Category Archives: Discipleship

Articles concerning the life and struggles of a Christian.

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Halloween: What’s a Christian to Do?

*Halloween is upon us – a holiday beloved by millions, especially sugar-crazed children. A recent entry into CNN’s Belief Blog meagerly addressed a debate that rages regarding whether Christians should celebrate the holiday. This post concerns the overarching question of that debate, but is in no way intended as an end-all answer on how exactly to respond. Just a reflection of my own experience. As always, I would appreciate feedback in the comments section – this is just another angle of the Great Conversation I mentioned in my last post. 

When I was a kid, I was moderately into Halloween. I enjoyed the store-bought costumes despite the terribly uncomfortable masks. I liked visiting houses with spooky decorations. And, of course, I loved that there was a calendar day dedicated to the free acquisition of candy. My parents would drive me and some friends to a nearby neighborhood (ours was too secluded and rustic  for proper trick-or-treating) and we would run the street, filling our bags with empty calories. Then we would hop in the back of the pickup truck to be ferried to the next street. We would celebrate our hauls, laugh and point at friends we recognized, and gather in packs to advance upon houses we knew, from experience, contained an overly enthusiastic grownup poised to leap out at us from the shadows or come alive from beneath a seemingly innocent white sheet.

"Seriously, Dad. I think you're taking the whole scare-off-the-trick-or-treaters thing too far."

It was a sad day when I found myself too old for trick-or-treating. Had I lived in a more populated neighborhood, I think I might have tried to do what some of those grownups did – become a figure of fright that gave the kids a story to tell for the rest of the night. But this didn’t happen. I went the way of uneventful boredom, hanging around with my friends at one of their houses, maybe stepping out a little later in the evening to see if any candy had gone unclaimed on people’s porches and doorsteps.

There is a line in First Corinthians that reads, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me” (13:11). I’ve always found this a depressing verse. I’m never nostalgic for the way I spoke or reasoned as a child, but I do miss some of those “ways of childhood.” Things were simpler, then. For one thing, Halloween was a tame holiday focused on how much candy one could acquire while wearing silly costumes – it was like some bizarre 70′s game show. When I became older, however, the whimsy of childhood sugar rushes faded, and I was faced with the darker side to this holiday.

Like dialysis at thirteen.

Growing up in the Church, I was told a lot of things about Halloween. That it was evil, that it wasn’t really evil but I should still “be careful,” that trick-or-treating was innocent fun but monster and psycho-killer costumes were not, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I eventually learned that Halloween is descendent from All-Hallows E’en, or the eve of All Hallows Day (November 1st), also known as All Saints Day. However, being part of a conservative, small-town Baptist church, All Saints Day was considered a Catholic holiday, and those Catholics might as well have been Freddy Krueger the way some folks talked about them. Thus, whether Halloween was pagan or religious, it wasn’t for responsible, committed Christians. Enjoy the “Harvest Fest” pumpkin-carving (no scary faces, please) and bilking suburbanites out of some mini-Nestle Crunch’s, and then go home.

Here’s the problem. All that scary stuff intrigued me. Ghost stories and tales of monsters gave me a rush. Fear is an extremely potent emotion, but I often felt that if I were to indulge in a little terror, I would be sinning against Almighty God. Luckily for me, I was a bona-fide wuss when it came to horror. I was the kid who had to run out to the bathroom during a preview for Gremlins 2. Believe it or not, my first horror movie experience was Scream in 1996 – I was a senior in high school.

However, just because I remained a virgin to horror movies for so long didn’t mean I wasn’t a fan of being scared. It was easier for me to read scary stories than to watch them. I was really into werewolves and haunted house stories and graveyard trespassing. I even wrote a few of my own stories with friends (think of a PG-rated The Exorcist).

Like this, only with no curse words, fewer scabs and only a smidge of pea soup.

Scream (of all the films out there, it had to be one that was a half-parody of horror movies) sucked me in. By the time I was out of college, I wasn’t dangling my toes in the waters of Crystal Lake anymore; I had waded in up to my waist. And, boy, did I feel rotten. A good Christian would never be caught dead watching movies or reading books that seemingly revel in violence and death … right?

Um, have you read the Old Testament?

