Month: August 2017

The Disbelievable & Misunderstandable God…

One of the fastest growing religious demographics in the United States is that of the “dones” and “nones” – those who aren’t affiliated with any kind of religious organization (anymore). This reality reminds me that God is often disbelievable and misunderstandable (as revealed in poll stats, the Bible and world history).

It’s ironic to me that Jesus was disbelievable and misunderstandable to the twelve men who spent every day with him. Not only did Jesus heal the sick and exorcize demons in their presence, he gave them the power to do so as well. And still, they did not get what God was doing, prompting Jesus to exasperatedly sigh, “Do you still not understand?”

For those of us who are Christians, maybe we say we believe in God a little too easily. Maybe we proclaim our faith in Christ a little too confidently.

Maybe we look down on the nones and dones, mystified as to how they don’t “get it” in regard to God when in it’s highly possible that if Jesus were in our midst, he might grill us like he did The Twelve: “Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?”

In this particular gospel story that Mark retells to us, word had spread that Jesus had fed four-thousand people with bread and fish. The Pharisees came to question Jesus about it. They had missed the event, so they asked for another sign from heaven.

This elicited a deep sigh from Jesus towards them and their generation of Israelites. God was making himself visible and present to his people through Jesus of Nazareth in practical and healing ways, and it was still disbelievable and misunderstandable.

Why? Because that generation (like most) were looking for signs of God as evidenced in power – the kind of political power that manifests itself in violence (safety), coercion (security), empire-economics (prosperity), and class privilege (stability).

They believed that when necessary God condones violence as a means to his will being done and his kingdom coming to earth. Jesus warned his disciples to “watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” Beware their appetite for power and their willingness to use violence – it’s like a cancerous yeast.

God made it clear through Jesus that he did not want his people to use violence to coerce, to punish, or to terrorize. This was a key way that the kingdom of God was both good news to people around the world as well as a source of fear to the few who had a greedy grasp on consolidated power.

Jesus had fed bread to five thousand people, and then later to four thousand people. In Rome, it was an obvious political strategy to use “bread and circus” to win the support of the populace. To the cynic, Jesus was using bread and exorcism to build a political base.

Yes, Christ (King of Israel) Jesus had a political agenda. It included using bread and power to actually renew the hopes and lives of people, to empower them to care for their neighbors, and reject abuse as a form of governing.

This was completely disbelieveable and misunderstood by those with an appetite for power. For this Jesus was crucified for sedition and blasphemy – he was a threat to Rome and Jerusalem. He was a political threat because he was a king who wouldn’t use bread to manipulate people.

Jesus went out of his way to avoid using violence to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. His gospel-command to his disciples are: love one another – and your enemies, be a non-violent (non-nuclear) peacemaker, be merciful, forgive those who hate you, don’t lie.

This is ridiculously difficult. It could get you killed too. Ironically, it is partly what makes God disbelievable and misunderstandable – but it is also the gospel.

Don’t misunderestimate the subversive political power of getting to know your neighbors who don’t look like you, of naming and confessing your bigotry, and of refusing to hate your enemies, in Jesus name.

This is the sign from heaven many are still looking for. May it be you.

Seek the Truth

THE TRUTH IS NOT FOR ALL MEN, BUT ONLY FOR THOSE WHO SEEK IT. ~Ayn Rand

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. ~Galileo Galilei

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~Niels Bohr

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? ~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. ~ the prophet Isaiah

Let’s be honest, we all like to think of ourselves as honest folks. Nobody likes to be called a liar.

But if we’re going to be real here, we must confess our propensity to not seek the truth, to believe our fantasies, and stubbornly close our eyes to the reality around us. It’s not easy to seek the truth.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. ~Sir Winston Churchill

In your personal life, we believe lies about ourselves all the time. At work, being to honest can get you fired real fast. In the community, speaking truth to power can be dangerous.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~Arthur Schopenhauer

The truth is, sometimes we benefit by little lies. Sometimes we have something to gain by not beleiving the truth about the ways our lifestyle is detrimiental to others in our region.

Who wants this to be true? Not me.

