Steve Brown, in a recent issue of the Reformed Quarterly (Fall 2007) writes about Amazing Grace:
I have also observed that those who first learn about the amazing grace of God often do, for a period, sin more than before. They are like the college student who, finally out from under the parent’s strictures, tests his or her newfound freedom. These also will slip into the darkness.
But the most important thing about those who understand grace and slip back into the darkness is that they always come back. Those who were trying to be righteous by their own efforts sometimes never come back.
What is grace? Grace is what saves you, holds you, and finally gets you home before the dark. Its called Amazing Grace because when you finally understand and experience it, it takes your breath away.
May you have a breathtaking Christmas season this year praising God for His grace, and, even more, experiencing it every day.
From a recent issue of Food for the Hungry's quarterly magazine:
Everyone has a story. Our stories tell of our triumphs and struggles, our mountain-top experiences and seasons in the valleys that have shaped who we are....
But far from the fairy-tale like stories of the rich and famous, the stories you hear in the seedy villages of Africa don't start with "Once Upon a Time..."
On the contrary, they open with nightmarish scenes: "I was repeatedly raped during the genocide"; "I got AIDS from my unfaithful husband. Now my kids are infected and we are left to die"; "I am a widow and am terrified to think of what will happen to my children when I am gone."
These are some of the story lines we heard during our five-week tour of East Africa. We went to listen, to be present. We found that there is nothing more human than entering someone's story with them.
A couple of years ago (Feb 2005), Kenneth Yu writes a helpful summary of an episode of South Park that parodies the Contemporary Christian Music scene:
In Christian Hard Rock, Cartman concocts another scam in an effort to win yet another bet with Kyle. This time round, the challenge takes the form of who will first earn a platinum record. Cartman decides that the fastest way to achieve that is to break into Christian rock. The formula of imitation is ludicrous, which in his words, is to "take regular old songs, and add Jesus stuff to them". Hence, we have such lyrics as "I need you in my life, Jesus" and "I just can't live with you, Jesus" in place of terms of affection like "babe" and "darling". Unfortunately, the parody hits closer to home than one cares to admit. As the faith it represents transcends new grounds beyond the layer of judgmental fundamentalism, its music still has a lot of catching up to do.
It is hard to believe now, in today's cultural scene, that Amy Grant took flak in 1986 for a song which made no explicit reference to God ("Find a Way" on Unguarded) or, even worse, for later releasing an album on a "secular" label (Heart in Motion, 1991).
(Thanks to the St. James Encyclopaedia of Pop Culture for reminding me of these dates and song titles, and for Google's cacheing old articles!)
What was seen then (and perhaps now, by some still) as a compromise in fact represented a holy rebellion against bad art for the sake of the "not much better" message.
Now, almost 20 years later, so much has changed. Thanks to a number of cultural developments, the Church is growing up. No longer content with "seeker sensitive," she is thinking more about mission.
Some of the same controversy remains in worship debates, but in terms of popular music, many understand today what seemed obscure two decades ago: our faith ought to compel us to hate bad art, not baptize it with an explicit "message" about God.
Perhaps better than any other recent band in the genre of "Christian but Mainstream," Relient K typifies this new paradigm. They make good music, enjoy doing it, and along the way, here and there, we discover a parable-like quality to their poetry that connects people to transcendence across the religious spectrum. That includes Christians who are tired of platitudes.
Part of that "connecting" includes the element of surprise.
With their most recent release, Five Score and Seven Years Ago (March 2007), Relient K does a great job of
An analysis by one music critic gives this explanation:
Infatuation is viewed through a fisheye lens in "Faking My Own Suicide," wherein the narrator (with a wink and a nod to the classic 1970's comedy Harold and Maude) fantasizes about faking a suicide attempt to gain the attention—and affection—of his dream girl.
Maybe the folks don't get it because they've not seen the film?
In any event, everyone agrees though that this song is typical of a band who likes to defy expectations with their work. Hmm. Seems like another Teacher taught in unexpected ways as well.
"Why is the Rabbi speaking with a woman?" or "Why do you heal on the Sabbath?" or "Why are you in a Tax Collector's home?" How about, "If the Rabbi knew she was a sinner, He wouldn't let her touch him."
Behind all of Jesus' surprises is a Big Story that shows a God of the upside down: raising up sinners, exalting rejects, beautifying the ugly, and...those who are in power and prestige are left holding the bag. And its empty.
Here are the lyrics to that song. Can you find the Big Story in these?
