I’m not talking about the authority of scripture or the absoluteness of Biblical truth. I’m talking about you. Have you earned the right to be heard, and how do you know? Because it matters, possibly more than anything else. 

     I didn’t just break up this mountain of text with coffee photos to be cute, y’all. I went with this theme because effective communication ultimately comes down to relationship. If you were to picture the person you want to persuade, whether they be a known individual or an archetype, how would they interpret a coffee invite from you? How would you, if you were them? Do they have a reason to trust your heart and character in the face of impending conflict? That’s not something you can solve with a rushed preamble when you already have a lecture locked and loaded. If they don’t know you like that already, they don’t know you like that. 

    Practically, this means the kid you haven’t seen since high school will not benefit from your thoughts on his relationship choices. Your coworker’s aunt will not be better for your paragraph responding to her Instagram story on personal nutrition, and Maria from Baltimore is profoundly unlikely to read your comment-section rebuttal and rethink her opinions on the US Postal Service. Seriously, stop fighting with strangers in the comment section. No argument can overcome the absence of platform. Your input, regardless of intention, will almost certainly not be productive. 

    But Kyle, that’s bias! I hear you screaming. 

    Yes! It is! Well spotted. 

     Bias is nothing more than the way we perceive reality based on our personal experiences. Everybody’s got it, and everybody’s going to continue to have it, at least a little bit, forever. Once you embrace that inevitability it becomes infinitely easier to listen and communicate successfully. 

    We need to be able to recognize when we’re just not the right tool for the job. If somebody is viscerally distrustful of women with college degrees, I have no reason to expect them to be persuaded by my opinions on the best way to serve carrots. And hey: if I’m distrustful of people who serve carrots boiled, maybe a carrot-boiler isn’t the best person for me to try and persuade that higher education isn’t an inherently corruptive system. That doesn’t make either of us stupid or evil, it probably just means that they’ve had negative experiences with women who have college degrees and I’ve been unfortunate enough to eat boiled carrots. 

    While I do believe that the diminishment of our biases is part of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, I also believe that thinking we will be entirely free of them this side of eternity is hubris. You see the world at a slant, and your neighbor sees it at a different slant. The question is whether or not you can still talk fairly to each other and trust that things won’t get too twisted around. 

    This next part of the exercise is unique in that it is exclusive to engagement that is not one-to-one: In terms of public address, who is your audience really?

     That’s right. It’s been a long time coming, but you’re finally ready to hear it.

    This is particularly for those of us in the habit of sharing our thoughts with a posture of authority. Do me a solid and go look at the last two or three posts you made to that effect — Don’t worry, we’ll wait. Once you’ve got them in front of you, read them from a third-party perspective.

Would someone who does not already agree with you be compelled? 

    It’s not a matter of sound logic, friend. It’s not a matter of appeal to authority, or of accurate if-then-therefore reasoning. It’s not even a matter of whether or not those things should be the matter. The reason that there were three arts of discourse developed in Ancient Greece was that logic and grammar will not accomplish the full job of communication alone. Rhetoric is, according to Aristotle’s definition, "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” This isn’t touchy-feely stuff, this is classical academia; if you are not expressing your ideas in a way that is compelling, you simply cannot expect people to listen to you. That means sarcasm isn’t the move when you’re trying to move a hostile audience. Neither is smugness, even though it feels sooo good. You might wear down respondents with your relentlessly objective debate club techniques until they no longer engage, but you haven’t convinced them. If anything, you’ve done both them and your point even more harm. 

    So who is your audience, if not whom you claim to be addressing? 

    Are you looking to persuade, or are you looking for a fight you think you can win? Are you looking to compel, or are you looking for a round of high-fives from those in your circle with the same convictions? Are you looking to motivate meaningful introspection and maybe even, Lord willing, life-change, or are you just trying to rally your base? 

    It’s possible you have been explaining negative feedback to your efforts with the excuse that the Gospel is controversial, and I hear you. However, I spend a very large portion of my time in secular spaces, and I can tell you right now that the average response to me talking about my faith is overwhelmingly respectful and even enthusiastic. I recognize this is anecdotal evidence, but surely multiple theologically orthodox Jesus conversations a week for the past 10 years in an environment where I was raised to expect hostility is data worth considering. The Kingdom of God is at odds with the kingdom of this world, that much is true, but I am extremely skeptical that you are experiencing pushback solely because the Christian faith is socially unpopular. 

    I’m not making this plea as a bleeding heart hippie begging everyone to get along. It’s much more serious than that; taking shots at the unsaved in the name of “defending the faith” isn’t merely unhelpful, it’s patently unbiblical. Paul started quite a lot of riots in his day, but it wasn’t because he spent all of his time owning the pagans with a truth they couldn’t handle. In fact, in his rebuke of the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 5, he makes a quick note that the standards they should live by as Jesus followers would be a ridiculous thing to hold anyone outside their community to. 

    “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?”

    1 Corinthians 5:12

     So again, I say: who is your audience? And who should it be? Is it not a much worthier use of your time to rebuke your own camp than to spin your wheels condemning The Other? There is plenty to challenge and lament in Christendom, what business is it of ours to fly into moral panic every time an explicitly secular movement comes to our attention? 

    “God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.’”

    1 Corinthians 5:13 

    But Kyle! I hear you bringing up very calmly and rationally, Aren’t you taking the teeth out of the Word of God? The Bible isn’t a warm and fuzzy book, I mean even Jesus could be really harsh to those who wouldn’t believe! 

     Yes, He could. Sometimes a full-send condemnation is the move, colorful language and all. In fact, from Genesis to Revelation there is a consistent pattern of scathing rebuke delivered from God to humanity in a myriad of ways. Our Lord and Savior did in fact roll into the temple one time and flip tables in a demonstration of holy anger, and there are times when it is our place to feel that same anger. Honestly? I’m angry right now. Our problem arises when we misunderstand the parameters of our right to imitate that degree of harshness.

    There are elements of Jesus’ incarnate nature that will always be beyond our limitations, the chief example being His claim to deity. Jesus spoke with the authority of Creator God, originator and sustainer of the cosmos, because He was God. That is a claim we simply do not have, and our posture needs to reflect that. Furthermore, Jesus spoke with the authority of one Who truly knew what was in the heart of everyone He spoke to: “He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.” (John 2:25) I like to think I’m a pretty accurate judge of character, but I can’t claim to do that. Lastly, Jesus spoke with the authority of one Who loved each and every human being with an entirely perfect love: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) Who among us can truly imitate the fullness of Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf? While we have access through the Spirit to real love, it will never be perfect.

     It is a good and worthy thing to imitate Christ, but we must not become overconfident in our zeal. Jesus’ firmness in addressing people throughout the gospels is not a free pass for us to throw harsh words at anyone we see as wrong. He is God, and we are not. Rather, the New Testament writers are extraordinarily clear that we are, first and foremost, to imitate His meekness: 

    “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

    by taking the very nature of a servant,

    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

    he humbled himself

    by becoming obedient to death—

        even death on a cross!”

    Philippians 2:5-8

Once you’ve walked through this exercise, take a moment of honest evaluation.

   Is your position really truth? Is your motivation really love? Are you really the most effective messenger for this audience at this time? If your answer to any of these self-reflections has been “no,” it is entirely possible that the holiest thing you can do is limit your freedom and shut up. Yes, I mean that. Even if you are 1000% right in your position on the issue and can prove it for days, if there is any shadow of arrogance in your heart the best thing you can do is shut up. Even if your compassion for those you wish to correct literally keeps you awake at night, if you have not earned the right to be heard by them the very best thing you can do is pray God’s goodness for them and shut yourself up. Just take a knee, and a few deep breaths, and shut up. 

    And as you shut up, allow yourself to experience the peace of trusting God to bring justice to a place where you have not been appointed to involve yourself. Yes, I do say justice: righting wrong thinking is a form of doing justice. There are more forces at work for the Kingdom in the world than you, trust them to do the labor you cannot. Support them in whatever way you can, praying often that the Lord would show them favor. 

    And if you’ve passed this exercise and are still compelled to speak — Go for it, and Godspeed. May you go forth with courage, humility, and the readiness that comes from the Gospel of Peace. May the Lord inspire and direct your speech, and may He open ears to hear and minds to understand. May the Word of God never return void. 

    Because here’s the thing, friends: it’s not too late for us. If you’re still reading this behemoth, it’s not too late for you. I still believe in the Church. I love her with every fiber of my being, and that’s why I have chosen to open my mouth and speak. I desperately hope and pray that every word, every cross-reference, every hyperlink, every stupid cup of coffee resonates in your soul as proof that this labor has been undertaken with real love. I love the Church, and I am convinced she is yet the beacon of light and hope the world needs her to be. 

    What could possibly be more transformative than the Church of Jesus Christ rising up to heal the damage caused by unkindness, spite, and bad faith argument? What could possibly be more attractive to the lost than to see the body of Christ unified, growing and building itself up in love, as each part does its work? What could possibly be more compelling than the citizens of God’s Kingdom declaring the Good News with conviction, wisdom, fairness, and skill? If you’re seeking a recipe for global revival, this is it. 

    The truth is worth speaking. 

    Let us be sure we speak it well. 

    “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

    Ephesians 4:29-32

— Kyle

Do Less

    I have an uncomfortable relationship with the idea of “my best.” It’s a wispy, iridescent ideal I’ve been told about my entire life, but never been able to comfortably grasp. Who decides what my best is? What’s the criteria? Is it effort? Is it capacity? Does the appearance thereof count, or is there some deeper excellence required in order to really and truly be the Best I Have to Offer? 

    I’m concerned I very rarely offer my best. 

    For one, I’m late for everything. Like, absolutely everything. Always. This is an immutable truth etched into the fabric of who I am, and just about everyone who knows me would back me up on that. And, having been raised on the Draconian mantra that “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable,” I’ve spent a lot of time beating myself up for my chronic lateness. But here’s the thing: The longer that I live, and go to work, and attend events, and generally participate in society, the more it looks like five minutes behind schedule more or less washes out in the American Southeast. 

    Because, actually, punctuality is entirely made-up. Will the world stop spinning if you’re eight minutes late to class? Will it even matter in two hours? (Let me help you out: It super won’t.) Bosses are late, professors are late, doctors are late, performances are late, flights are late, payments are late, and yet we’re all still here. It doesn’t hurt to be on-time, and it’s true that punctuality is respectful of the time of others, but it isn’t life or death in the vast majority of circumstances. As a vital element of human society, I would argue that punctuality is a myth. 

    So, then, what is a realistic expectation for punctuality? Or for anything, really?

What actually counts as “best”? 

    I’ve obsessed over this for years. Deep down, I suspect I’ve never actually given anything 100%. Maybe 87%, tops. And that’s on my best day. The irony of it is that when I follow that rabbithole all the way down, I find underneath the guilt over not trying hard enough is a sedimentary layer of pride. Oh, me? Yeah I don’t do homework. Study? How do you do that? I don’t have to. I get A’s anyways, without trying at all. It’s great. Sure, I could probably do better, but I’d rather sleep through biology and be Good Enough than do the labor to be Great. 

