“A God Who Suffers,” part three

Remember how I said one of my former professors likes to compare God (Psalm-like) to a black lab? She’s written a wonderful little book about it called “Dogspell: A Dogmatic Theology on the Abounding Love of God.” Her name is Mary Ellen Ashcroft … look it up on Amazon and get a copy.

Anyway, at the end of this tiny tome, she talks about “Rescue Dog,” and his extraordinary love … how he is always there, wherever we are, to share our sorrows with us. “In the ICU, the mortuary, the nursing home – there is God, muzzle against cheek,” she writes. Human rescuers “race in, equipment in hand, all efficiency – where’s the problem? They set up machines, take measurements and rush, sirens wailing, through the streets. They maintain the patient’s vital signs, help them hang on for dear life – if “life” is a permanent vegetative state. If time is a lockstep through eternity, then we must check off as many heartbeats, as many breaths as we can.”

But rescue dog is different. He doesn’t swoop in and remove us from our difficult situations. “Rescue dog doesn’t do extreme measures,” she says. “The most extreme measures have already been done – tumbling, stripping, rolling.” He has already come down and joyfully mingled with us in the mud, already given himself to rescue us forever. “It’s enough to be there, dog with us.

“Rescuers rush in and hook up machines. Dog rushes in and licks your face. Presumably, God could pull out machines, machines beyond our wildest expectations – truly dues ex machina – to deliver us. God could do that, but it seems that often God, doglike, prefers simply being there to extraordinary measures. [Dog] comes in and sits, tail thumping occasionally, muzzle on neck, occasional lick on hand until the heart stops.

“It’s all over: The graph lines on the machines fall flat. The rescuers shake their heads and start unhooking.

“Deep within, far beyond their most sensitive monitors, the stilled heart quivers. That sound? What is it?

“A scratch from the other side of glory’s door, a whimper of welcome. The yelp of greeting warns you. Brace yourself: This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Prepare to meet thy dog.”

I know it’s not a perfect metaphor, especially if you haven’t read through the book to get to this last chapter … you haven’t read about how dog waits eagerly to greet you, face to face. How he longs to w-a-l-k with you in the cool of the day. How he runs joyfully to meet you, with uncontained exuberance, and doesn’t care what you look like or what you do for a living. A God enthusiastic and vulnerable to pain. A God who rushed down the slippery slope through the mud just to be near us where we were.

But it’s this same God of whom David says in Psalms 56:8, “You have kept track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” In 85:8, David writes, “I listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for He speaks peace to his faithful people.” God speaks peace to us! He catches our tears.

And in Jeremiah 17:7-8, the prophets writes, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat, or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.” In other words, they are plugged in to the vine, and draw their sustenance from God himself.

In the footnotes of my Bible it says this: “Those who trust in the Lord will have abundant strength [even in difficult times], not only for their own needs, but even for the needs of others.” They will produce fruit even in their suffering.

“A God Who Suffers,” part two

I haven’t suffered too much in life, by comparison, but I dislike it when I do. I don’t rejoice when I encounter various trials (I love the wording, though: “various” covers so much ground so nonchalantly) as James directs in 1:2. But I am figuring out a few things that suffering has to teach me.

Suffering teaches me compassion. I’m not a merciful person by nature, so when I suffer it helps me identify with those who are suffering. Suffering is awkward for me. It’s a kind of weakness I don’t know how to handle. I want to tell suffering people to suck it up. (I told you I’m not merciful.) It’s what I tell myself, too, when I’m suffering. But I don’t think that’s what James meant when he said “Consider it all joy” or when Paul talks about “rejoicing in weakness” in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. I certainly don’t think it’s the example Jesus gave us through his suffering. He didn’t suck it up.

He cried and bled and groaned and hung on to God for dear life. He was miserable. You’ve got to be pretty upset to sweat blood. But instead of closing in on himself, he opened up. That’s what gave him the grace to say, “I love you and forgive you” to the people poking at him with a stick while he bled to death. Even more, God’s shocking love was what caused God to say, “I love you and forgive you” to the people poking his son with a stick while his son bled to death. That’s a crazy love. Either he’s twisted or we are.

Suffering also teaches me how much life matters. How valuable life is. That’s the reason suffering sucks … because life is important. So when it goes wrong, it’s painful and awful. If life wasn’t important, suffering wouldn’t matter as much. What I do with my day wouldn’t matter as much … the choices I make wouldn’t matter as much. But they do, because it is. So suffering teaches me the value of life, and why it is such a tragedy for even one to be lost … because that one means the world to God; that one is precious.

