Am I Simple Yet?

The Lord preserves the simple. - Psalm 116:6

The psalmist says that simplicity leads to salvation.  The simplicity of the childlike faith that Jesus spoke of.  Knowledge can make us arrogant, but faith acknowledges that we know nothing.  If we ever feel that we are in control and can rule our lives, we are not in a place where God has control.  When I am strong and powerful, God has no place in my life.  When I am weak and abased, God must be my life.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

How many times have I seen what I want and set out to achieve it, only to fail miserably?  And how many times have I submitted to His will, only to find my wildest dreams coming true?  The more I study theology the less I realize I know.  Just when I think that I could be coming to an understanding of God and who He is, I turn the corner into another mystery or paradox.  What I do know is that all my effort to do the right things is wasted.  Only when I simply rest in Him do I find peace as well as success.

Christianity 101

 A horrible misconception about the life of Christ-followers is that everything is about rules and regulations. So many people will never walk into a church building or engage in open dialogue about spiritual matters because they think that we will tell them to “clean up their act” or “get it together” so that they will be acceptable to God. There are two huge problems with this; first, nobody can make themselves clean enough to be acceptable to God; second, we actually are acting like we can!

Imagine that. The Bible we claim to believe states very clearly that all of our righteous behavior is meaningless (see Isaiah 64:6 and Romans 3:10), yet we try to tell the world to get righteous before they can meet God. No wonder people won't listen to us! The modern church is full of double talking Pharisees just as Israel was in the time of Jesus.

The sad truth is that we all are sinful humans who cannot come near to God without Him calling us. When sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam, the relationship between man and God changed (see Genesis 3). Originally made in God's image, mankind is now a distorted image of Him. Left to our own devices, we will eventually succumb to our earthly nature which is at odds with God's divine nature (see Genesis 6 and Romans 8:7). What this means in practical terms is that a human is unable to be righteous in the eyes of God unless one of them has a change in nature. God does not change (see Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 1:10-12), so we must.

Paradox v. Contradiction

One of the most common problems we run into when trying to understand the Christian faith is the apparently contradictory nature of God presented to us in the Bible.  When studying the Scriptures it is hard to not become confused by conflicting ideas.  God is one, yet we know Him as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  He wants us to tell the truth and be faithful to our spouses, yet the Hebrews were assisted in taking the city of Jericho through a lie told by a prostitute named Rahab.  Jesus taught us to "turn the other cheek" and later told His disciples to carry swords as they went out into the world.  From our perspective these all seem like contradictions.  If we knew the whole truth, we would see that they are merely paradoxes.

The real issue at hand is our perspective.  When we finite humans attempt to understand something complex, we will quite often try to simplify it for the ease of comprehension.  There is really nothing wrong with this defense mechanism; it's just how we function.  We want to understand, so we shrink the incomprehensible to fit the framework of our understanding.  If two ideas do not seem mutually possible, then one of them must be wrong; according to finite humans.  When approached with the intellect alone God will always seem contradictory because our intellect is limited, yet God is unlimited, infinite, and incomprehensible.  Just as an ant's limited perspective keeps it from truly understanding the full truth of a foot stomping in the middle of its home, our limited perspective keeps us from truly understanding God and how He works.

Montana

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

-Socrates, according to Plato

Montana died in a small town in Texas. Montana was nine or ten years old, depending on whose report you read. Montana hung himself in the boys' restroom at school. A very rare occurrence, it seems, because an expert in the study of suicide (nice job) said that self-inflicted death happens in young children only about five times a year in the U.S. This particular death struck close to home for the simple reason that it happened in my home town, in a school where I used to work. I didn't know the child or his family, but we don't need to know someone to grieve at their departure from this world. We certainly don't need to know someone to feel the stab of pain that his parents must be feeling (I have three children of my own). We don't even need to know someone to have an understanding of the pain that they must have experienced just before murdering themselves. I can still remember clearly the emptiness and agony that went hand-in-hand with my earliest suicidal thoughts.