    It’s funny how self-perception works. Despite being a smart kid in school, in hindsight it appears that I identified myself a lot more with everything I hadn’t done than everything I had. The first time somebody called me an overachiever, I thought it was a joke. It made me uncomfortable, like I’d tricked everyone somehow. In psychology, this is referred to as imposter syndrome; the sense that, despite outward appearances, one is actually a fraud. And I’m not unique in this - It has been estimated that nearly 70% of individuals will experience signs and symptoms of impostor phenomenon at least once in their life. 

But is the issue about whether we do our best, or whether we do enough, or whether we are enough?

    If the affirmations on Instagram are any indication, the persistent tie between production and personal worth is still going strong. Something supply, something something demand. And despite the constant reassurances that we are not our jobs, we are not our achievements, we are not our output, it appears that we remain unconvinced. We are exhausting ourselves with our efforts to deserve approval. 

    It’s a narrative that’s followed Millennials for over two decades now. From childhood, I and my peers have been heckled as the Participation Trophy generation. Which, frankly, is an odd thing to shame a demographic for considering we didn’t award those trophies to ourselves. Nonetheless, the sense that anything we achieved was undeserved stuck; we are cursed to endlessly pursue greater accomplishment, and endlessly suspect that what we’ve done so far doesn’t really count. 

    Bleak, right? Boy, oh boy, we’re just getting warmed up. 

    Because, per Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. The curse of the Millennial-twenty-something is the curse of mankind. We are forever seeking righteousness, and forever coming up short. Regardless of whether you can relate to any of the things I’ve listed so far that stress me out, and I am more than willing to admit there’s some privilege tied up in all of them, I am firmly confident that there is something that gives you the same wobbly sense of what-if-I’m-a-fake deep down in your gut. Maybe it’s your marriage. Maybe it’s your parenting. Maybe it’s your friend group. Maybe it’s your spending habits. Something, somewhere in your life is making you second guess whether you’re getting it right. Even within the Church, striving and insecurity are in full view no matter which way you look. It’s a conversation I have often, with others and with myself: 

    “What if I’m not doing enough for God? How do I know I’m giving my best?

    Underneath the guilt of not trying hard enough, and the pride of not having to, is fear. What if this actually is my best? And what if my best isn’t good enough? What if I’m wasting my time and everybody else’s? What if I’m a disappointment? 

    And how do I know? 

    It doesn’t have to be a mystery. God doesn’t expect us to live in tense uncertainty until we die. (Surprise! Not that bleak after all!) There’s actually a lot in the Bible about how we can live our lives in peace and security, certain of who we are and what we need to do. And that, friends, is what this essay is going to be about.

    Let’s begin with one of the greatest hits of all time: Proverbs 3:5-6.

    “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (v. 5)

    The first half of this classic is so well known we might make the mistake of skimming over it without fully absorbing the profound truth it offers us.

The first step to living a peaceful, secure life is letting go.

    The truth is that our resume, no matter what it is, just isn’t going to cut it. Paul famously makes this point in his letter to the Philippians, listing his dazzling credentials like a 17-year-old WASP applying to Harvard. 

    “[...]If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

    But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”

    Philippians 3:4b-7

   The best we have to offer, the biggest and shiniest trophies we’ve got, we can just go ahead and count as loss. It’s a wash. Subpar. The dread we feel of inadequacy is completely deserved. The Message paraphrases this thought as, “The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for.”

    And posturing is completely useless, because Romans 3:23 makes it painfully clear that we’re all in the same boat; “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

    I’ve checked the Greek word for “all” there. It’s pantes. (It means “all.”)

    I bring this up because these are the things we have to acknowledge in order to understand why we must trust God and not ourselves. There’s no getting around the fact that we’ve all missed the mark of righteousness, and nothing we bring to the table is going to change that. If we’re going to believe the Bible, these are inarguable facts; so do yourself a favor, embrace your inner nihilist, and let go. 

    This becomes a lot easier when you read that Romans 3 goes on to say: “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” That same “all.” Yes, our resume does not cut it, and yes there is nothing that we can bring to the table to change that. But the radiant good news of the gospel is that it was never meant to. In all things, at all moments, our justification comes through Jesus. He is our Best. He is our Enough. This isn’t just a cosmic, spiritual concept - Moment by moment, Jesus is our adequacy. Throughout the mundane granularity that is human living, it is not us but Christ living in us (Gal 2:20); thus allowing us to release our hold on our own abilities, take the pressure off of our own understanding, and turn our eyes to the only One who actually has any idea what’s going on. 

    Which brings us to step two: 

    “... in all your ways submit to him...”

    Proverbs 3:6a

    The King James Version phrases it as “acknowledge,” and The Passion Translation says to “Become intimate with him in whatever you do.” No matter how you put it, the core thought is that the input and will of God should be something we are perpetually attentive to. If you’re like me, at first glance that might sound like a ton of effort. The thought of constantly straining to hear God’s voice every second of every day is enough to give any normal person a migraine. But that’s because we’re looking at it from the completely wrong angle. 

    In the same way that it’s a lot easier to hear a friend when they don’t have to shout from another room, it’s a lot easier to hear the Lord when we’re dwelling with Him. Peace of mind and purpose in life begins when we abide in God’s presence. That’s right kids, now that we’ve embraced our inner nihilist we’re embracing our inner mystic next. 

    A year ago, a mentor of mine (hi Pam!) lent me a book called The Practice of the Presence of God, and it rocked my life. The subject/author of the book was a 17th century French monk named Brother Lawrence. Born Nicolas Herman to poor parents in 1614, Brother Lawrence joined the Carmelite order as a young man and lived out his days in relative obscurity, working as the monastery cook until his health gave out. Even the book he is credited with was compiled after his death, composed of letters he wrote and conversations recorded by others. And yet, this man has had a profound impact on the Christian faith for the past four centuries, influencing Catholics and Protestants alike. Why? Because Brother Lawrence knew that he was loved by God and lived entirely to love Him in return, seeking nothing but His face. 

“I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the presence of God. For my part I keep myself retired with Him in the depth of centre of my soul as much as I can; and while I am so with Him I fear nothing; but the least turning from Him is insupportable.”

       There comes a point of intimacy with God when you can’t imagine life, not one single second,  without Him. The longer and more fully you gaze on Jesus, the dimmer the rest of the world grows. The Psalmist expresses it this way:

    “One thing I ask from the Lord,

    this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

    and to seek him in his temple.”

    Psalm 27:4

    More than anything else, the observance made by everyone who encountered Brother Lawrence was that he was a man of profound peace. He was a man fully at rest, regardless of circumstance; in meditation, on the road, washing dishes, wherever. What the spiritualists call “mindfulness”, or “centeredness”, or “groundedness”, or what have you does in fact exist - There is a state of mind available to human beings in which we experience true respite.

Once we let go, we are able to settle in. The presence of the Lord is the safest place to be.

    He is our adequacy, our righteousness, and our Good Shepherd. Psalm 23 poetically describes the flawless guidance we can expect when we submit our ways to Him. In the gospel of John, Jesus Himself tells us that good fruit, the outcome of a purposeful life, is only possible when we’re abiding in His presence. 

    “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
    John 15:5

    This is the How. This is the place we have to live from in order to be free of the fear of falling short and missing it. And, in my opinion, this is the hardest part. As it so often happens, What is a natural overflow of How. 

    Step three: 

    “... and he will make your paths straight.”

    Proverbs 3:6b

    Sincere trust in the Lord and consistent closeness to His heart begets direction. The New Living Translation says, “He will show you which path to take.” The Message says, “He’s the one who will keep you on track.” All this time that we’ve (I’ve) been spinning our (my) wheels, God’s promise has been hiding in plain sight. And, respectfully, while the Lord does have thoughts and feelings about where we go to college and who we marry, I would like to argue that the essence of our marching orders is far more simple. 

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

    And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

    and to walk humbly with your God.”

    Micah 6:8

    That’s right, kids. It’s literally right there in a minor prophet, not an unknowable mystery hiding in subtext and hermeneutics. This is what the humans are supposed to do. When you boil your life down, and all the details evaporate, this is what should be left. Why? Because it’s what the Lord has asked of us. 

“ Let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please God, that perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity.”

— Brother Lawrence

Once we let go of our own understanding and settle into God’s presence, we are able to continue forward in confidence.

It allows us a focus that transcends the chaos raging all around us, insulating us against distraction and insecurity. It is for this reason that we cannot be shaken. The ground beneath our feet is clear, precise, and solid. 

    Doing less doesn’t mean doing nothing - It means doing only that which really matters. We allow the divine curation of what we emphasize in our hearts. It’s very Marie Kondo. And when we’ve recalibrated our self-measurement to God’s expectations of us rather than our own, we find ourselves much less defeated. 

    This doesn’t mean “letting ourselves off the hook” when it comes to our faults. Don’t worry, reformed friends, I’m not arguing for that at all. 1 John 1:10 strongly expresses the seriousness with which we must take our fallen nature: 

    “If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.”

    Sin is gravely serious. It’s an offense against a Holy God, and we have no right at all to excuse or downplay the implications of that. But for the redeemed, the story goes further. When we actively acknowledge our wrongdoing, we are then able to move forward in freedom. 

     “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”

    1 John 1:9

    Just as much as confession, we can’t afford to miss the moving forward. We can’t afford to waste the freedom Jesus bought for us. It’s a trap of the enemy, designed to take from us whatever he can possibly manage to take. Don’t let him. 

    Included in The Practice of the Presence of God is a list of observances of the way Brother Lawrence lived his life, my favorite of which is the following: 

    “That he was very sensible of his faults, but not discouraged by them.” 

   We can know our failings without being buried under them. Self-awareness doesn’t necessitate the constant dredging up of shortcomings. Know your faults, by all means, but please don’t burn through your peace being discouraged over them. We have access to better. 

    This is what Jesus meant when He said, “My yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matt 11:30) Not that life will be easy as a follower of Christ, but that it will be a life worth living. And what has been asked of us, we bear with the help of the One who asks it. What a beautiful promise. Rest and purpose, in perfect balance to each other. 

    Let go, settle in, then continue forward. 

    For those who are tired of being tired. For those who are exhausted with their own weariness. For those whose souls are ready to give out altogether - This is the answer. The How, the What, and the Why all bound up into Who. The good news goes so far beyond the rescue of our souls from damnation, although that would be more than enough. Here and now, in the land of the living, the Lord has not withheld from us what we need in order to do what is good. Now take a deep breath, shed the weight of the things you weren’t meant to carry, and step into it. You, child of God and co-heir with Christ, are defined by the blood of Jesus; and He isn’t a fake. This is who you are. This is what you need to do. 