It also helps me to understand joy better, and satisfaction. Contrasting opposites help us while we muddle around here on earth. I don’t think they are essential … we’ll understand true joy in heaven without any suffering necessary to define it … but while we’re here it definitely helps deepen my perspective.

And as James says, suffering builds strength in us. No pain, no gain. When we come through on the other side, our faith is stronger – we have more experiential proof to sustain our faith. I think it’s a tribute to God’s greatness that he uses suffering … the exact opposite of his purpose in creation … to build stronger faith in us. He redeems everything! Everything meant to harm us, he transforms into something that blesses us (Gen 50:20). And the benefits don’t just nurture us, but extend to others as well.

What does suffering teach you? How has God transformed your suffering? Can you see any opportunity for healing and growth through the suffering in your life?

“A God Who Suffers”

Suffering is such a great topic; it’s so deep and twisty you can think on it for hours, come to few conclusions, and still feel accomplished that you have tackled a great mystery.

I think suffering is a great catalyst. It can either close us up, folding us in on ourselves, or it can open us up to the world. When we turn inward and focus on ourselves in our suffering, our wounds often begin to fester. Our suffering becomes sour and depression swamps us. Tendrils of bitterness curl around our hearts. I like to talk about sin in my life this way: as a festering sore that, when covered up, goes inward, blackening the skin and oozing a greenish pus. It communicates how unhealthy sin is for us, and how it taints the healthy parts of us too. I think suffering is also like that – disastrous when it turns inward. The good news is, suffering is edifying when it turns us outward to focus on others and on God instead of on ourselves.

But let’s be real: suffering isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s hardly bearable. There are things so unexpected, so unjust, so painful, we don’t know how to move forward. Yet even in our agony, Christ offers us opportunity. When we open ourselves up in our suffering -- as Christ opened himself –instead of making us sick, our suffering begins to heal the sick parts of us. Our vision sharpens, our priorities clarify. Instead of festering, the wounds clear. We begin to learn what suffering has to teach us … what the example of a suffering God has to teach us.

More on this tomorrow.

“Love Tree,” part three

It seems kind of pathetic, to sit there as a branch on the Love Tree, waiting for love to be produced in my life. I get kind of impatient … what should I be DOING? I like how Dallas Willard talks about the formation of love (and the other fruits of the Spirit) in our lives: he says we do have a vital role. What is it? To suck it up, tough it out, random acts of kindness, be the ball? To be willing, says Willard. Our role is to be willing to have the Holy Spirit create love in us, create peace in us, create joy in us, that we then offer to each other and to the world.

Is that it? Does it seem too easy to just be willing? But the trick here is to really be willing. Often I say I am, and think I am, when my life clearly demonstrates that I am not. For example, I know from 1 Corinthians 13 that love “bears all things.” All things! Let’s be honest, I generally don’t want to bear all things. I’m not really willing and eager to bear all things. I don’t really want to “cover a multitude of sins,” especially other people’s sins against me (1 Ptr 4:8). The truth is, I want love applied to me, and maybe to “act” loving sometimes, but I don’t want to truly be loving, to have the fruit of love formed in me. Because that would mean I have to bear all things. In Colossians 3, Paul describes it as “making allowance for the faults of others, and forgiving anyone who offends you.” And that’s just one of the things love does!

The good news here is that God’s already spotted my weaknesses and hesitancy. He’s willing to work around it. In 2 Corinthians 12:10, Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong,” referring to Christ’s power at work within him. In 2 Corinthians 4:7, he says, “We hold this treasure in jars of clay, to show this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” And as I draw near to God, as I talk to Him in prayer, and read His Word, and serve with His people, I find it easier to be willing, because my relationship with Him is deepened and my focus is on Him, not on myself.

When I don’t see evidence of fruit in my life, it means two things: I’m not really willing to have fruit formed in me (and I’m resisting God’s opportunities to form fruit in me) and I am focusing too much on myself and not enough on Him. It means I have not restructured my life in such a way as to revolve around Him and what He wants for me; I am still trapped in my old way of thinking about what is best for me, and what is best for my family, and what I think is right. But God also promised to transform my thinking, and if I ask Him, I will “be transformed through the renewing of my mind” (Romans 12:2). Jesus finishes up the Love Tree metaphor by saying, “Remain in me.” Stay plugged in. Remember how much I love you, and act accordingly.