Narrative theology (a way of viewing God and his purpose for humanity in terms of a living, breathing story) utilizes the situational archetype that underscores practically every story in our world: good vs. evil. Now, a Christian who has moved beyond folk-religion stereotypes understands that the “good” in our story far exceeds the “evil.” Nowhere is this truth clearer than in the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Ultimate Good triumphs over evil. Good wins. Good has to win. Even when it seems to lose, it still wins. This is the bedrock reason for a Christian’s joy in Christ. This is what the Book of Revelation’s message was chiefly concerned with: Good wins. Sure, there is evil now, and tough times are a-comin’, but take heart, Christians, because Good wins.

Several years after I succumbed to the sins of watching horror movies and indulging in such sordid merriment, it occurred to me that the reason I was so intrigued by stories of terror is that what is at stake is the triumph of good over evil. Some people might enjoy cheering Michael Myers on as he slashes his way through Babysitterland, but I always found myself rooting for the heroes and heroines, hoping they could outsmart the killers, outrun the monsters, or outshine the perilous situations in which they found themselves. I wanted to witness redemption, not condemnation. The dark, grim and fiendish characters and environments only served to make the battle between good and evil more dramatic, more appreciable. If a man escapes the clutches of an annoying and selfish girl and finds his true love, I suppose that’s a satisfying story (*yawn*). If a man escapes the clutches of a horde of zombies and rescues his true love in the process, even better! Often, when horror movies amp up the chills, they also amp up the “good” that is at stake.

And, every once in a while, a film comes along that's cranked to eleven.

One of my favorite blogs is spending October examining the merits of various horror movies, both well known and obscure. I enjoyed what one of the reviewers had to say regarding why he contextually enjoys exorcism films (as well as other horror films):

“As a believer in Jesus and the things He did and showed us to do, I find these films exciting and faith boosting. Exorcism cinema offers a rare meeting ground between film and what I believe (or want to believe) in my Christian faith. While some horror films tinker with ideas of good and evil, faith and religion, Christian and anti-Christian, exorcism films blatantly pitch God and Satan in the boxing ring and then ring the bell. For this reason … I find them to be hopeful and emblematic of a greater (truer) metaphor: God the Father literally loving the Hell out of us.” 

There will always be the naysayer who argues for purity of behavior over purity of spirit, throwing out scriptural gems like Philippians 4:8: “Whatever is good, whatever is true, … think on these things.” I don’t deny that they have a valid argument. However, indulging in fear isn’t always detrimental to a person’s outlook. Some psychologists believe that being able to identify villains and monsters, however irrational or outlandish, help young people work out their anxieties and emotions regarding the ambiguity of death and the sanctity of life.

Halloween is a prime example. Co-opted from an ancient druidic belief that the onset of dark winter energized vindictive evil spirits to rise at night and terrorize people, it was originally a specific observance of how to thwart the spirits by dressing up as them and passing undetected in their midst. It was trickery to avoid evil, not to indulge in it. It was beating the demons at their own game. It was, once again, the triumph of Good.

What a way to precede the celebration of all the courageous, faithful departed who have passed from life to death to life again! Let us take Halloween at face value, embracing the prickling of fear it brings while learning how to muster our courage, remembering that courageously holding fast to the Good in face of the evil is one of the fundamental components of a saint.

What’s a Christian to do with Halloween? It’s really each person’s individual call, but as for me, I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to wear my ridiculous costume, eat my mini-Nestle Crunch, and let whatever darkness I encounter stimulate a persevering love for the light.

What about you?

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Balloons, Sharp Sticks, and Being Right

Yesterday, I not only had the opportunity to substitute teach a Sunday morning Bible study class, but I also made it back out to the church for an afternoon class on Baptist history. Strange the things you can take away from such humdrum church activities without even knowing it. Despite neither lesson focusing on it, I was left pondering how important it is to some Christians that they be proven right. Do you know what I mean?

Like a lot of things, this is not an exclusively Christian mindset. Religions of all brands and breeds contain their fair share of accuracy wardens, as do atheists and the non-religious philosophers of our day. There are agnostics even who hope their hesitation stems from loyalty to logic rather than complete disregard for it. We want to ensure that our belief system is error-free and precise in all circumstances. Because, if it’s not … if some sharp stick of dissent can easily be poked through the ideological membrane of our system … well, let’s just say we tend to react a lot more like the kid whose balloon has just been popped than the adult whose matured enough to learn that balloons are known to pop from time to time and it’s not the end of the world as we know it, nor the end of balloons as we know it.