    This is the burden worth bearing. And as is so often the case, it’s simple but it isn’t easy. It will cost you your trophies, your career projections, your ministry goals, your 5 year financial plan, your carefully curated social status, and the unbearable weight of knowing none of it was enough. Dear child, loosen that white-knuckle grip on your life and find freedom. 

    Trust God, let go, and just do less. 

“That we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment, that we may beg His assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us, offering them to Him before we do them,

and giving Him thanks when we have done.”

Brother Lawrence

- Kyle

Church Clothes

    I’ve been listening to a lot of old Charlie Hall and Matt Maher recently. I say “old”, it’s only been about ten years since the albums I’ve had on repeat came out. And, if we’re being completely honest (and we have to be - that’s the rule of blogs), I didn’t actually listen to those albums when they had their moment in 2009. I just heard some singles covered at worship sets attended by my older brother and his friends, and they stuck with me. Until this year, I had never even heard the original recording of “Constant” off of Hall’s The Rising. Frankly, I like the arrangement I heard in the summer of 2011 better. Sorry, Charlie. 

    Regardless, I’ve been listening to it almost compulsively for several months, along with other music recorded in the same circles around that time. The way the album is engineered, the synthesizers, the vocal styling, all call back to mind a very specific era in the American church that I think, perhaps, I miss. It was like the tension before a wave breaks, but stretched out for years and years: an underground, scrappy, for-us-by-us Christian subculture. 

    As it usually happens, the primary product of this movement was music. The arts are always the forerunner of any significant shakeup, religious or otherwise; that’s why we call it “avant-garde.” Granted, that phrase tends to apply primarily to creative innovation that is weird and inscrutable, but not every movement that leads the way into the next thing has to follow those rules. It can also be beautiful, heartfelt, accessible, even comforting. 

    I still remember the first time I heard Phil Wickham’s “True Love.” I was 14, in 10th grade, and had always gone to larger churches that identified with the SBC. That is to say, the music I was exposed to was primarily bland family-friendly CCM, plus a little alternative Christian metal in my teens. More than anything, it was a cultural practice. I dunno, we’re Christians. Here’s some Christian media. Guess this is what we’ll consume, as Philippians 4:8 echoes in the distance.

    “So you know how Christian music sucks?” My older brother Mark says to me, pulling YouTube up on the desktop during Thanksgiving break. 

     “Yeah,” I say to him, not really in the mood (because no 14-year-old is ever in the mood.) 

    “This is not like that.”

    “Okay,” say I, still not in the mood. 

    This was not like that. 

    This blew my freaking 14-year-old mind. 

    It wasn’t that it was better recorded, or more musically clever, or more impressively sung than the other music I’d heard that also identified as “Christian.” It was the incisive sincerity in each and every note. It blew my mind; “He actually means it.” 

    Let’s stop here a moment. Yes, I do know that Philip David Wickham was not the first man in history to write genuine worship music. I do know that the Holy Spirit did not touch down for the first time when Kim Walker started fronting Jesus Culture. I am absolutely not in any way stating or attempting to imply that after 2,000 years, Bethel’s worship ministry kicked into gear and finally we were all doing church right. 

    Here’s what I’m saying: Charlie Hall, Matt Maher, Phil Wickham, Jesus Culture, Bethel, Passion, etc. provided a new context for the Christian faith for young, disillusioned believers who wanted nothing to do with their parents’ religion. It was less innovation than it was reclamation. It was a means of taking ownership. 

So why did the youth of the early-to-mid-aughts want to separate themselves from mainline Evangelical Christianity so badly?

    Let’s go back to the concept of the avant-garde and its relationship to countercultural movements. For every movement, trend, or era, there are two defining factors: music and clothes. From jazz and flapper dresses to emo and eyeliner, music and clothes are the primary way that the counterculture sets itself up in opposition to the mainstream. Both mediums are deliberately intended to upend social mores deemed unnecessary, oppressive, or morally wrong by the countercultural participants. 

    It really hasn’t been that long since the average Evangelical church couldn’t get away with having loud drums in the worship service. I can still remember when the massive church I attended in Woodstock weathered backlash for simply adding a separate contemporary service. The very idea that loud drums were happening somewhere on a given Sunday morning was just too much for a surprising amount of people to take. But, lest we be too harsh toward the past, let us remember the immortal words of the Reverend Johnny Hunt on the matter: 

    “If loud drums are what it takes to bring people to Jesus, play ‘em until my ears bleed.”

    In that moment, however - at least from where I sat - Johnny Hunt was the outlier. 

    In addition to loud drums, the list of the profane included jeans, tattoos, sneakers, clothes that showed skin or wear, unnatural hair colors, and so on. These were battlegrounds across the nation, but especially in the southeast. Churches split over splitting hairs, members were expelled for stepping out of line, and, perhaps worst of all, outsiders were never allowed in to begin with. The American Evangelical church was a bubble carefully guarded by precise guidelines and expectations. Instead of a family, we had an exacting and vengeful HOA. 

    It was this concept of maintaining separation from the profane that drove nearly every aspect of evangelical life. It motivated a forceful push-back against the liberal tide through conservative political action, faith-based education, and internally produced media. This greenhouse ecosystem was designed to prevent the children, in particular, from ever experiencing any contact with the secular world whatsoever. The irony of this dogged isolationism is that it produced a subculture that was not in the world, but it was of the world. It was temporally-minded, self-centered, product-focused, and appearance-prioritizing tribalism that devastated souls and dishonored the name of God. It was the very worst kind of profanity. 

    From 1999 to 2008, church membership in America dropped from 70% to 61%. 

    Nine percent in nine years; an unprecedented decline. Obviously, something or somebody must be to blame, and in most of my circles the culprit was assumed to be postmodernism: The Church is dying because the times are evil and the culture has forgotten God. However, there were dissenting voices in the great wide spectrum of Christianity that had other ideas: Perhaps the Church is dying because God’s people have forgotten their mission. 

    And so all of the misfits who had been left out, pushed out, and run out of the mainstream church staged a coup. Tattooed young rebels in torn-up jeans played the drums as loud as they could in warehouses, schools, backyards, theaters, and anywhere else they could find to host a church plant on Sunday morning because they wanted to bring people to Jesus. Come as you are, they shouted, you belong here. Ministries sprouted up left and right founded on the principle that regardless of history and outward appearance, God pursues the ones he loves. 

    The buzzword was “relevant”, but perhaps a more accurate term would be “accessible.” We were done with petty exclusivity and shiny facades. 

We took our church clothes and we burned them.

    Now, this is the part of the show where we stop and acknowledge that I am not relaying new information. You can step into any mainstream American church today and hear “church culture” disavowed and criticized. Visit any standard church website and see reassurances that there is no dress code, come as you are, all are welcome. Established bodies and plants alike constantly work to distance themselves from the inhospitality linked to the Evangelical identity, and good for them! The renewed zeal for the essentials of the Gospel has been immensely encouraging to my faith. 

    From the music to the clothes to the signs outside the entrance, accessibility has become one of the most vital considerations of ministry. Will it meet people? Will it encourage people? Will it show Jesus to people? If the answer isn’t “no”, let’s all calm down. Even at my fairly conservative family-oriented church, the worship leaders have tattoos and the preachers are wearing sneakers. 

    So this is a good thing, right? 

    Yes…? 

    But also, no. 

    It’s inevitable that anything that connects with people will become popular, and anything that becomes popular will be commodified. And lo, we have famous pastors, worship leaders, and cultural figures whose celebrity is derived from the very anti-establishment sentiments we just talked about. Do we drag them out to the guillotine for this? Nah, not today. The mob is just as responsible for commodification as the leadership, if not more so. We’re consumers. It’s what we do. 

    It’s more or less a fact that counter-culture will always go mainstream; it will just be a more palatable, watered-down version of itself. And so here we are, in the midst of a new brand of mainstream cultural Christianity, and it is just as harmful and inaccessible as our parents’ practice. 

    So I guess that’s what this essay is about. We can point fingers all day, but what are we doing wrong? And how do we do better?

    The primary thing I think we need to admit to is the rise of Shiny Church™. We’ve been accused of choosing style over substance for years, but let’s own that for a second and really dig into it. One can more obviously see the tendency toward superficiality in megachurches, but the truth is that we’re all guilty of it: Shiny Church isn’t just about numbers. It deals in a specific aesthetic, vocabulary, and currency. 

    I think most of you reading this have a good sense of what I mean by aesthetic and vocabulary. You’ve observed this on some level, and you more or less agree. We can unpack all those things some other day. However, it’s worth sitting for a moment on the currency element of contemporary mainstream Christianity: The quickest means of earning status in the Millennial Church is the evidence of faith. 

    We perform righteousness. We do. We do it for likes on Instagram, and status in our faith communities, and money. We do it in the exact same way that believing people have for thousands of years, we just have different tools at our disposal. We know this about ourselves and we do it anyways, for our own gain and our own glory. And the really messed up thing is that we talk about this literally all the time. On Instagram. 

    Real quick: I’d like to propose that pious captions do not cancel out performative imagery. I’m sure I’ll get on that high horse for a whole essay someday, but for now here’s what I’ve got to say (And truly, I mean this as kindly as I can): 

    Before you assume that your position as a Christian Influencer is okay because you post to share faith and encouragement, please consider whether or not the medium is cancelling the message. A picture is worth a 1,000 words, and you can only cram 2,200 characters into a caption. The photo’s gonna win. Be careful. 

    And in truth, that’s all I’m saying. We need to stay alert and be careful. Patting ourselves on the back is not going to protect us from going the same way as the past generations we want so badly to be different from. The preachers are wearing sneakers, sure, but now they have price tags for thousands of dollars. The garb of dissention has become the uniform of the new establishment, and it signals wealth and opulence and cool instead of accessibility. 

The fact is, we are building a religion that our children will reject.

     There’s this concept of generational cycles in the Bible, specifically in the Old Testament. It’s one of the things the Children of Israel are best known for, actually. God does something amazing, works some sort of incredible miracle and delivers the nation from their enemies hands, and everybody’s way into it. Until, you know. They aren’t. Over and over again, we see Israel fall away from the Lord into idolatry and cultural sin so fast it gives us whiplash. How could anybody be that flakey? Didn’t all those people just see a Red Sea parted? Didn’t those people just now see the walls of Jericho brought down to dust? Who even are these people? 

   Well, I’d argue that it starts making a lot more sense when read in context. And not only that, but it also starts to look uncomfortably familiar. In Judges 2, we see a generation of Israel confronted with their disobedience by the angel of the Lord and turning immediately to repentance (v. 2-5). But as time passes, things begin to slide: 

    “After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals.”