I was only slightly older than Montana when I realised that death would be a relief from life. I had been bullied at school (some feel that bullying led to Montana's death), but that was not a reason to die. I was failing in most of my classes even though it was obvious to everyone involved that I knew how to do the work, but that was not a reason to die. The arguing and inevitable divorce of my parents was not a reason to die. I was very familiar with alcohol at the time and had begun to play with supposedly harder drugs, although I have no idea what makes pills and herbs worse than fermented vegetables. Still not a reason to die. The one-two punch of puberty and my first junior high dance was more devastating than any of these things, yet we all go through that. So why did I want to die?

I don't know.

Maybe it was because I was dealing with adult issues too early. Or it could be that I felt that quick, easy solutions are better than patience and perseverance. Maybe I was just a blamer and finger-pointer and, when I realised that no one was truly to blame, I simply turned on myself. Or maybe I was born with a dark, spooky psyche and death fascinates me. Does it really matter why I wanted to die? I tried to murder myself and failed. Several times.

The problem is that not everyone fails. A boy of ten decided that an unknown death would be preferred to the life he knew and hung himself. Now the finger-pointing begins.

Some will rant at the school for not recognising and dealing with the problem. Some will blame the parents for the very same failures. According to some, he was simply weak-willed and would have never succeeded anyway... I feel fine sharing that view because the same was said of me. Is “self-indulgent wimp” actually a medically valid diagnosis?

The truly sad part of all of this is that while we look for someone to pin the blame on we are continuing to allow children to die. You see, “they” are not the problem. We are. As a society we fail our children, and we perpetuate the issue by blaming everyone else.

We Americans have to wake up to the fact that what we value in our society is what kills us as people and individuals. We claim to believe in free speech, whatever that really is, yet we kill people over the words they say. We glorify sex in our art, literature and entertainment, yet act appalled when our children are aware of and active in their sexuality. We give money and possessions a dominant role in our lives and then wonder why the next generation is so materialistic and self-centered. Through video games and film we make the violence of combat out to be some grand adventure (I've been there, and it's not). Then, for some reason, we don't understand why kids are violent towards one another. And we cannot fathom why, in a society that acts as if there is no God, children grow up with no hope and turn the violence upon themselves. Of course, not every American behaves this way, but as a society...

The suicide of a child in America does not surprise me. It saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me. We adults act like children, and our children grow up too fast. We spend so much time chasing the "American Dream" that our kids are being raised by schools, daycares and video screens. Instead of fathers teaching boys to be men, and mothers teaching girls to be women, schools teach them to be androgynous nobodies. We let TV and Nintendo dictate morality rather than take that responsibility upon ourselves. And then we blame everyone else for the way the world is. We want the quick, easy solution. Unfortunately, raising kids, like changing society, requires patience and perseverance.

So, another child has fallen through the cracks. No one person or group is to blame. We all are. If you could go back in time and ask a Viking why he enjoyed going out to burn, rape and pillage, he would probably shrug his shoulders and say, “It's what we do. We're Vikings”. He would not understand that there might be something wrong with the way he lives. Why do we live the way we do? Because we're Americans. It's what we do.

Divine Economy

Mat 6:14 "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

The Lord informs us very clearly here that being forgiven by God is contingent upon our forgiveness of other people. This does not mean that we somehow earn His love or grace, but that it is His love and grace flowing through us which allows us to show forgiveness to others. When I am aware of how God has shown me mercy I am able to pass that on to people around me. If I don't realize how I have been blessed I can't pass it on.

It's like trying to give someone a million dollars. I don't personally have a million dollars, so I can't give you a million dollars. No matter how hard I try, it is impossible for me to give away that much money. Likewise, if I have never apprehended God's forgiveness, it can't flow through me. If I don't know that it is there, I can't give it away.

But, according to the verse above, if I give it away, I get more. In chapter 19 of Luke Jesus says that those who use what they have will receive more, but those who do nothing with what God has given will lose what they have. That's how the divine economy works. Give it up and you get more. Hold on to what you have and you lose it all!

If each one of us realized this, on something more than an intellectual level, it would transform the entire world. Possessions and money would become tools for good instead of measures of greed. Our thoughts towards other people would be focused on their needs instead how they might serve our needs. Grudges and resentment would become historical footnotes in a society driven by benevolence.