"C'mon, Timmy, just let it go. We'll get you another one. They only cost a quarter."

Now, before you assume I’m nitpicking guardianship, I want to be clear I’m not calling out people who simply desire veracity in their beliefs. Who doesn’t? I certainly want the tenets of my faith to hold true. That’s why I believe them, actually – because despite the sticks of criticism that poke at my faith from time to time, I have found that what I believe has never really been popped. Punctured, maybe, but I’m okay with a patchwork faith. The things I believe may come across frowsy, but not as flimsy or fragile as balloons.

I’m talking about the folks who feel an overprotective need to verify not only what they believe, but to grind to mulch any and every stick that might be picked up by a critic. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.

In the Baptist History class last night (yeah, I know, I already took an actual semester-long class on Baptist history in seminary, but like any exhausted grad student, I nodded off a couple times, so it doesn’t hurt to have a refresher), we learned about J.R. Graves , the gentleman to whom Landmarkism is attributed - Landmarkism being an absurd (if you’re a supporter of scholarship or even plain,old-fashioned logic) belief in Baptist history that the only true, valid church is a Baptist church, as long as it, of course, adheres to Landmark beliefs, and that Baptists can trace their roots back all the way to John the Baptist.

It's in his name, for crying out loud!

If you grew up Baptist (especially in the South or Midwest), or if you have some familiarity with Baptist practices, you may have encountered the lingering effects of this 19th century controversy when you were told that Catholics are bound for hell, and those Episcopals, Presbyterians and Methodists aren’t far behind. I grew up suspicious of other denominations and it wasn’t until I graduated college and actually started spending time with some young, devout Catholic students that I realized the faultiness of this way of thinking.

The question, of course, is why J.R. Graves would ever feel the need to be so extreme with his rewrite of Baptist history. It’s one thing to take pride in your denominational tradition – it’s quite another to condemn everyone else. I don’t mean to copy Graves’s extremism by offering this analogy, but it stands to reason that if Adolf Hitler had settled for being merely proud of the Aryan race and stopped there, millions of families might not have been destroyed. Sure, people might have thought the little guy with the Charlie Chaplin mustache was a teensy bit racist, but simple pride in one’s race does not a genocidal maniac make. The same thing goes for diehard fans of believer’s baptism.

Though, I'll admit, he's got the mug for it.

It’s when we seek to purify our beliefs to such an extent that we reject any notion of misguidedness or fallacy that we wind up losing touch with the very point of our faith. When a Christian – like J.R. Graves – insists on factual treatment of faith, he becomes his own worse fear. He becomes a contradiction. A person’s faith cannot be based on facts. If it is, it isn’t faith at all, but merely an obsession with proof. When Graves sought to “purify” the Baptist legacy by adding erroneous assumptions about history, as well as severing all lines of participation and mutual respect with other denominations, he was entering into one of the most dangerous forms of escapism that there is.

We may not think we’re as bad as Graves when it comes to arguing for the truth, but as my pastor commented last night, it seems the man’s quest for purity boiled down to that age-old vice known as arrogance; “There’s something about having that secret knowledge that nobody else does,” the pastor reminded us, and he was right. We love to be in-the-know, and, for some twisted reason, being in-the-know feels a lot more exciting if we can look out our stained-glass windows and see all the people who don’t have the same clue.

"Look at those chumps out there, walking around all ignorant and indigo."

In addition to the tenets of my faith, I also believe in something I like to call the Great Conversation. It’s a conversation that all of us can be a part of if we wish, whether we are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists or whatever way we choose to categorize ourselves. I enter into the Great Conversation when I choose not to build a moat between myself and the rest of the world. When I trust in the strength of my ideological membrane not because it can’t be punctured, but because the only way I will learn how to strengthen it is by accepting that the occasional stick might pierce a weak spot. To be a part of the Great Conversation, we do not have to become relativistic or unitarian (even though all relativists and Unitarians are welcome to join in) – we can hold fast to what we believe. I know our pluralist society praises compromise, but most religious people would agree that there are some aspects of one’s faith that cannot be compromised. However, this doesn’t mean the conversation shouldn’t continue. Sometimes the best discussion that occurs in this Conversation concerns the reasons why some beliefs cannot be compromised. This is how we learn from one another.