    Judges 2:10-11

    The people had no firsthand knowledge of who God was, and so they lost their reverence; the Why behind the What. Whether or not we want to admit it, the truth is that time plus repetition equals ritual without context. Faith becomes religion, and religion is flexible and self-serving. This is the mistake we make when we elevate “the way we do church” above the Gospel; while that mindset is certainly harmful to us, the real victims will be the generation who comes after us. We will leave an inheritance of empty language and misguided pageantry, and there will be no way to distinguish between the worship of the Living God and the worship of everything else. 

    In addition to generational cycles, continuing on through Judges reveals the even more disappointing pattern of cultural cycles. Starting in Judges 3, we see the beginning of a familiar scenario: 

    “The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that He sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.  But when they cried out to the Lord, He raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, who saved them.” 

    Judges 3:7-9

    The passage goes on to say that after the eight years of captivity it took for Israel to repent, the land enjoyed forty years of peace under the new leader Othniel (v. 11). Considering the average lifespan at that time, neither eight nor forty years was too terribly long. But then, Othniel died. 

    “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and because they did this evil the Lord gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel.”

    Judges 3:12

    Hooh, boy. That was quick. And, once again, Israel was given over into captivity as punishment for their sin - this time for eighteen years (v. 14). Which still wasn’t that long, if you really think about it. Clearly it was just long enough, though, and the people realized their error and cried out for deliverance again. Likely a lot of the same people, if you really think about it. The point is, God raised up another champion and the land had peace for eighty years. And that is, actually, a pretty long time. 

    But then: 

    “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead.”

    Judges 4:1

    Twenty years of captivity, forty years of peace. 

    “The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.”

    Judges 6:1

    Just this little slice of history, Judges 3 through 6, 206 years total, includes four distinct instances of the Israelites leaving God. Considering the average lifespan during this point in history appears to be between 100 and 120, we are absolutely not talking about the result of a faithful generation dying out and the kids ruining everything. These were the same people ruining everything, over and over.

It’s the difference between a people with no firsthand knowledge and a people who know and simply forget.

    But why? How? What is the sin the Israelites keep doing that’s so terrible, and why is it relevant to a conversation about the modern church? 

To really understand that, we have to define what it is that scripture keeps referring to as “evil.” Let’s go back to the beginning of Judges 3:

    “The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.”

    Judges 3:5-6

    What we see here is a progression of compromises. The people of Israel, who have finally come into the land they were promised when they left Egypt, are surrounded by people groups who have their own customs, practices, and gods. In fact, in verse 4 it explicitly states that the Lord left those people in the land on purpose to see if Israel would remain loyal to Him when it was no longer convenient. As we’ve already seen, the answer was “no.” And it started when the Israelites began playing by the world’s rules instead of staying obedient to the word given to them through Moses. We do evil when we forget God, and we forget God when we begin to allow grey areas in our loyalty.  

    And this happens fast in the absence of good leadership.

    “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced.” 

    2 Kings 17:7-8 (emphasis mine)

   Note the difference here from the pattern we saw in Judges. Rather than bringing the people back into right relationship with the Lord, the leaders in this passage doubled down on the idolatry of the nation. 

    Idolatry. 

    There’s a heavy word for you. 

    If you’ve been around the church scene for a minute, I don’t have to tell you that an idol isn’t just a statue made out of wood or stone. An idol is anything we put before God. It can be a thing, but it can also be a person or an idea. Essentially, any noun. That being said, don’t allow the broad strokes of the concept to allow you to miss the nuance. 

    One of the most famous and specific accounts of Israel turning to idolatry comes just after the miracle of being freed from Egyptian slavery. As Moses is literally speaking to God on Mount Sinai, the people below start getting antsy. 

    “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’”

    Exodus 32:1

    And there it is. That, right there, is the whole thing spelled out. Israel turned to idols when they forgot the immanence of God. They no longer perceived Him as present, so they had something created that would be. 

    “He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, ‘These are your gods,  Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

     When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”

    Exodus 32:4-5  

    Don’t skip over Aaron trying to shoehorn this created thing into the worship of the Living God. How many of our idols fall under the umbrella of “church”? How many of the things we build altars to in our hearts masquerade as “ministry” or “Christian Values”? How many of those things do we hold onto because they provide the same comfort to us that the calf provided to Israel? 

    The calf offered something tangible. It was a physical, empirical thing that the people could see and touch and dance around. In contrast to the invisible God they had followed out of Egypt and the leader who had disappeared to speak to Him, all of their senses confirmed that this entity was real and present. 

    In addition to that, the calf offered something familiar. The Egyptian religious tradition was centered on a pantheon of gods who were worshiped in man-made forms, and the Israelites had been in Egypt a long, long time. The God who had brought them out was almost a foreign thought, and the unknown can be frightening. Why not seek comfort in the same old thing? 

    Last of all, the calf offered something immediate. They didn’t have to wait on someone else’s timing for a next step. We want a thing. Aaron, make us a thing. Here, take our stuff. Make the thing. No waiting, no delays. Just quick, controllable results; Here’s the thing. 

    The golden calf isn’t just a silly joke. In this account, we see a reflection of every systemic solution to the discomfort of reckoning with the mystery of God. Idols are systems, and systems are an inevitable component of organized religion. Whether we’re looking at the Catholic tradition, the Orthodox tradition, or the Baptist tradition, the trap of systems can’t be avoided. We are constantly striving to invent a means of ensuring our own holiness. We want control of our own destiny, and so we either create a new system or we fall back on an old one. 

    “By some such stubborn tendency toward error Fundamentalism in our day is moving back toward spiritual slavery. The observation of days and times is becoming more and more prominent among us. ‘Lent’ and ‘holy week’ and ‘good’ Friday are words heard more and more frequently upon the lips of gospel Christians. We do not know when we are well off.”

    A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

    This is not to say that all ritual is unequivocally harmful; let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. I actually have a great affection for the church calendar, which I talked about at length in my last blog Joy & Light. And, beyond my personal feelings, it cannot be denied that scripture commands us to do certain things at certain times for certain purposes. It always comes down to context, and ritual within context is beautiful. In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul gives us an excellent template for how we should approach this element of faith:

    “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

    1 Corinthians 11:23-26

    Remembrance. What we do, we do to remember. We do to acknowledge. We do to set our eyes on the Kingdom of God, both as it is now and as it is to come. This applies both to ancient rituals and the rituals we have developed in more recent years. Liturgy and rock church, commentaries and Bible studies, feasts and conferences -  All function as a formal means of worshiping God by remembering who He is, what He’s done, and what He’s promised to do. Ritual within context is beautiful. Still, let us not be so arrogant that we miss the advent of our own idolatrous systems. 

And can we avoid that trajectory? Can we, really?

   Honestly? No. 

    We can strive, and police, and obsess over every cultural moment, but it won’t be enough. All of the sneakers and impeccably torn tees in the world cannot save us. We, as a culture at large, will go the way of our parents, our grandparents, and the children of Israel. We have to; it’s been the most basic truth of human nature since the Fall. We simply cannot escape failure, and thus we cannot escape the disdain of our descendants at large. 

    But. 

    (And praise God that there is always a “but.”)

    That is not to say we cannot operate within our culture with integrity as individuals. We can, and indeed must, keep showing up in our churches, our communities, and yes -  Even online. There is no reason we shouldn’t declare the glory of the Lord everywhere we are, and that does include Instagram. Far be it from me to insist we seclude ourselves from public places so that the sacred is never “tainted.” The practice of sharing testimony on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is as much ritual as anything else, and ritual within context is beautiful. We just need to keep a finger on the pulse of our intentions and our audience. Per 1 Corinthians 8:11, we’re responsible for the little Christians who might stumble over our Shiny Christian™ images and miss the meat of what we want to say. 

    Stay alert and be careful. 

    That is what we can do. We can take stewarding the faith of the younger people in our lives with all the gravity that it deserves.  We can teach and disciple and live out the truths we claim to represent. Instead of clamoring on about Christian Values or joining lynch mobs on Twitter, we can daily lay down our lives and take up our crosses and be like Jesus. Even when nobody’s watching. And, most of all, we can live in humility. So that when our children reject the hypocrisy of our systems, we cheer them on. 

    Lord willing, the kids are coming for our church clothes. Chances are it’s already beginning. They will build a bonfire out of our sneakers for the sake of the Gospel, and Lord willing we will be the ones handing them the matches. Or, if you like, the torch. 

    May they continue the work of building the Kingdom of God on our ashes. 

“Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture,

will praise You forever;

from generation to generation,

we will proclaim Your praise.”

Psalm 79:13

- Kyle

Joy & Light

   Is it the most wonderful time of the year? Is it, really? According to my personal research, nobody over the age of 13 seems to think so. It was an informal study, but still. Data is data.

   Christmas is an odd beast for several reasons, not the least of which being how many details of its modern form are relevant only to the very youngest among us. Santa Claus, for instance. How long is the average length of belief in this mythical character? The first five years of human life? Maybe six? By seven, surely, the kill-joy agents of growing up begin to circle and dubiously ask, “Aren’t you a little old to believe in Santa?”

   Yet, culturally speaking, Santa Claus is so central to the Christmas season that there are movies on movies on movies expanding on his narrative and the associated “magic of Christmas” which do not mention any religious context for the holiday, whatsoever.

   (I’ll go ahead and slow this roll a moment to assure you that, no, I am not teeing up for a Christ-in-Christmas rant. This essay is not against anything. I have no bone to pick with Santa Claus. Well I do, but that’s a whole other essay and it’s not what you think.)

   What I’m driving at is the stark schism between Christmas in childhood and Christmas in adulthood. You can see it so clearly in the eyes of parents as they watch their children tear into gifts with gleeful abandon. It’s a look that is both gratified and hungry; gratified that they have managed to stoke their young ones’ sense of wonder, and for the opportunity to borrow a piece of that wonder for themselves. Hungry, because they can’t get the fullness of that wonder back.

   We get older, and the holidays become complicated. The season no longer feels separate and special. The tensions we carry throughout the year, cultural, familial, and personal, still exist in December; and no amount of roasting chestnuts or jingle bells seems to make them disappear. If anything, we become even more aware of our sadness by its aching juxtaposition with a celebration defined by joy.  

So we retreat into our traditions.

   Cookies, trees, candlelight, and yes: Santa Claus. Anything and everything that reminds us of being too small to look around and realize that “hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.” We bury ourselves in Bing Crosby and stilted stop-motion reindeer. Our traditions become our constants, and we feel a little lost when an element of the ritual is lost. Somebody moves house, a decoration is thrown out, a loved one passes, and suddenly nothing feels right anymore. We lose another piece of Christmas, and we can’t get it back.

   This unstable quality of Christmas traditions has been a source of great frustration to me for many years. What shall we do, if even Bing Crosby cannot save us? Where can we turn? Is there any sure way of feeling that the world is right? That Christmastime is, in fact, here?

   I believe there is. This essay is on the liturgical season of Advent.