Faking My Own Suicide
So I've made up my mind
I will pretend
To leave this world behind
And in the end
You'll know I've lied
To get your attention
I'm faking my own suicideI'm faking my own suicide
Because I know you love me
You just haven't realized
I'm faking my own suicide
They'll hold a double funeral
Because a part of you will die
Along with meWish you thought that I was dead
So rather than me
You'd be depressed instead
And before arriving at my grave
You'd come to the conclusion
You've loved me all your days
But it's too late
Too late for you to sayBecause I'm faking my own suicide
Because I know you love me
You just haven't realized
I'm faking my own suicide
They'll hold a double funeralBecause a part of you will die
Along with meI'll write you a letter that
You'll keep
Reminding you your love for me
Is more than six feet deep
You say aloud that you
Would've been my wife
Right about that time
Is when I come back to life
And let you know
I'd let you know (whooaa)I was faking my own suicide
Because I know you loved me
You just never realized
I was faking my own suicide
I'll walk in that room and
See your eyes open so wide
I've been so lost
Because you know
Because you know
You will never leave my sight
(you will never leave my sight)
Until the day that I die for the first time
(until I die for the first time)
And we'll laugh, yeah we'll laugh
And we will cry
So overjoyed with the love
That saved my life
Our love is so alive
I love Christmas. Its like an old friend: it has its faults, to be sure, but when you’re reunited with her after not seeing her for a while, all you can think about is catching up on an old conversation. Then, of course, after the first glow, reality sets in and we have to reckon with the darker side of our relationship: busy schedules, traffic, stretched budgets, and, for some of us, reminders old heart aches and breaks.
Since then our reality so rarely doesn’t live up to the rhetoric, it is good to be encouraged to hang in there and persevere in keeping Jesus, the Christ in the holiday, front and center in our otherwise often conflicted and confused thoughts and feelings during this time of year.
Who better to bring that reminder than Old Simeon, a first century Jewish prophet whose perseverance through years and years of waiting finally paid off? Who better than Simeon, ancient visionary to whom God Himself had spoken.
God’s message to the old Mystic, Simeon, was something like being told, “Mr. Henry, you’re the proud father of a brand new baby boy! But I’m not going to tell you when. Just hang out in the hospital waiting room for the next thirty years; it’ll eventually happen.”
Simeon would see with his own eyes the Redeemer that God’s people had hoped for for thousands of years: the Savior of the World. But he didn’t know when.
What would this have been like?
Day after day, Simeon, a loyal God-listener went to the Jewish temple checking his mailbox for the message that God’s Good Word had finally arrived.
What did he say when the package finally arrived? Read it for yourself, from Luke 2. Read it carefully and you can almost taste the relief in his soul; it is palpable:
29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
I've noticed that my 10-year old son has taken to noticing cars. Not just any cars: expensive, fast, race cars and luxury cars. This does not give a dad a good feeling.
Well, that's not altogether true. There is a fatherly pride in knowing that my son loves something that I have almost no interest in. "Whose son is this, anyhow?" I want to get to know this kid! He's something else!
So, he wanted particularly to point out that this was his favorite car right now. Go for it, son. Atta boy.
To welcome December and the Advent Season, a meditation on the Incarnation seems apt. This one is provided for us by C. S. Lewis, who, musing on the nature of God says...
If in fact the Creator-Creature distinction is what Scripture says it is, then the value in Lewis's observation and hypothetical question is simply this: more than revelation, the Incarnation shows us redemption.All three persons of the Trinity are declared ‘incomprehensible.’ God is pronounced ‘inexpressible, unthinkable, invisible to all created beings.’ The Second Person is not only bodiless but so unlike man that if self-revelation had been His sole purpose He would not have chosen to be incarnate in a human form. (C. S. Lewis, Miracles, chapter 10, “Horrid Red Things,” page 77)
Now think about the implications of this truth for our lives. Those who claim to follow Jesus should perhaps remember the saying, "You are the only Jesus some people will ever see." Try turning the incarnation from a noun (something to see) to a verb (something to do). God's Incarnation redeems. As we incarnate God to others, they are, by God's grace, redeemed.
Merry Christmas world!
How can you bring the good news of the Incarnation to others this season?
Speaking of having conversations, I finished an interesting article in the September 4, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, "Bob on Bob," a review of a book that compiles excerpts of good interviews of Bob Dylan over the decades. But, as Bob is a notoriously difficult interviewee, the article largely analyzes several of these interviews Bob Dylan has given over the decades.