No one will ever listen to what you have to say if they don’t think you respect them, or if you show no patience with them, or if you exude suspicion rather than attentiveness. If you find yourself feeling this way, you may have already started backpedaling, stumbling into the trap of escapism into which Graves fell.

As for me, I think it’s high time we lay down our sticks and have a chat.

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God-willing, You’ll Read This Post

Let’s talk for a moment about this nebulous yet paramount Christian concept known as “the will of God.”

You may have heard the term used before in a variety of situations, but most often it is yanked from its holster when someone is trying to determine how to properly prepare for his or her future, or perhaps when people are discussing a specific turn of events in someone else’s life. “Well, you know, if it’s God’s will, you’ll get that promotion…” “There’s nothing more I can do – we’ll be together if God wills it…” “He’s in the hospital right now, but I suppose, God-willing, he’ll get better…”

"Look, a 14-point, and right in my line of fire. It must be God's will!"

It’s a kind of fate-and-fortune catch-all, really. If something happens, it happens because God willed that it should happen. If something fails to happen, it is generally considered to be “outside of” God’s will, i.e. what he desires to take place in the course of human history. A lot of religious folks – including most Christians – use this as the all-inclusive explanation for why some things happen and other things do not. However, problems arise when we attempt to apply the explanation to misfortune or difficult circumstances. The greater the trial, the more this explanation seems platitudinous and disconnected from reality. As a result, God’s concern for, and activity within, human experience is attacked.

For the last eleven months, I have been searching for a position on a church staff. I have applied for all kinds of associate positions that seemed like a good fit, as well as student ministry positions that gel with my ten-year background in church work. I have even sent my resume out to a few dozen churches looking for lead pastors. All in all, I have applied to almost one hundred churches. As of today, however, I remain unemployed. Occasionally, an acquaintance will ask me how the job hunt is going. Early on, I was optimistic that a good job was right around the corner, and I answered as the same vein. After eleven months, however, my optimism has almost completely dissolved, and in my mounting frustration, it’s hard not to fill that vacancy with cynicism and anger.

"What's it like to not have a job? It's like spending a whole day in a dirty, smelly deer stand and not being able to kill something majestic!"

These days, I respond honestly – that the search is not going well at all and times are very, very tough. The response I receive from people is almost always the same stock response I hear every time (whether I answer with positivity or negativity); it’s one of the Christian subculture’s greatest hits, and it is, in essence, the thoughtless application of this thing known as “God’s will.”

“Well, I just know God’s got a place for you.”

Thanks.

Care to venture a guess as to where that might be, or what I’m supposed to do in the meantime, or why he has chosen not to reveal this secret location over the past eleven months?

Like I said, cynicism is hard to avoid.

Let us dissect this ambiguous concept of God’s will, shall we? Especially why God apparently feels the need to play his cards so close to his chest. To give our analysis some form we can clearly recognize, let’s think of it in terms of dating. Now, the abiding belief in our culture is that there is one special someone out there for everybody (not counting the people who we brush off as unfortunate souls cursed into singleness like the remainder in a long division problem) and one of the main priorities of life is to identify who exactly this is. Dating is, in essence, sleuthing. Gathering evidence to solve the mystery known as “Who is my soul mate?”

By Jove, Watson! She's perfect for me!

Don’t want to accept this? Consider every romantic comedy you’ve ever seen. How many times did one of these movies end with Jennifer Aniston realizing this chiseled yet sensitive dude with perfect teeth wasn’t ”the one” after all, but rather only one possibility in a thousand? How many times do eHarmony or Match.com testimonials feature a guy talking about how perfect five different girls were followed by footage of him walking in the park with a blonde, then sharing a drink with a redhead, and then visiting a carnival with a brunette, and so on?