   Over the past year, especially the past six months, I have had an increasing interest in High Church practices. Much of this is driven by a wider interest in the full spectrum of scripture-based Christianity, given that I was raised in the narrowly southern evangelical Bible Belt and have little formal knowledge of other denominations’ styles and observances. But even more than that, there is an anciently poignant quality to liturgy that always stirs up in my soul something I can only describe as the kinship among the saints. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit has always been the same, and I can feel Him in the old writings and chants just the same as I do singing Hillsong on Sunday morning. I’m sure this is a very common experience for mature believers, but it’s new to me and my mind is still super blown.

   This is in no small part due to the tendency of mainstream American Christianity to fall back on our favorite lifestyle philosophy, Rugged Individualism™. Your faith is between you and God, and everybody else can knock right off. Furthermore, we seem to feel an almost entrepreneurial pressure to walk out this Personal Faith® with avant garde creativity, innovating constantly and imitating no one. It’s an odd thought to us, praying something somebody else has prayed before. Doesn’t that mean throwing out authenticity altogether? And what about all of the things that the Church has been wrong about? Didn’t you know that Jesus wasn’t even born on December 25th?

   Hooh, boy. If that isn’t the favorite. Yes, dear friends, Jesus was not born on December 25th. Judging from a few key details, particularly the fact that the infamous shepherds were out with their flocks, it was likely (say it with me!) mid-to-late September. Furthermore, much of what we consider Christmas decorations and traditions were originally associated with pagan winter solstice festivals and became integrated into the Christmas cliche as the religion spread. That’s right, your mistletoe is Celtic magic.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy heathens.

   So why are we still doing the whole December 25th thing? We all know it’s wrong, your smug cousin alone has shared enough memes to educate the whole of Western Christianity. Yet here we are again each year, merry and bright as ever. Why is that? This may come as a shock to Cousin Devon, but it turns out the celebration of Jesus’ nativity has absolutely nothing to do with throwing the Lord a dope birthday party. We symbolically celebrate Christ’s coming on the 25th of December because of the liturgical calendar. Advent begins at the start of December, Christmastide begins on the 24th, and Epiphany comes twelve days after. Later on is Lent, and then Easter. It’s an annual rhythm with beginnings in the apostolic age of the first century, and while it certainly has not been permanently fixed, you can hear the echoes of the early believers in every ritual and tradition.

   That’s why we do it. Tradition. It’s the way we’ve all been doing it for as long as any of us can remember, so we’re going to keep on doing it. And you know what? That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.    

   The Spirit of God is an amazing Being, always in a perpetual state of renewing and revealing. We see this phenomenon first and foremost applied to scripture, but it also comes into play with the writings, habits, and practices of the Church throughout the ages. Is the liturgical calendar as essential to Christian living as the Bible itself? We’re going to go with, “no.” However, there is a true sacredness to the observances of the saints that, when illuminated by the Spirit, can reach down into our souls and pull heaven that much closer to earth.

    For me, at least recently, one of the most powerful aspects of these traditions is the acute awareness that there was a time when they did not exist. We so take for granted being born into a world that has Christmas. The first chapters of Luke are concrete fixtures of our reality, remembered by our parents’ parents being sincerely lisped by Linus under a hand-painted spotlight. Yet they have not always been.

The season of Advent reminds us that there was a time before.

   There was a time when being in right relationship to God meant the constant, nationwide striving of a people to remain pure. Since the Fall, this standard was precarious at best; difficult to attain and always temporary. But the Lord saw the hopelessness of His people, and He promised to save them.

“I see Him, but not now;

   I behold Him, but not near.

A star will come out of Jacob;

   a scepter will rise out of Israel.”

   Numbers 24:17

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,

   though you are small among the clans of Judah,

out of you will come for Me

   One who will be ruler over Israel,

Whose origins are from of old,

   from ancient times.”

   Micah 5:2

   “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

   Isaiah 7:14

   Immanuel meaning, of course, “God with us.” The Old Testament prophets foretold a king who would bring the presence of God to the world, permanently. The chasm between creation and Creator would finally be closed, and we would once again be whole. The weight of sin, “the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor,” would be shattered (Isa. 9:4).

   For thousands of years, the people waited for this Messiah. For around 450, the Intertestamental Period (“deuterocanonical” for our Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends), they waited in silence. One can only imagine how disheartening it was, generation after generation, to long for the fulfillment of such a promise: That Emmanuel would come to ransom captive Israel.

   And then, all at once, the Son of God appeared.

   It began with the angel Gabriel’s visitation to Zechariah, Jesus’ relative, promising a son who would “go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17). Less than six months later, Mary received a message from Gabriel as well.

   “‘You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.’”

   Luke 1:31-33

   The first chapter of Luke is absolutely packed with rejoicing. When Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was well into her own pregnancy with Jesus’ cousin John, she immediately recognizes that Mary is carrying the Messiah and breaks into praise. Mary responds with a spontaneous song overflowing with delight and awe at God’s faithfulness, recalling the promises made to her ancestors that were now, of all things, being fulfilled through her. Zechariah also sings at the birth of his son John, prophesying over the near arrival of the Savior:

“‘Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,

   because He has come to His people and redeemed them.

He has raised up a horn of salvation for us

   in the house of His servant David

(as He said through His holy prophets of long ago).’”

   Luke 1:68-70

   The time comes for Jesus to be born, and through a bit of bureaucratic inconvenience He is, indeed, born in Bethlehem. An angel appears to nearby shepherds (the ones with the flocks, remember?) and delivers one of the most famous speeches of all time:

“I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”

   “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Luke 2:10-11

   A little later the magi from the east come as well, having read the signs foretold by the prophets that the True King has arrived. Matthew 2:10 says that when they realized they had found Him, they were overjoyed.

   When Jesus is brought to be consecrated in the temple, He is met by two elderly prophets: Simeon and Anna. Both had been awaiting the coming of the Savior their entire lives, and both had the incomprehensible privilege of beholding Him with their own eyes and speaking the word of God over Him (Luke 2:22-38).

   When we sing about joy coming to the world, this is what we mean. A heart-bursting excitement, an uncontainable hum of delight that all of heaven and nature sings: That Christ had come to make His blessings known, to wipe out the curse of sin and death as far as it is found. These names and phrases can become so familiar to us that we forget that Jesus’ birth changed everything.    

   “Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

   The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

   John 1:12-14

   After years of silence and waiting on a word from God, the Word Himself came to us. After years of striving to reach God through the barrier of the Fall, He broke through the barrier to bring us back, and the first blow was struck in the Great Offensive against Death and Darkness. The age-old anxiety, “How shall we please God?” was answered in the form of a baby born to a no-name girl in a no-name town in a no-name nation, exactly as promised. And thus, the hopes and fears of all the years were indeed met that night, likely in mid-to-late September, in the little town of Bethlehem.

So we celebrate,

starting four Sundays out from the 25th of December.

   Already the sun is sliding out of sight closer to 5PM than any of us are comfortable with, and every year it seems so hard to believe that it’s happened the same way all the years before. My friends with seasonal depression tuck their heads down and try to ignore the gnawing sense of Not Enough Light. I, too, have found myself struggling through the shorter days. As I drive down the dark road, having only just finished work, the unease bubbles in the back of my throat. I obsessively cycle through everything not done yet, everything that could go wrong, and everything I wish I could get to but know I won’t because the daylight is being steadily stolen away from me. This is what December is like in adulthood: Not enough time, not enough energy, not enough you. The year begins to feel cramped, barren, faded, and used up.

   And then we drag into the mix one of the most significant holy days of the entire church year, which again has absolutely nothing to do with when Christ was actually born. It’s easy to become irritated with the current state of affairs. What is the purpose of a chronologically inaccurate celebration blended with pagan rituals and symbols? Does that alone ruin Christmas? Or should we also pile on the indignity of commercialism? The desecrating effects of cultural appropriation? Is there anything of true worthiness left here?

   Of course there is.

   God has not abandoned Christmas to its cultural assimilation to the American dream, nor has He abandoned it to the encroaching dusk. He is not dead, nor does He sleep. What could be a more fitting setting for us to remember the time before the Messiah’s birth and to look for His second coming than the winter solstice?

   “When the wind is coldest, and the sky darkest, we’re invited to experience anew the warmth and light that’s existed all along.”

    Amanda Bible Williams

   As I wrote in my last essay, Save the Cat!, it’s been my experience that God reveals Himself most perfectly through contrast. How better for us to comprehend the revolutionary moment of the Light entering darkness than to endure the long winter night? How better for us to truly grasp and rejoice over the truth that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

   Has not, will not, cannot.

   There was a time when all of creation was cramped, barren, faded, and used up; and then, all at once, a thrill of hope. Glad tidings and great joy. Unto us, a Savior was born. And now, every December, we can all gather together around this Light of the World to celebrate His arrival and anticipate His return.

   And this is why I have come to dearly love the Advent season. It’s a time of hope and wonder, of leaning into the thin places where eternity draws close. It’s a vital exercise in gratefulness and awe. It’s a much-needed touchstone of familiarity, of comfort and joy. The beauty of Advent, and the liturgical calendar at large, is the gentle rhythm of remembrance and renewal. When seen in the right light, the True Light, traditions are our way home.

   As I drive through the deepening blue of winter twilight, I no longer see the dark. I see the lights shining through it, and I can feel it in my soul. A thrill of hope. A spark of joy. A jolt of anticipation.

   O come, o come Emmanuel.

   - Kyle

Save the Cat!

    You know how sometimes you’ll be driving, and several minutes pass, and suddenly you’re looking around like, “I have no idea how I got here, I have no memory of the last six turns, did I almost kill anybody because I truly do not know”?

    Of course you do. This isn’t a quirky or profound observation, literally everyone does this. Your brain knows when you don’t absolutely have to pay attention and seizes the opportunity to do whatever it heckin’ well pleases and then suddenly, somehow, you’re pulling into your driveway. It’s kind of a miraculous thing, if you really think about it. The way your passive self can operate your body while your active self does other things.

    What’s really fascinating to me is the way I will sometimes become suddenly aware of my own stream of consciousness and discover an entire train of thought happening that I was not even cognizant of. Like a radio station tuning in, the static gives way to actively progressing ideas that I can climb aboard and investigate. It’s kind of delightful, the way we can happen upon our own thinking.

    The following essay is based on one of those discovered trains of thought.

    Well, it’s actually the culmination of several years of mulling, both active and passive. Starting from about 16 or 17, I’ve returned over and over again to this specific philosophical problem and tried to work it out. I’ve generally spent a few days wrestling with it, found a fairly satisfactory answer, and moved on with yet another layer of theological opinion insulating my worldview. Until, of course, it came up again. Because this question is a tough one. It’s the granddaddy of all philosophical questions, and honestly it’s a little arrogant for any of us to think we’ve ever solved it all the way through. It’s far too exponential and, frankly, mysterious for that.