“Love Tree,” part two

So now that I see my love tree needs watering, how do I do that? How does love get produced in my life? Can I do it just by trying harder? By doing the right things? Saying the right things? If I act like I’m loving does that make me loving? I know from my own experiences that it doesn’t work that way. “Fake it ‘til you make it” doesn’t work for love.

In John 15, Jesus says that, actually, God is the love tree. We are just a branch on the tree, and being part of the tree is what produces fruit in our lives. When situations crop up, we have the choice of responding however we want … we can draw from ourselves and the world, and produce bitterness, or draw from the Love Tree – God himself – and produce a blossom of love.

If it seems kind of weird to think of God as a tree, blame those Biblical writers … personally, I like the metaphors in Psalms where David compares God to both a rock and a chicken. One of my mentors likes to compare him to a black lab. But more on that later.

One of my favorite things about God is that he never tells us to do things “just because.” He doesn’t say, “Be loving because you ought to,” or “forgive others because you should.” He doesn’t even say, “Because it’s the right thing to do, that’s why.” He always says this: “Because I love you; because I forgive you. That’s why.” In Jeremiah 31:3 he says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have called you.”

When those opportunities blow through where we chose our response between love and something else, we aren’t told to think about fairness or justice or looking holy or faking it … we’re told to think about how overwhelmingly God loves us, and respond accordingly. In John 13:25, Jesus says, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” “Love each other the way I have loved you (v.34).” 1 Corinthians 14:1 says it this way: “Pursue love above all else.” Galatians 5:6 says “The only thing that counts is faith made effective through love.”

“Love Tree”

This morning I read this verse in Proverbs: “Hatred stirs up quarrels, but love makes up for all offenses” (10:12, NLT). There’s a lot of depth in that little verse. All offenses. It’s similar to 1 Peter 4:8 – “love covers a multitude of sins.” I think of all those scenarios throughout my day where I have a choice of responding in love or “quarrels”: when my husband has neglected to take out the trash, when my neighbor has parked (again!) on my grass, when my coworker has forgotten to tell me the meeting time was moved up, when the BMW cuts me off on my drive home, etc., etc. And don’t get me started on the in-laws! There are so many opportunities for me to either take offense or respond in love. Usually I think as long as I don’t do or say anything, I’m fulfilling the letter of the law. But what’s in my heart? Am I thinking loving thoughts that cover the offense, or am I keeping score or feeling justifiably annoyed?

It seems a little distant to me, that kind of love that naturally breathes forgiveness and mercy and grace. Sometimes I feel that way about all the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control (Galatians 5:22). I think, how can I have those as my automatic response to life?

I think the first thing I need to understand about fruit is that it is not for my own benefit. I like to think, “God, give me more love in my life, give me peace, give me joy,” as though these are things that God gives to us to make us happy. But the Scriptural analogy of fruit is that the fruit is something produced in us (not given to us) so that it can be offered to others … an apple tree doesn’t produce apples so it can eat them, the apples are for others to eat. And the biological purpose of fruit is to spread seeds … which ties in to another Scriptural analogy, the planting of seeds. Another purpose of fruit is service – feeding each other.

How is your love tree doing? I think mine definitely needs watering.

“Jesus Hearts Gays,” part two

How many of us come to Jesus with all our issues resolved?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been following Christ for years and years and I STILL have sin in my life that I haven’t “gotten over” yet. Is it serious? Yes. Is it a big deal? Yes. Does it keep me from loving Jesus and working in ministry? No. It doesn’t keep me from church, from participating in the “body of Christ” … the flawed and messed up but sincere group of people who have been knocked over by grace.

I don’t know about you, but I need to be in church, not just want to be. Sure, I love to serve and worship and grow, but it’s deeper than that … I need to be there because I haven’t gotten it all figured out yet. I still need grace and mercy and renewal every day while I try to figure this thing out.

So isn’t that true of others? Shouldn’t all sinners be in church where they can encounter grace and mercy and renewal as they try to figure life out?
Why then do some things keep people out entirely? Like being gay. We so often want them to have things all worked out before they can come and be one of us and experience grace, mercy and renewal.

Who else should we be excluding? People who struggle with porn? People who get angry too much? Where’s the line? Where should we send these people to meet God? What timeline should we give them for having all their issues worked out?