It’s hard for some people – whether they are single or already married – to hear that the idea of that one special someone might be bogus, that there might be hundreds or thousands of special someones out there for them, and the determining factor in finding who they will commit to boils down not to the magical hand of God (in non-religious terms, “fate”), but to the choices they made that landed them in a certain place with a certain set of circumstances (“free will”).

Am I rejecting the notion that God has a purpose for our lives? I am not. Does this imply that God is not involved? It does not. On the contrary, I’m trying to elevate our level of personal responsibility in the lives with which we have been blessed. God gave us the ability to choose, to make decisions, to sometimes effect change according to our level of effort. Most of us would agree with this. We would never fully discount the existence of free will. But when, for better or for worse, we want to validate something (or someone) as having a distinct purpose, we tend to stick the “God’s will” decal on it in an attempt to authenticate the experience.

Unfortunately, like a sixteen-month-old left unattended in a scrapbook store, we’ve become sticker-happy. We slap the “God’s will” explanation on everything from finding a spouse to finding a good parking space at Target. We’re as comfortable using it as a reason for category five hurricanes as we are for our minivan breaking down.

"Whataburger's selling the All-Time Favorites again! It must be the divine will of Jehovah Jireh!"

Is God to blame for why I have spent eleven months searching for a church position with nothing to show for it? And if the people who point me to his lofty plan are correct and he does have a special place somehow set aside for me, am I supposed to sit on my parents’ couch in the meantime watching Sportscenter until I get the portentous phone call or e-mail? I mean, if it all boils down to God’s will – unalterable fate – do I even have a role? Or am I just the receiver waiting for the quarterback to spot me and toss-up a pass?

BAD PUN ALERT: It would be a "Hail Mary." Get it? (Yeah, I'm watching too much Sportscenter.)

I realize I’m dancing around the bang-your-head-against-the-pew-rail topic of predestination, specifically the age-old “vs.” debate: fate vs. free will. But my interest is not in opening that can of unconditionally elected worms. Rather, my goal is to remind all of us – especially Christians – that while it is possible for God to purpose something outside of humanity’s involvement, he does not work that way. He chooses to interact with our own choices. He wants us to make the effort, rather than wait for him to do the work.

Think of the most defining, pivotal moment in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. There he is in the little hillside garden called Gethsemane. He is kneeling in prayer, face to the ground. He is so anxious and fearful of what he has discerned is coming that blood seeps from his sweat glands. He’s crying. He’s struggling. He’s asking God – who remains silent just like he so often is with us – if there is any way for his will to play out differently. Would the Father please devise another way for humanity to be reconciled to its Creator? In the end, and I’m sure the words were some of the most difficult Jesus ever prayed, he blinks away more tears, clears the phlegm from his throat, and says, “Not my will, Father, but yours be done.”

What did Jesus recognize to be God’s will? Was it not that God desired to fulfill his purpose through humanity rather than separate from it? The divine work of reconciliation was to be intimately wrapped up in human choices no matter where it may lead, even to the point of physical torture and death. Could God have devised another way? Some of us might believe that, yes, he could – after all, he’s God. But because he is not one who stands far off from our world and our experiences, he rejects doing things another way. He subjects his will to the choices of humans, because he knows us well enough to know that his purposes will be fulfilled eventually.

He places Jesus’ safety in the hands of a betrayer who chooses to sell out his master. He subjects Jesus’ sentencing to Pilate’s jurisdiction, who chooses even against his better judgement to condemn him to death. What if Judas had relented before leading the temple guard to the garden? What if Pilate had heeded the words of his wife? Did God force them into one specific course of action? Frederick Buechner writes of free will, “The fact that I know you so well that I know what you are going to do before you do it doesn’t mean you aren’t free to do whatever you damn well please.”

What if I never find a ministry job? What if what I interpreted as a call to ministry finds me working in a university office or as an English teacher in a public high school? I’ve already begun looking for employment in those places, because the reality is that I need a job. I need to support my family which will very soon increase by twenty-five percent. I need to stop waiting on God to do all the work, and start making decisions I trust to be the right ones. I won’t throw God for a loop. If anything, I’ll give him more opportunity to get involved.

"Hey, guys. He finally turned off that Walking Dead marathon! Let's get to work!"