     So, while I am about to tackle it with my very best effort, my resolution of the question is not necessarily something which I believe to be truth. It’s really just an idea that has helped a lot of things make sense to me, and I’m writing it down in the event that it might also help you. But it’s not truth, it’s just an idea. So if you get to the end and it doesn’t help you, that’s fine! Just leave it alone.

    Now, this will be a bit dense, so I’ve included multiple pictures of my cat to break it all up.

Isn't she magnificent?

     Okay, here we go.

    I’ve spent a long time fighting with the nature of the universe and, by association, the nature of knowledge. As a person of faith, it’s an almost daily internal conversation; after all, faith and doubt must by their very definition coexist. This tension is not bad or wrong, it’s actually completely healthy. But there have been many times when doubt has thrown a particularly well-aimed punch, and I have to do the extremely uncomfortable work of stepping outside of the truth I have accepted and look at it all externally. And sometimes, when I’m being especially critical, what I have called Truth no longer adds up outside of its own context. It’s difficult to understand faith when you are removed from its proximity; it doesn’t make sense.

    There have been multiple occasions when I have stepped out of faith and not known whether or not to step back in. Surprisingly, this is most often in times when the Lord is clearly speaking to me.  There is such grandness to the Lord’s voice, even in the mundane. There is such comfort, and hope, and purpose. So of course, in my heart the question begins to grow. Would God really say? Did you really hear? Couldn’t it have just been your own thoughts and desires? How can you be sure?

   And slowly but surely I roll it all back and back and back until I reach the question of God existing at all. Clearly, there is no absolute proof for it. The existence of a divine, intelligent power is entirely impossible to nail down with any satisfaction. Just about anybody, when they’re being absolutely honest with themselves, will tell you that. That is why faith is a choice; whether that faith is in a god or in no god, it is something decided upon by the one holding the belief.

    Even so, arguments can be made. And there are some really great ones out there on both sides, all made by people far more intelligent than I am who have spent a much longer time thinking on it. There are pages and pages of complex intellectual gymnastics written on why God isn’t real, but really I think the biggest and most difficult argument is the fundamental question every single person asks at least one time in their lives.

    “Why is there evil?”

    If God is all-good and all-powerful, why do bad things happen? The narrative of a perfectly loving being that is also perfectly omnipotent simply does not fit the world we see around us. CS Lewis expresses this disconnect extremely well in his book The Problem of Pain:   

“'If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.'”

    It doesn’t take a great deal of looking to find true human suffering in our world. In fact, it doesn’t take a great deal of looking to find it in our own neighborhoods. Many of us have experienced significant pain ourselves, and I can guarantee that any of you who haven’t have an unpleasant surprise coming.

    In every nation, at every level, at every moment, there are innocents being harmed and evildoers prospering. There are atrocities occurring all over the globe this very second which I, personally, cannot even fully process the concept of. It’s absolutely overwhelming.

    If God is all-powerful, how could He allow it?

    I’ve had a theory about this for a while, and as it turns out somebody else has already written a paper on it. From Contextualism to Contrastivism was published in 2004 by the philosopher Jonathan Schaffer, and while I haven’t read the entire thing I can give you a general idea of what it’s about. Contrastivism, or The Contrast Theory of Meaning, is a theory that falls under Epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge (coming from the Greek episteme, meaning “knowledge”, and logos, meaning “logical discourse.”) Basically, Epistemology is trying to answer the question, how do we know things?

And how do we know that we know?

    The classical statement used to prove knowledge is, “S knows that p.” For example, you (S) know that the sky is blue (p). This can get increasingly more complicated, like you know that the sky is blue because your eyes have processed the sensory information of light refracting in our atmosphere and delivered that information to your brain, which in turn analyzed the information and concluded that what you were perceiving is what you have been socially conditioned to recognize as “blue.” Still, even with all of those nuances, this formula is not really a concrete means of establishing absolute truth. What if everyone sees colors differently? What if “you” is actually just a brain in a vat? The whole argument falls apart. So how do we know that we know things?

    Contrastivism proposes instead a three part formula for proving knowledge: “S knows that p rather than q.” You know that the sky is blue rather than red. You know that you’re hot rather than cold. You know that it’s dark rather than light. Unlike its popular counterpart Contextualism, which claims that all knowledge is dependent upon specific context and is therefore relative, Contrastivism asserts that there is room for absolute truth in knowledge, and that we can know what it is based on what it is not.

    And now we begin to get somewhere. We have this concept of the nature of reality, and therefore we can start to grasp the bones of the universe. Which is fairly vital in any discussion concerning God, because scripture tells us that He Himself is the foundation of the cosmos.  

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”

John 1:1-4

    According to the Bible, God’s divine DNA is woven into everything that exists. Stars and planets, ocean and sky, mountains and pebbles, elephants and beetles, and, most of all, you and me. We aren’t God, but we are defined by Him. He is the Great Something from which all other things have their origin.

“For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:16-17

    Not only was God the formative clay from which everything was created, He is still actively sustaining the creation.  Stars and planets, mountains and pebbles, you and me. Which of course, begs yet another question: What the actual does that actually mean? How can God be intrinsically part of us if we are not, ourselves, divine? How can God be distinct from creation if He is actively holding it together?

    Here are some thoughts that have helped me.

    Generally when we think of God, we think of Him more as a person. We list His relatable qualities, describe Him in personable terms, and lean heavily on His incarnate form as Jesus. This is not remotely wrong, but it does sometimes confuse the conversation. There is the specific Character of God, and then there is the general Nature of God; if Character is the cells, marrow, and tissue of God, Nature is the protons and electrons. And while God’s Character is dimly mirrored in us, it is His Nature that we fully embody. He defines the code of existence because He is the author of existence.

Which brings us back to Contrastivism.

    If there is indeed a binary scale of is-to-isn’t that defines all knowledge, we can conclude that it comes from God’s Nature. This means that in order for there to be good, there must also be its opposite: bad. In order for there to be right, there must be wrong. In order for there to be holiness, there must be sin. God could not create a non-contrasting reality, not because He isn’t almighty, but because His Nature demands the existence of opposites. God is who and what He is, and He cannot deny Himself.

“It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain

    So, if God is good, and He could not create a universe without allowing room for evil, why create it at all?

    It doesn’t make very much sense when you think about it. God isn’t lonely, because as a being with three persons He’s all the company He could ever need. God does not require a counterpart, because again, as a being with three persons, He doesn’t need anything else to define His “Self.” We know the Father is the Father rather than the Son. We know the Son is the Son rather than the Holy Spirit, and so on. Each of God’s “Selves” are easily defined by Their distinction from the others. God does not get bored, because He is not confined to the linear progression of time and therefore is literally incapable of having a dull moment. Because, ya know. No moments. God does not need creation.

    So why? Why set all of reality into motion? Why create something good only to allow it to be corrupted?

    Here are some more thoughts that have helped me.

    There’s this book written by Blake Snyder called Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. It’s about the monomyth (or “hero’s journey”) narrative as applied to film and, now on its 23rd printing, it is every bit as prolific as it expected itself to be.

    Snyder coined the title Save the Cat! to describe the decisive moment when the protagonist does something good or brave to establish them as the hero of the story; for instance, when Ripley saves the cat Jonesy in the first Alien. The Save-the-Cat moment is vital to good storytelling because it proves that the protagonist is worthy of our support and investment. It demonstrates integrity, selflessness, and courage. Instead of just merely telling us that the hero is a hero, it shows us.

    I think about this principle all the time. Literally constantly. Pretty much on a loop, to be honest. Because, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am absolutely obsessed with two things: storytelling and integrity. Story doesn’t matter unless you can believe in the characters, and relationships don’t matter unless you can believe in the person.

Without demonstrated integrity, you have flat narratives and untrustworthy people.

    To illustrate my point, I’m going to share a brief anecdote from my Real Life. I would change the names, but frankly I don’t remember any of them so we’ll just stick with improper nouns. So: One evening I went to a local singer/songwriter night to support a friend, and there was this young artist there who also played several songs. Part of the structure of the event was that the artists’ explained the inspiration behind their songs before performing them, and babygirl told us all about her thoughts and feelings and the ways music has helped her process them. A significant theme was the pain and confusion she was feeling over her parents’ divorce and her father moving to Alabama for work. The fun part was that her dad had actually traveled back to Georgia to see her play and was sitting in the front row. So the event ends, and I went up to find her and encourage her as a fellow songwriter/creative female. Along the way, I fell into conversation with the dad.

    I’ll never forget how anxious he was to explain to me how much he loved his daughter and how hard he was trying to do right by her. It wasn’t blustering or self-absolution, either; the earnest, to-the-quick pain flickering behind his eyes was absolutely real. He told me about how God had called him to a ministry in Alabama, and about all of the ways it had been blessed, and about how he called his children every night and came to see them once a month. I love her so much, he kept saying. I just hope she knows I love her.

    She does, I told him. She’s hurt, but she does. And do you know what? Even if she doesn’t fully see it now, when she looks back she will know so well how much she is loved. Because character is proven in imperfect circumstances.

    Which brings us back to the universe. God speaks creation into being, from light to stars to oceans to animals to man, and then He calls it good. But something happens.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?’

“The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’’

‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”

Genesis 3:1-5

    We all know what happens next. Mankind believes the lie that God does not have our best interest at heart, and the relationship is broken. Sin enters the world, and with it comes a serious problem.

“This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.”

1 John 1:5

    God is holy. God is perfectly good, perfectly righteous, and perfectly just without any exception. There is no flaw in Him. There is no fallibility or weakness. There is not one trace of evil. He is entirely pure, and He cannot allow anything of any less purity than Himself into His presence. And thus we have this separation.

“But your iniquities have separated

you from your God;

your sins have hidden His face from you

so that He will not hear.”

Isaiah 59:2

    When mankind fell, a barrier was raised between creation and Creator. It was forged in shame, distrust, and rebellion, and it hurt God deeply. We were no longer able to walk with Him, we were no longer worthy to be called His people, and worst of all, we were no longer alive. As we read in John chapter 1, God is life. And when mankind chose to disobey and reject Him, we rejected life as well: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). That’s why the Levitical sacrificial system was put in place to begin with. The debt had to be paid, and only death would suffice.

    God couldn’t simply overlook the barrier, because He is perfectly just. And God cannot deny Himself. But God also couldn’t allow us to remain lost, indebted, and alone, because He is perfectly loving. God needed to somehow satisfy the fullness of both His Character and His Nature.

“But He was pierced for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on Him,

and by His wounds we are healed.”

Isaiah 53:5

    Salvation is God’s Save-the-Cat.     

   We know that God is willing to lay down Himself rather than allow us to be destroyed by a consequence we completely deserve. S knows that p rather than q. And thus, through the most imperfect situation imaginable, God proves He is always good. Despite the great lie, the great betrayal, and the great separation, God remains faithful, demonstrating radical mercy and impossible grace without compromising a single shred of Himself. And this is how we are able to know and understand the fathomless fullness of who He is: Because we are able to know what He is not.