I’ve been mulling over Matthew 9, and other passages where Jesus hangs out with those his “church” rejected. How did Jesus expect us to continue his work? What was his vision for changing hearts and letting people know they matter to God?

And on the subject of community, here’s a quote from Gerald May: “One of the powers of faith community is its capacity to provide a lasting steadiness through all the wavering of its individual members. When I cannot pray, the prayer of countless others goes on. Where I am complacent, others are struggling. Where I am in conflict, others are at peace. Most important, when I cannot act in loving ways, there are those in my communities who can.”

“Jesus Hearts Gays”

A friend of mine loves gay men … most of the gay men she’s met are sweet and funny and she’s drawn to them. She someday hopes to establish a ministry that reaches out to and gets to know and shows love to gay people.

Can I just say that’s so Jesus to me?

So my friend and I were talking about gay guys and she asked, how can we say it’s wrong in such a loving way that we won’t anger or crush them? (Referring to church, not individual conversations.) And you know, I think the answer is we don’t. We don’t say anything.

Instead, I think we try something new … befriending those who are different from us, getting to know them and loving them as individuals important to God. We’ve tried all sorts of talk. Let’s now try some quiet love in action.

It reminds me of the story about when the local church leaders (the pastors and elders and deacons) noticed this new preacher in town who, instead of “preaching the Bible” about homosexuality, showed up at parties thrown by gay guys. He went out dinner with them and generally acted like their friend instead of their judge. Somehow I don’t think he worked “you know, homosexuality is wrong” into his conversations at the dinner parties. Obviously, the rest of the pastors were upset by this “hippie love” behavior and called the pastor on it.

He said a crazy thing. I mean, this guy was out there. He said, “Go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices (Hosea 6:6).’ For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who are sinners.” That’s from Matthew 9:13 and I gotta say, most of us church people are not Jesus in this story. We’re the Pharisees, slightly scandalized and helpless when see peeps ministering in real love to those we consider too far outside the grace of God.

"Politicked," part two

I really am getting excited about next year … everywhere I turn, it’s commentary on politics. It will be cool, come January, to have the first African-American president in the USA. A living, breathing embodiment of our melting-pot nation.

But most of the conflict I witness is Republic/conservative vs. Democrat/liberal. Even today I read a blog about why Donald Miller voted for Obama, and the comments people left even called his salvation into question because of his vote.
Is it just me, or do you hear this kind of attack and counter-attack too? I hear Christians on both sides of the party debate, although generally I hear it said that you can’t be a good Christian and a Democrat. Apparently in his day, Jesus and the disciples voted Republican. I guess when he comes back he will again.

Here’s a quote I found from a famous Christian author writing to conservatives about their conflict with liberals from way back in the day:

Don’t forget that you used to be outsiders too. You lived in the world without God and without hope. Christ himself has made peace between us by making us all one people. He has broken down the wall of hostility that used to separate us. By his death he ended the whole system that excluded people. His purpose was to make peace by creating in himself one new person from different groups. …Our hostility toward each other has been put to death! Now all of us may come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

Can you guess who the author was? It was Paul, writing to the Ephesians about how Jews and Gentiles wanted to rip each other apart and that their division only damaged their hearts and denied Christ. He said this all in Ephesians two, verses eleven through fourteen in the NLT.

What do you think? Does it apply today too?

“Politicked"

Most of my friends and family are conservative Christians, and most of them did not vote for Obama. Some of the fundamentalists at the family fringes are pretty despondent about the election results. You know, I’m actually really excited to see what the democrats do … here’s their chance. They’ve got the Senate, the House and the President. And since my hope’s not in politics, I’m not worried about liberal government at all, I’m just curious to see what they do with this chance.

I think it’s very sad that peeps have put their hope in the US being a “Christian” nation. I get it, since I used to be the same, but then when I understood about Jesus and started to care about people’s hearts, all that political concern just fell away from me. Laws don’t change people’s hearts. They don’t save their marriages, they don’t rescue their children. They don’t heal their hearts.

Just like the Old Testament law. It protected the people and pointed them to God, true. But it didn’t save them. Morality didn’t save them, their relationship with God saved them.
The truth is, eliminating abortion in the US would not save the world. Even ending poverty wouldn’t save the world. Because morality isn’t the hope of the world. Only Jesus is the hope of the world. I want to be known for what I’m for – Jesus – not known for what I’m against.
After all, politics is culture, and culture never saved anyone.