These days, when I think of God’s will, it’s not as some unascertainable force that influences us like a manipulator does his marionettes. Instead, I think of God’s willingness to trust me, even when I act in untrustworthy ways. I think of the faith he has in me to find a job even when I collapse in despair from rejection after rejection. I think of the confidence he has in his purpose for me, even when my own confidence is shattered, duct-taped back together, and then shattered again. I think of the way he doesn’t fault me when my prayers turn into rants and I question his concern for me.

I’m not saying it’s always comforting to think this way, nor is it easy to face failure when I know God could step in and nudge a situation into working out a bit differently. I haven’t learned how to find joy in this interaction between God’s holy will and my own fitful capabilities, and I’m not sure I ever will. I suppose accepting the mysterious cooperation, though, is a good first step.

Sometimes, though … Ah!

It is a terribly irksome thing to be so trusted by God.

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Tell the World It’s Beautiful

For my students…

It's been real, BFA

When I confess that I am not a “by-the-book” English teacher, I recognize two things. The first thing is that, yes, there is a great pun there. The second thing is that my occasional unorthodox approach to teaching English, and my attitude about it, can often confuse and sometimes even alienate students in my classes. I have a sarcastic sense of humor that is fused with a quirky desire to sprinkle pop-culture references within passionate, sometimes long-winded discourse on how important literature is to me. I know that, as we blaze through the spectrum of American literature each year, some of my students are left a bit bewildered, if not downright frustrated. What I try to do at the end of the year, then, is to explain why I am the way I am, and why I have chosen to teach this class for the last three years. Hopefully, in explaining that, I can help each one of my students understand the bigger picture – how all this affects our reality and how we view the world in which we live.

I love literature (that is, I love the reading and the analyzing and the discussing and the comparing and the contrasting and the interpreting) for many reasons, but the main reason I love it is that reading literature is incarnational. Something otherworldly comes alive when we read literature. Whether we’re reading a short story, a poem, a play, a novel, or comic book – somewhere in the depths of myself there is a swirling and churning of new life. Colors emerge and blend, suns ignite, stars glisten, characters take on flesh and a new world is born in my consciousness, and whether I intend for it to or not, this world will affect the one in which I actually live. As the C.S. Lewis quotation on the wall just outside my classroom door states, “Literature adds to reality – it does not simply describe it.”

We covered most of these, I think...

The selections we read in class are chosen not only because they all belong to the general category of American literature, but also because I believe each one comments on the incredibly intricate composition of the human experience – our joy, our pain, our anger, our sadness, our prejudices, our bravery, our need to give and receive love. Naturally, some of these stories may be darker than others. Some make us feel happy while others make us feel sad. We will agree with some outcomes and conclusions, but others cause us to shake our heads in disbelief or disgust. We have these reactions because we are human, and incarnation is a concept that moves us all. A person who tosses aside a story or poem and simply says, “It was boring,” or, “I don’t think it means anything” has not truly read the work. It means something. It meant something to the author, and even in the off-chance that it didn’t, it still means something to you … if you will let it. And you should let it.

Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “There is nothing so secular that it cannot be made sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.” Translation: there is nothing in this world that is so dark, or odd, or obscene, or pagan, or anti-God, that cannot be transformed by Christ, who became a lowly, dust-footed man from a nowhere town so he could finish God’s work of reconciling the world to Himself. Every time I read a work of literature, I remember this quote, and whatever the subject matter I am reading, I remember that God is real, that He is present, and that the minute I doubt His presence (even in the darkest of places), I doubt the Incarnation.

We’re not all going to enjoy the same kind of literature. Some of us aren’t into the same kinds of stories, nor do we all enjoy the same kinds of poetry. Some of us want happy endings to the tales we read, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some of us don’t mind descending to dark places as long as there is a clear redemption at the end, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. However, we cannot be afraid of the challenge some stories or poems or plays present to us. There are a lot of works our there that are tough nuts to crack – one thing I’ve never said in class is that interpretation is easy, because it isn’t. It can, however, be very, very good.

Pictured: mixed nuts

If we would seek understanding, like the Teacher in Proverbs encourages us to do, I believe God will help us learn something from what we read, no matter what it is. I believe a new world will come to life inside us, and we will not be able to look at our own world the same way again, and that is a good thing. When it comes to transformation, the “loss of innocence” is a necessary archetype.