If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out. ~Oscar Wilde

But when I seek the truth, I must be willing to hear the ways I was wrong. And accept not just the judgment, but the correction and the new direction.

Whenever you have truth, it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. ~Mahatma Ghandi

We’d like to believe that our seeking the truth only has personal consequences. But as the prophet Isaiah points out, it’s the widows and the poor that often bear the brunt of our blindness to the truth. When we don’t seek the truth, injustice prevails.

While we often become victims of our own deception and lies, many others also are afflicted by them too, sometimes directly, other times indirectly.

It’s human to be deceived, and be prideful. So we must take the courage given to us to seek the truth. It is to this end that God in Jesus makes known his word and will – it is to this end that he works in the world.

To those that seek truth they will find the Lord. And as Jesus said, the truth will set you free from the bondage of lies for the flourishing of all.

Love truth, and pardon error. ~Voltaire

FICTION IS OBLIGED TO STICK TO POSSIBILITIES. TRUTH ISN’T. ~Mark Twain

 

Don’t Trip Over Miracles

Maybe you’re like some of my friends who seek the truth, respect science, try to see the world as it really is, and thus are skeptical of all the miracles in the Bible. For a variety of reasons, the seeming centrality of miracles in the Bible keeps them from believing it to be a trustworthy source of wisdom and revelation. I sympathize with them.

I used to pray for miracles. When my youngest brother Ben was 13 he went blind due to a small brain tumor, and then died later that summer. We begged God to heal him. My dad was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor a few years ago. We begged God for a miracle. We didn’t get the one we prayed for. I admit I was angry and disillusioned.

These are two ways I have tripped over miracles. We trip over miracles when we make them a bigger deal than they really are – both in the Bible and in our modern life. We trip over miracles when they become the object of our attention instead of their context. I think there are healthier ways to put miracles (of the Bible and the ones we beg for these days) in perspective.

For example, in the gospel Mark writes about two stories where Jesus heals a man who is deaf and mute, and then feeds four thousand people with a few pieces of bread and fish. In our scientific era, it’s easy to react skeptically to this account. It’s also a spiritualist era, and we can too easily focus on the miracles as proof of the divine. But this is tripping over the miracles and missing the point.

In this story, Jesus was approached by friends who begged him to heal their deaf, mute pal. Because of compassion, Jesus took him aside, away from the crowd, and healed him – and then “commanded them not to tell anyone.” What kind of ruler does that? If Jesus was a typical Israelite or Roman or American king, when he healed someone or fed four thousand people with a few pieces of bread and fish, he would make a grand speech demanding loyalty, making more exorbitant promises, and leveraging the crowd’s energy for political power.

That is not King Jesus does with his power. When he heals and feeds people, it’s out of compassion, it is to embody the gospel, to inspire and empower people to join in this power-full mission of healing and flourishing. What kind of king would do that with such power today? It’d be a miracle if they did….

I’m not saying that God doesn’t do miracles anymore. I’m just reflecting on the gospel and reminding myself not to trip over the miracles. I’m not asking skeptics to believe in miracles. But I am inviting you, when you read the gospel, to not focus on “miracles” but instead on the compassion that generated the healings and feeding, and how King Jesus leveraged that power. If you don’t trip, you’ll see that this is the bigger miracle.

If you do believe in miracles, and pray for them, and have witnessed them, and benefitted from them, don’t trip over them. Don’t set your heart on miracles at the expense of setting your heart on Jesus. Not getting the miracles we beg for can trip us into resentment and bitterness towards God. We then miss the real point of the miracles: Jesus demonstrating to his followers – heal with the power you have been given, feed with the resources you have received.

We might think we don’t have much to offer, but then we are missing the point of the story: it was trust in God and compassion for humanity that drove the work of Jesus, which was also the source of his power. This is what we are saved to do, in Jesus’ name.

The real miracle is not that we are healed or fed, but that we become more love-full and actually do the work of alleviating hunger and sorrow in our community amidst our ongoing struggles Even while are ill or under-resourced, or busy or anxious.

When Jesus inspires you to do that, we won’t be tripping over miracles.