    I hope this helps. 

“The Lord is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and rich in love.

The Lord is good to all;

He has compassion on all He has made.

All Your works praise You, Lord;

Your faithful people extol You.

They tell of the glory of Your kingdom

and speak of Your might,

so that all people may know of Your mighty acts

and the glorious splendor of Your kingdom.

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,

and Your dominion endures through all generations.

The Lord is trustworthy in all He promises

and faithful in all He does.”

Psalm 145:8-13

    -- Kyle

Your Hardest Hardest

    “I don’t like The Office.”

    “Really? Why?”

    “Well I started the first episode and I just couldn’t get through it. It’s just really terrible.”

    *pinches bridge of nose*

    Okay, look. I get it. I really do. The Office is a slow-burner in a lot of ways. The comedy is awkward and uncomfortable, the writing is a bizarre brand of understated hyperbole, and the characters take seasons to truly develop. Still, I adamantly believe all the way down to my toes that it is some of the best storytelling that we have managed to achieve as a species, and I furthermore believe that all of the aforementioned characteristics are among the reasons why.

    Once you’ve seen the show through to the end, you see how considered every moment is. You see all of the details coming together in the background. You begin to appreciate the patience and thought that went into every point, turn, and arc.

    The Office is a masterpiece.

    Fight me.

    That being said, there are plenty of technically brilliant narratives that haven’t had the same cultural success and longevity as The Office has. I could write an entire essay on why I believe that is, but several people have already done that. Feel free to read up, but I’ll go ahead and tell you that there aren’t any big surprises. Clearly, the primary reason people love the show is that it’s comforting. And it’s not just the nostalgia, either. The Office is comforting because it’s honest. It reflects everyday, ordinary life in a way that is still extremely recognizable and accessible. Even through the lens of entertainment, we are able to see ourselves. We see our own hope, joy, and growth. We also see our own disappointment, discouragement, and frustration. One of the most compelling storylines is when Jim and Pam’s marriage struggles in the last season. It happens because of small things like miscommunication, withdrawal, and lack of consideration: Real things. Things that, frankly, can be hard to recognize when it’s happening to us until it’s too late. And, really, that is the question being posed by the narrative. Is it too late?

    The answer is, of course, no. Jim and Pam work it out. It’s very evident that it is a difficult process, and that healing and reconciliation take work, but Jim and Pam are left with a happy ending. They have to be, because The Office is a kind-hearted, generous story. It reflects our fallenness, but it also hints at the glorified. Because, more so than anything else, The Office is a show about love.

    This essay is also about love.

    I want to talk about what I feel is a severely underrated moment in the show. The fact that I couldn’t find a single clip or GIF of it is a pretty solid indicator that I’m right. In the 8th season, the paper company Dunder Mifflin has been absorbed by a larger office supply company called Sabre, and Sabre has decided to explore selling their products out of storefronts. Dwight Schrute, a salesman,  has been selected to manage a team of employees of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch (including Jim Halpert, another salesman) who all travel to Sabre’s headquarters in Tallahassee to develop this storefront project.

    So if you haven’t seen the show, Dwight is in a constant state of striving for recognition and  promotion. It’s a bit of a running gag. As the co-developer of this project, he is positioned to be made head of the new branch. Dwight is very, very excited. Which brings us more or less up to speed.

    Episode 18, season 8. Dwight is preparing to pitch the project to the Sabre board, and he thinks his promotion is set in stone. Jim, however, is privately told by the CEO that Dwight will not only not receive the promotion, he will actually be fired. Jim and Dwight aren’t exactly friends, but Jim knows this isn’t fair and tries to tell Dwight, who is only interested in throwing his success in Jim’s face. So Jim, feeling he has already gone above and beyond by trying at all, decides to leave Dwight to his fate. You haven’t seen him, Jim tells Pam over the phone. I tried, he won’t listen. I hear you, says Pam.

    But did you actually try your hardest?

    Oof. What a question. What a sharp, convicting question. Because we have all been in Jim’s shoes, and we’ve all had to make that choice. Is it worth it? Are they worth it? Am I really responsible? Scripture says, yes.

    “Rescue those being led away to death;

   hold back those staggering toward slaughter.”

    Proverbs 24:11

    Jim knows he only tried his pretty hardest, so he goes back again. And he is dismissed and laughed at, again. And Dwight is literally just outside the door of a conference room filled with people planning to dispose of him, poised to step over the threshold of destruction, when Jim goes back one more time and cross-body tackles him out of the way.

    We, the Church, have got to do that. My God, we have got to do that. When we see people headed for disaster, we can’t just sit back and watch them walk off the cliff.  Love is hands on. Love holds back. Love is active, intentional, and entirely committed.  

    And there are no excuses.

    “If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’

   does not He who weighs the heart perceive it?

   Does not He who guards your life know it?

   Will He not repay everyone according to what they have done?”

    Proverbs 24:12

    Here’s the thing. You know, deep down, if you’ve given your very best effort. I know I do. And, more importantly, God knows. The Message translation says that He is “not impressed with weak excuses.” So while it is not your responsibility to save everyone, or even anyone, it is your responsibility to fight for them. And if you know in your heart that they are lost, and you do nothing, that’s on you. We know what’s waiting for lost people. We know the futility of life without Christ. We know the consequence of entering eternity without Him, and yet we consider it more worth our time to criticize, legislate, and isolate than to reach out and pull them to safety.

    How dare we.

    This self-centered apathy is heartbreaking enough when directed outwards, but it’s just as if not more tragic when aimed inwards. What could possibly be more crushing than being let down by the Body of Christ? And yet we see it every day. The phrase “church-hurt” rolls off our tongues with stinging familiarity as we recount tale after tale of the thoughtless, selfish, and even cruel treatment we and others have experienced at the hands of confessing Christians. This is so deeply wrong.

    “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

    John 13:34-35

    When Jesus said this to the twelve, (well, eleven; Judas had gone), it was just after washing their feet and just before going to the cross. Two distinct, profound illustrations of the Lord’s perfect love for His people. And while He did not say those words to Judas, given that Judas had already left to betray Him, He did wash his feet. Jesus knew that evil had settled into Judas’ heart, but He served him anyways. He loved him anyways. And that is how we have been commanded to love each other.

    This is not an easy thing. Post-Salvation does not mean perfect. To live in community is to live the reality of others’ failings and brokenness constantly scraping against our own. It’s hard. It hurts. But it’s right. The only way we can learn to truly love the lost is if we learn to love our brothers and sisters first, whether they want us to or not. Because that is how we have been loved.

    “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

    Romans 5:8

    Let’s go back to The Office for a second. Dwight did not want to be saved, nor did he truly deserve to be saved. He not only had no interest in listening to Jim’s attempts to warn him, he didn’t even want to accept what he thought was victory gracefully. Because, to Dwight, this was his long-awaited triumph over his enemy. At long last he had beaten Jim, and he was delighting in every single moment of it. He deeply and truly relished Jim’s defeat right up until the instant he managed to get through the door and witness another employee being thrown under the bus in his place. But despite knowing that Dwight didn’t deserve to be helped, and despite not even liking the guy, Jim fought to hold him back.

    While we were still calling God our enemy.

    While we were still cursing His name. While we were still spitting in His face. While we were still in an all-out sprint on the path to destruction, Jesus went to the cross and tackled us out of the way. God, caring more about our good than we ever could, made the loving choice to save us. God, knowing that we could not change our own way, chose instead to wrestle us to the ground so that we would not be destroyed. And unlike Jim, God’s intervention in our destruction is always a wholehearted endeavor.

    This is love.

    It is uncomfortable, inconvenient, deeply sacrificial, and often thankless. It means seeking each other’s good before our own. It means saying “No” to dysfunction and unhealthy dependency. It means saying “Yes” to ugly burdens and paralyzing need. It means reaching out instead of pushing back. It means holding up instead of tearing down. It means giving out of our poverty. It means forgiving seventy multiplied by seven times over. It means continually choosing grace. It means the daily laying down of our lives. This is not just a trite wedding sermon, this is a battle cry. Love is hard. And we are called to love hard.

    The Office has staying power because that hard love, that real love, resonates with our souls. We know we need it. We desperately want to give it. It truly is the best thing we have, and some might say the only thing. We know from 1 Corinthians 13 that love is the only thing that will last in its full integrity when this world dissolves like snow and the unseen hope comes shining through the fog. And thus, we have this ultimate and final question waiting for us at the end.

    At the end of the day.

    At the end of your life.

    At the end of it all.

    Did you love your hardest hardest?

    -- Kyle

Atta Boy

   I’m twenty-two, single, childless, and not currently intending to have children. You’ll therefore be pleased to know that I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about the finer points of parenting. Which, frankly, takes a bit of courage for me because I hate expressing opinions on things I have no personal experience with. It’s a bit like jumping up and down on a well-aged rope bridge to prove it’s secure; risky, to say the least. Yet here we are, all the same. Me with my opinions, you girding up to read them. So please, know that I’m uncomfortable, and read on with the understanding that I am aware of my experiential ignorance.

   Here we go.

   I think all people go through three basic phases regarding how they relate to their parents. The first is that they perceive Mom and Dad as infallible, all-knowing deities. This generally lasts in some form until adolescence, when self-knowledge really kicks in and perspectives begin to widen. There comes a suspicion that not only are your parents sometimes wrong, but maybe often wrong. Maybe your parents aren’t really that much more sure than you are about what to do or think or be. Maybe they aren’t fixtures of reality. Maybe they’re just real. Maybe they’re vulnerable. That, I believe, is where much of adolescent anger comes from. You get to the threshold of adulthood and realize that it’s a scam, and your parents are the ones who sold it to you (or so you believe.) There’s a lot of fighting, miscommunication, and blame in this stage. Nobody likes it very much.

   The third stage is empathy. You get into adulthood, look around, and realize that it’s hard. You start to imagine yourself in your parents’ place, and you realize how easy it is to make mistakes. You understand, and hopefully you start to forgive.

   That’s the conversation I generally have with my peers.

   “I know my parents did this, or said that, or continue to treat me this way but…”

   There’s understanding, forgiveness, and humility. But, frankly, there’s also accommodation. And, frankly, there’s a point where accommodation becomes enabling. It’s rolling over in the face of sin  instead of rebuking, which is not Christlike or loving at all. And it’s running rampant in the Church.

   Why?

    Well the simple, observable fact of the matter is that the Church is full of bad parenting. Shocking, right? Christians are bad at stuff! Oh no! What a crushing realization. But just because it's inevitable doesn't mean that we shouldn't acknowledge our shortcomings and work towards improvement. The Church is full of bad parenting, and we need to talk about it.  