Allow me to sum up these thoughts in a story…

This place.

Several years ago, when I was attending seminary, a few of my best friends lived together in a big, white house on 15th Street in Waco, Texas, on a corner known to be one of the most heavily trafficked for drugs and prostitution in the city. Hey, rent was cheap; a few other seminary students lived in a small blue house next door. My friend Josh described how he would lay awake many nights and listen to cars rumble up to the curb, how he could hear the faint shuffling and scuffling sounds of business being transacted, and car doors squeaking open and slamming shut, and burping mufflers grumbling off into the night. He told me how depressing it could sometimes be, especially when he would hear familiar female voices speaking – these were the prostitutes who my friends would come across and speak to on a weekly basis when they would walk out of their house, or return home from class. The odd thing about these women, and some of the men who lived in the area and worked as pimps and dealers, was how much they loved these six guys living in this house. They watched out for them – they kept an eye on their house during the day. It was as if the neighborhood, rough and sinful as it was, had embraced them as members of some extended family. It was common for homeless people to wander up the street, see the cars with the college decals parked in the driveway, and come to the door to ask for money – after all, these were Baylor students, and the stereotype is that all Baylor kids are loaded with “daddy’s money” (unless they’re graduate students like we were). However, the guys had decided that they would never hand out money just like that – instead, they always bought extra bread and peanut butter and jelly, and when the street people asked for some cash for “something to drink” or to “catch the bus” or for smokes or Church’s Chicken, the guys would politely turn them down, but immediately offer to make them a sandwich or give them a glass of water. Eventually, the women who hung out on the curb and the men who passed most of their days sitting on tattered couches on their porches would yell out to people they saw approaching the house’s door that they would find no money for themselves there, but if they were looking to score a sandwich…

My friend Josh tells the story of one of the prostitutes from the corner the guys saw most frequently. Her name was Dee. She often stopped by to talk with the guys or to ask for a glass of water. One day, as Josh and some of the other guys were hurrying off to class, Dee came by for a visit. They gave her some water, but told her that they didn’t have time to talk because they were late for their class. She understood, and began to walk away. Then Drew, one of the housemates, looked at Dee and said, “Dee, you know what?” When she turned, he said, “You look really nice today.” Josh says that if you could have seen Dee’s face, and the way this seemingly simple compliment lit her up, you would wonder if anyone had ever given her a compliment before in her life. If so, it must have been a long time ago.

A few days later, a group of us were sitting around one evening, conversing about deeply philosophical and theological issues (as seminary students will do in their spare time) – things like predestination and prevenient grace and why The Scorpion King is apocryphal rather than a true member of The Mummy movie series canon. Somehow, the conversation spilled into the concept of “desensitization” – the idea that seeing too much violence, or sexuality, or hearing too much bad language (whether in books or movies or in real life) dulls you to it and leaves you open to its corruption. It seems like an important thing to remember, and perhaps a reason why so many Christians have such varied feelings on things like R-rated movies, Mature-Audience video games, secular novels and the like. I had started to take the natural defense of this position, until Grayson, one of the other housemates, spoke up.

“I’m not so sure desensitization is always a bad thing,” he said. “Look at what Drew said to Dee the other day. You know, if we hadn’t been living where we’ve been living these past few years, and seeing and experiencing what we have, I don’t think he would have said what he said. At least not honestly. But he was being honest.”

Grayson explained that the guys had finally gotten past the thought of these women on the corner as prostitutes. They were women, and they were God’s creation, and they were loved. No matter how trashy they may have looked to them at first, over time, the guys had come to view them not through their own eyes, but through God’s eyes. They had become desensitized to the darkness around them, but now there was light. There was honesty that pierced through the murky film of their misgivings and limitations. They could look upon the world – even the sinful, dirty, fallen world around them – and call it beautiful.