Bob Dylan has been known to reduce many an erstwhile quote-grabbing interviewer to utter confusion partly because they are "looking" for someone who apparently isn't there. Here's a great excerpt from the New Yorker article:
If you were serious [in that musical age when rock and roll was moribund] you played folk songs. And to become a folksie, unless you actually were from Oklahoma, you invented a persona. The whole folk revival was make-believe anyway; it was urban kids trying to sound like hillbillies and sharecroppers. One of the folk music veterans when Dylan came on the scene was Ramblin' Jack Eliott, a singer with a cowboy twang who had once hoboed around with Guthrie himself. Ramblin' Jack was the stage name of one Elliot Adnopoz, a Jewish kid from Flabush whose father was a prominent surgeon. Cambridge was another center of the folk revival--its where Joan Baez got her start in the coffee houses around Harvard Square. (She was a B.U. dropout.) ...Artifice was the price of authenticity.
It seems that many folks see Dylan as less a philosophical visionary and more of a cultural opportunist with great musical talent. For Dylan, it was never about the "movement" but about the "song."
So, "finding" Dylan has been difficult. Here's something to think about: if someone were to look for you, really look for you, who would they find?
One business commentator I like, Dale Dauten, aka the Corporate Curmudgeon, wrote in his column this past week of the art and science of conversations.
Lately he has been listening to some great conversations with executives (not always the easiest people to have conversations with) hosted by public radio personality Kai Ryssdal of the PRI radio program "Marketplace," available as podcasts here.
What is Ryssdal's advice on how to have a great conversation? Stay away from "yes" or "no" questions and be persistent in keeping the conversation going.
Dauten at this point recalls a line from a 1974 movie, The Conversation, in which Gene Hackman plays a surveillance expert whose job it is to listen in on conversations. I've not seen the film, but I like this quote.
"At one point," Dauten writes, "Harrison Ford's character tells him: 'I'm not following you, I'm looking for you. There's a big difference.'"
By analogy, I think, in evangelism, God calls us to not simply follow someone in a conversation. We need to know "Who is this person, how has God made them? What makes them tick?"
I believe this is the secret for relationship building and for finding opportunities to enter into people's spiritual lives to point them to Jesus. You must LOOK for the other person. When you find him or her, you're in a good position to show and tell them the good news.
I read a book at the beginning of this year or end of last year called Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition. It was an outstanding and warm, yet scholarly treatment of the subject of "how do I know when I'm pursuing the right calling?"
The bulk of the book dealt with the ethics of "ambition" per se, and explored how being ambitious is in many ways the exact opposite of being called. Ambitious for that Ivy League education? Or called to serve the poor?
The gem quote of the book is when the author quotes Buechner's concise yet profound definition of calling:
Calling is where the world's great need and your deep gladness intersect.
That is a version of Ovid's classic motto for a liberal arts education: dulce et utile, "sweetness and usefulness." In other words, gladness alone is not enough; nor is usefulness. It is also a version of Piper's Christian Hedonism motto: "God is most glorified when I am most satisfied in Him."
May God give us, then, a holy ambition for His Church, such that we are both useful, and beautified in the process; both satisfied in Him, and glorifying Him.
Finished Donald S. Whitney's book which provides the reader ten questions, and ten essays, on spiritual health.
But Whitney brings up some other important points as well. One, which I appreciated most, I think, was his chapter on love. You know you're spiritually healthy if you love others--whether they are Christians or not.
Recently I've reflected on how, relatively speaking, in certain situations, those who do not claim to be Christians are sometimes easier to love than those who claim to be Christians. More of us who claim to follow Jesus could use the old saying--was it Calvin? Augustine?--"But for the grace of God, there go I."
A humble person, an unpresuming person, a person who is not arrogant--this is a person who is easy to love. Yet love is not an "easy virtue." Its expression is tested in the hard cases, as Jesus said: "what good is it if you love those who love you? Do not even the tax collectors do that?"
I took issue with one part of Whitney's work, his final essay, longing for God, in which he asserted, with quotes from the likes of Jonathan Edwards, Martin Lloyd-Jones, and Joni Erikson-Tada, that heaven is not merely about "being at peace" or "getting a new body," but about being free from sin and being in the presence of God.
Whitney's emphasis came across as an "either or." I take heaven to be a "both and." That is, both flesh and spirit, both spiritual graces and resurrection and incarnational (i.e., "fleshly") experiences. Jesus had them both (in a manner of speaking, for he never sinned) at the same time; ours is "already and not yet."
No, spiritual longing for heaven is not merely for forgiveness, but for our new bodies, for peace, and for the end of pain. Both And.