    So let's talk. When I say "bad parenting", I don’t mean in terms of where you do or don’t let your kids go, or whom you do or don’t let your kids spend time with, or what you do or don’t let your kids watch/read/listen to. Those are details, and in my opinion as a person who was parented and who knows many people who were also parented, those things aren’t really that serious. It all washes out in the end, if you get the important stuff right.

   But people aren’t getting it right. And I see the scars of that everywhere I look. So many of my friends share with me that they left the church and are no longer open to Christianity because of their experience with Christ-claiming parents, and it absolutely breaks my heart. So many eternal souls with their backs turned to salvation, and for what? Why is this happening?

   I think it stems from a broken, yet widely held, perspective of what parenting is. So where does that come from? Let’s look at what scripture says:

   “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’—which is the first commandment with a promise—  ‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’”

   Ephesians 6:1-3

   I’m willing to bet that most of you reading, especially if you grew up in the evangelical Christian subculture, could recite those verses in your sleep. Many of you could probably sing it to some child-friendly tune or other. I know I can. This bit of scripture is massively popular with young parents trying to “train up” (read: wrangle) their children, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a conversation ender. Sort of a cosmic Because-I-Said-So. And, personally, I think that perspective is vastly missing out on the point of the passage as a whole. You see, there’s a second half to this thought. Paul also has something to say about the other side of the equation.

   “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

   Ephesians 6:4

   Okay, now we’re really starting to get somewhere. Children, obey your parents. Parents, show grace with your children. The Message translation puts it as not “coming down hard,” while the King James says not to “provoke [them] to wrath.” No matter how you look at it, the meaning is clear. Paul is saying that it's the parents’ responsibility to be mindful of how they treat their kids. He’s reminding adults of what we so easily forget; kids are just kids. Yes, they need to be trained and instructed, but they also need to be treated with generosity and patience. If you leave the grace out, you end up with a frustrated, exasperated generation.

   And the Church has deeply exasperated its children. It’s not just in the interpersonal familial and generational conflicts, although to be sure those do plenty of damage. It’s in the wide statements, the generational blame and disparagement. Truly, take a moment. Think about the way you generally speak about your children’s generation. Is it encouraging? Is it hopeful? Does it exhort, or does it dismiss? Trust me, your kids are internalizing the way you perceive their peers.

   And that’s what brings us to what I really want to talk about with you.

  “Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.”

   Colossians 3:21

   Very nearly the exact same language as the letter to the Ephesians, but I think this phrasing strikes a little closer to the heart of the matter. The Church is discouraging its children. I cannot even begin to recount how many conversations I’ve had with brokenhearted friends who just did not know how to please their Believing parents. I certainly cannot recount how many people I am acquainted with who are, at their core, defined by striving against the certainty that they are a disappointment.

   Again, please take a moment. Have courage, and be as honest as you can.

   Do your children feel that they have your approval?

   There are so many gifts that you can give your kids: a good education, time management skills, artistic and/or athletic training, knowledge of scripture, a Christ-centered community, the list goes on more or less forever. But I truly believe that there is nothing more vital that you can give your child than the certainty that you approve of them. It’s the one thing they can’t do without, that doesn’t wash out in the end with their personal choices and tendencies.

    This is not to say that you should not hold your children to a standard. Hebrews 12 makes it perfectly clear that discipline is a good and loving thing. God “disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.” (v. 10) You should absolutely want your child’s good more than you want them to feel good. You should absolutely tell them when they are outside of the instruction of the Lord. You should absolutely raise your children to respect and honor you as their spiritual authority. We are not talking about “soft” parenting here.

   What we are talking about is a posturing of the heart. Giving your child your approval pretty much always means laying some idols down: Pride, control, your own rightness, and, let’s be very, very honest, power. Whether it's the school they should have gone to, the tattoo they shouldn't have gotten, the job they should have had, the politician they shouldn't support, the person they shouldn't have married, or simply the preferred way they should express love and respect for you. Whatever it is that’s catching in your chest as you think about unconditionally approving of your child, and doing so in such a way that they are entirely secure in it, is the thing you need to let go of.

   Giving your child your approval means being gentle when you rebuke. It means being intentional about communicating that they are loved, accepted, and wanted. It means always, always, always rooting yourself in humility. It might very well mean an apology. More than anything, it means demonstrating the character of Christ.

   “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”

   Romans 15:7

   When Paul talks in Ephesians 6 about “the training and instruction of the Lord,” he’s not just referring to religious principles and behavioral standards. He’s talking about raising your child in such a way that they understand who God is and how He relates to them. You need to give your children your approval because it is the very best way for them to grasp that, under the New Covenant, they have God’s approval. You need to pursue your children's hearts with the kind of deliberation and self-sacrifice that God has promised to them. You, tall Christian, were made to help your entrusted little Christians reach the higher shelves of faith. Dads especially, you have a sacred duty to your child. God is referred to as “Father” over 200 times in the Bible. For better or for worse, your son or daughter is looking to you to demonstrate what that means. 

   Let’s take a step back for a moment. I recognize that this discussion is based on multiple assumptions, as I am speaking to a very specific audience. There’s one caveat in particular that I want to briefly acknowledge: In order to be able to do any of this effectively, you have to be firmly secure in your own identity in Christ. Gentleness, love, humility, and acceptance all must come out of the overflow of what you have received from the Lord. So, again. Take a moment, and have courage.

   Do you know that you are loved and approved of?

   If not, this essay is still for you. The greatest gift you could give your child is also the greatest gift that you can accept, yourself. As a believer in Jesus, you are absolutely, positively, 100% approved of by God. It doesn’t matter who you have damaged or disappointed. It doesn’t matter what you could have done better. Jesus’ righteousness has been counted to you, and that’s the end of it.

   Regardless of where you are in your walk with Christ and your family, I want to challenge you. Just a few small challenges, and then I’ll finally hop off of this high horse and be on my way:

1. Take the time this week to tell your children that they are loved and accepted, even if you think they know it.
2. Be brave, and ask if there are any ways you can increase their confidence in that fact.
3. Ask the Lord to deepen your understanding of His love and approval of you, even if you think you’ve got a good handle on it. There is always more.

   Thank you for your time, I sincerely hope that this has been encouraging. 

   “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”

    1 Thessalonians 3:12-13

     Best,

    - Kyle

The Intimacy of Resurrection

   I have been very, very slowly making my way through the Gospels since last December. It’s August, and I’ve just now made it to the 17th chapter of Luke. Some of that is due to not reading every day, or reading elsewhere, but a lot of it is the fact that I’ve been reading the little subheadings one at a time.

   There are a couple reasons for that, the first being that setting a manageable threshold makes me more likely to be consistent in the daily habit. After years of being daunted by literally any sort of self-imposed commitment, it turns out that I’m actually perfectly capable of being intrinsically motivated. I just have to eat my elephants one bite at a time. And, perhaps even more importantly, I have to be realistic and gracious with myself about those bites. Still, while I’m only reading a few paragraphs a day, I’ve read more scripture for its own sake over the past two years than I did the twenty years proceeding.

   The second reason is that I want to give myself time to absorb the details of what I’m reading. I truly believe that God is often best seen in the details, my favorite being that the temple veil was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died. God, in His great love, knew we could not close that gap and chose to come to us. From top, to bottom.

   This essay is about another one of those details.

   About a month ago, I was reading in Luke while waiting for my order at my “home” coffee shop, when when I got to the account of Jairus’ daughter.

   “Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying.” (Luke 8:41-42)

   As soon as I read her age, tears sprang to my eyes. I saw her so vividly in my mind, the same age as the girls I teach bible study to on Wednesday nights. I saw her long dark hair, her small pale face, her cold, sweaty palms. And I started to cry.

   Because when I was eight years old, I tried to drown myself in a frozen pool.

   It’s a memory I’ve more or less repressed for years, but it had come up only a few days before in a therapy session. The older I get, the more I realize how severe my suicidal ideation actually was as a child. It’s difficult to trace my motivations, everything was so chaotic and I remember so little of the specifics. Abuse, neglect, a nasty and drawn-out divorce. There was a lot. And I wanted it all to stop.

   Not enough, considering I pulled myself back out when the hypothermia I was counting on failed to set in. But there was still something there, deep and raw, that I put away after I walked back into my house, and once that memory returned the something resurfaced in my adult body with the kind of violence only unresolved trauma can produce.

   However, considering I had taken up counseling again for the sole purpose of digging up that sort of thing, I suppose I can’t really be mad. The loose ends in my subconscious wouldn’t wait any longer. The Lord was calling me into healing. And sometimes, healing hurts. Like a bone being reset, or a joint being popped back into place, or the blood returning to a tightly knotted muscle. So often the pain we feel is the pressure of God’s hand bringing our spirit back into alignment. And I had been needing that so desperately.

   I was down a rabbit hole of trying to grasp the abstraction of His love. Frustrated that the spaces where I felt the most loved, the most valued, and the most known were often a distraction from who God has told me to be; both as a Believer, generally, and as Kyle, specifically. The concept of switching out the concrete for the intangible was one I wrestled with daily. But I wanted to want to want to want to be satisfied. I wanted to want for nothing. I just couldn’t get ahold of how.

   He has been so very patient with me. As I’ve fought, and complained, and over and over again gone back to idols of temporary security and connection, the Lord has been gathering up the broken pieces I’d left to gather dust and begun to put them back together.

   Here’s the thing about repressed memories. Once one comes up, others follow. There were several additional painful ones of self-harm, but the one that burned the hottest in my chest seemed far more trivial. I remembered playing with my older sister, taking turns pretending to be the “Dead Girl” in our church’s Easter passion play. We were both fixated on the character for years, and in hindsight I finally understand why I'd longed so much to be in her place.

   In the blocking of the play, Jairus carries his daughter to Jesus, who takes her and raises her in the air (Yes. Like Simba.) She pops up, and He catches her in His arms.

   Jesus held her.

   And that was why I started to cry over my marked-up NIV as I read that passage. Because Jesus was on His way, and this little girl was not going to be dead long. The actual events of the miracle were less theatrical than in my old church’s play, but to me they are even more sweet.

   “When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother. Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her.

   “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.”

   They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up.” (Luke 8:51-55)

   In Mark's account, he specifies that the Aramaic word Jesus uses to address the girl is talitha. It’s been translated as “my child,” “little girl,” and “daughter.” It’s a pet name.

   Jesus, knowing that this little girl’s heart had stopped beating, sat down by her side, held her hand, and said,  

   “Honey, it’s time to wake up.”

   Resurrection is intimate. The Lord is not simply touching His fingertip to ours to give us new life, He is reaching out and wrapping His arms around us. The purpose of sanctification is not to make us morally "good enough", but to pull our hearts closer and closer to His. Because that was the whole point. That we were gone, separated, and we couldn’t get back. We didn’t even want to get back.

   “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4-5)

  This is the purpose of life. We have been given the opportunity to accept this immeasurable gift of relationship with the One Who wants nothing more than to be with us. It’s unfathomable, but it’s true. And it’s worth believing in.