Whatever you do in this life, be it science or math or music or art or history or mechanics or linguistics or literature, never be afraid of becoming desensitized to this world. Of course, there are measures we must take to guard ourselves from “the sin that so easily entangles,” (Hebrews 12), but we must never shut out the world in order to protect whatever measure of holiness we think we have. Jesus blazed a trail of love directly into the darkest, seediest corners of this world, and he did so confidently while all the other religious people stood back with their heads shaking, their eyes wide, and they jaws hanging open to their knees. But he did it, and if we are going to follow in his footsteps, we must learn to walk the same roads that he walked. It’s scary, and it takes courage. Courage comes from learning, and learning comes when we throw aside easy, shallow answers and open our minds. When we become reflective. When we examine and when we interpret. No one ever said this was easy, but if we are going to be Christians who actually make a difference – who actually change the world rather than badmouth it – then we have to do what is hard.

He went this way.

Whatever you do in this life, don’t forget to slow down every once in a while. Don’t walk this road without taking time to look around. Read a good book, take to heart a poem, embrace the Spirit behind a song. Let the power of these things come to life inside you. Let the Incarnation matter, because it does. And as you live out your own story, look up from the pages every now and then and tell the world, in all its disorder and disarray, “You’re beautiful.” You’ll be surprised how soon you come to mean exactly what you say.

by

The Center

I’ve been thinking lately about finding my center. I know, it sounds like ridiculously futile, New Age recreation. However, I mean this in an intensely practical manner. I’m not interested in “finding” my center because I think it has gone missing in some subconscious or metaphorical way. If anything, it is I who have gone missing.

As Yeats writes in “The Second Coming,” ” Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / … The best lack all conviction while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Perhaps this is an odd reference, but if I am to war my way through the thousands of daily skirmishes – the decisions and the distractions and the desperations – and still place my head to the pillow in peace, then there must be a center that reels me back in, day after day. That keeps me breathing and thinking and just courageous enough to look in the eye this ravenous world with its starving stare. It is not my center that has strayed from me, but I from it. And each day that I do, things fall apart; the center cannot – or will not – hold.

Much of what I have written so far might seem pointlessly abstract. However, when we begin to consider our centers – that which holds our life together and gives it meaning and purpose – I believe many of us, if not all of us, will find that we must speak thus. Words only go so far, whether they are passed between friends, expressed in lines of poetry, partnered with a melody, or delivered from a pulpit. Eventually, even the words fail us. (Such is a frightening and sad reality for a teacher of literature and composition to accept.)

Perhaps this is why “centering prayer,” as it is popularly known these days, does not depend solely on spoken words to communicate our desires and our attitudes to God. There is even more basic forms of expression that go on, such as breathing, posture, and that wonderful communique, silence. Sometimes, we have to leave all our many babbling words behind in order to genuinely express our inmost inclinations.

As a Christian – specifically one who desperately wants that to mean something more than a political preference or a moral mindset – my center is Christ. Not the tired metaphor of Christ “living in my heart as my personal Lord and Savior,” (was there ever a more selfish way to describe the work of the Savior in someone’s life?), but as the unifying and very real God drawing every single aspect of my life into communion with Him. Christ, the benevolent giver of mercy and grace, is proclaimed as Lord over the lives of his followers. But unlike some eternal foreman or power-hungry overseer, this Lord draws us into a relationship that transforms servanthood to friendship, worldliness to meekness, selfishness to humility.

Finding my center means daily doing whatever it takes to live in communion with this wonder-filled Christ. What I am beginning to discover is that while I seek to do this, life does not slow down. The skirmishes keep tumbling over my horizons, making the need to commune with my center even more necessary. After all, without our “circumferences,” as the writer Richard Rohr puts it, there is no center. Without the world around us turning and turning in Yeats’ “widening gyre,” we may not even know we had a center, let alone what that center must be. We would be flung into the depths of our lives, fighting and scrabbling our way through the muck of earthly experience, without any awareness that turning with us and waiting to draw us back into a sense of wholeness and purpose is something – Someone – greater than it all.

Evangelism, then, begins with reminding people there is something to which all the spokes in our wheel connect. Something that remains central while we are hurled back and forth by the centrifugal, retrained chaos of our years, our months and our days. This is the truth of living, and only once it is established can a greater Truth be recognized and possibly accepted.

And when things fall apart, as they are apt to do again and again, it is the greater Truth that holds out his steady hands and calmly asks us to take hold and find our footing once again. Finding the center, and finding the courage to hold on to Him, is the greatest undertaking a person will ever face.

Maybe words go farther than I thought…