Year of Biblical Politics

It seems that in the middle of every feud, be it theological, political, who left the toilet seat up or the toothpaste cap off, there are those who will staunchly dissect and throw their fist in the air, tout truth and justice. Rightness is the aim. And then there are those who will seek peace, restoration, claim mercy and love as the higher standard. Progress is the aim. What is interesting here, though, is that those of the justice persuasion will rarely come over to the side of mercy, but those of the mercy persuasion will come over to the side of justice only when their acts of love are being infringed upon.

Who ends up looking like the bad guy here?

The just of course. The less progressive one.

Nobody likes a bully. And the world, and the Church, is full of bullies. Those who throw big words and the Bible around with little regard for the people it affects.

But I would like to propose, if I may, the fact that the sneakier of the two is the merciful turned just.

We ought to be wary of sneaky people. The world, and the Church, is full of sneaky people. Those who have agendas in every direction and woo us in with good-feeling words.

And someone wants to talk about feelings here, I know (because you are the merciful ones). But when I begin to infringe on yours, you bring out the big guns and talk about how I ought to be just and not be too mean because someone's feelings might be hurt. (Let the record stand that I am by nature a Mercy, and by nurture, Just.)

Here's something:

Instead of taking our cues from culture, from just judges or merciful peacekeepers, from liberals or conservatives, from caps on or seats up, maybe we should take our cues from God who is perfect judge and perfect mercy.

He is perfect judge, so sin is not tolerated, holiness is the only acceptable state, watered down faith isn't helpful, and nothing but the best will do.

But He is also perfect mercy, so He gave a Substitute, laid on Him the sins of us all, but still, nothing but the best will do.

In our pursuit of mercy and love and all the good feeling parts of our faith, let's not forget that sin entered the world and our heroes of the faith still fall miserably short of anything good—and that sin (false teaching, acts of unrighteousness, mockery of God, poor leadership) ought to be exposed for God's glory and our good.

And in our pursuit of justice and truth and all the certain parts of our faith, let's not forget that the same righteousness that covers us, covers our sisters and brothers too—and that the call on all of us is glory to glory, faith to faith, further in, further on, nearer to God, nearer to glory.

WHAT did HE MEAN?

These days it seems authorial intent is an aside, an afterthought. What really matters is how the piece of music or poetry or prose made us feel and feelings are something we westerners are never short on. And so praise God for twitter and facebook, and someone thank Him for LinkedIn too, because without these outlets of immediacy, how would we ever know how anyone felt about anything? This morning a short twitter exchange:

Him: Sometimes I need to be reminded of what I sometimes believe. Me: Almost all the time I need to be reminded of what I almost never believe.

So this has me thinking about doubt this morning.

--------------------

In my Old Testament class we began our study of Deuteronomy today. It is, in short, the paraphrase of the previous four books of the Bible and, in long, an instructive to remember and rejoice, remember and rejoice.

Forget authorial intent and even my innermost feelings, remembering and rejoicing slip my mind more than anything else.

Remember: what God intends, who He intends it for, and why. Rejoice: that God has not forgotten me or His promises, or most of all, His faithfulness to His character and word.

The other night a friend challenged me deeply. I sat on my bed Indian style, while her words came across the phone, and eloquence aside, she finished with, "So get up off your ass and do something about this situation..." Lest you think she's of the coarse, unfeeling sort, she sent me an epistle of love the next day filled with all sorts of right thinking and gospel truth.

Why?

Because I forget. I forget what God has done. I forget what He has promised. I forget what He does intend and not just how it all makes me feel.

--------------------

This morning reading through the first few chapters of Deuteronomy with the rest of my class I'm reminded that there is cancer in that room and death, loneliness and confusion, joblessness and despair. In that room of 38 people who love Jesus deeply, who serve Him radically, who have been tapped on the shoulder by leadership at my church to come out and lead well, in that room of 38 people things do not always go well.

There are some of us asking: will we ever get to see the promised land? Has our sin been too great? Has His anger been too deep? Has our doubt been too strong?

And it's not because we don't know the gospel or the grand intent of God's hand: it is because we do not remember the gospel and sometimes forget the grand intent of God's hand.

So Deuteronomy is a sweet comfort to me today. Because it is a book about remembering and rejoicing—even if we never see what we think is promised to us. It is a book of history, of Ebenezers set at which to point and say, "Look what God has done thus far." It is a book about God's intentions, even when our feelings run rampant over truth.

Remember.

And Rejoice.

what shines brightest

I haven't always been a peacemaker. I used to be a peacekeeper. I hoarded peace like a child with his Christmas stocking full of Andes Mints and Pez candy dispensers. I kept peace to myself, sure that if I could pet it, and feed it, and care for it, it would stick around. I kept it like a kept girl, made it work for me, paid its wages at the altar of hiding in groups and keeping relationships at arms length. I kept peace by repeating after myself that I was not at fault for the grenades flying over my head or the words flung across wooden tables or down long hallways.

Romans 12:18 says to live peaceably with all and, well, I have tried to do that. No one can accuse me of bringing wrecking balls into life's infrastructures in the past decade. No sir.

Tonight I think about the rest of that verse, though, or rather, the beginning of it: If possible. So long as it depends on you. Then live peaceably with all.

If possible. Meaning: when all other outlets have been explored, when I have sorted through the cans and wills and dos and don'ts of possibility. When I have exhausted improbability and taken no thought for the bullets colliding through my unchinkable armor. When I have braced myself for the fall that will inevitably come when I am most certainly misunderstood and when I am blacklisted from here til kingdom come. When it is possible, do it.

Stop writing the rebuttal. Don't blog the discourse. Don't preach to the choir or to the vagrant in the back row on whom you have your [plank-filled] eye.

Why? Because it's possible. It's possible for you to shut up, pursue peace.

So long as it depends on you. Meaning, and don't miss this: the world will spin madly on.

Eliza Doolittle sung a bit of theology for us all when she sang to Prof Higgins, "And without much ado we can all muddle through without you." So as long as we hold the beautiful ability to pursue peace with all men, we ought to. So long as it depends on us, we should trust that our meddling in affairs that bring an end to peace, well, people die on hills like that and we wade through the carnage for centuries.

Tonight I sat in a room with some beautiful people and we shared some broken things, some carnage, places where we didn't pursue peace or where someone didn't pursue peace and we were the wreckage left behind.

But here is the beautiful part of that: wreckage will be left while we wander this earth, but what's ultimately left, when the All Consuming Fire has come and burned away everything but what shines brightest, what shines brightest will be the Prince of Peace and we add nothing to that beauty with our earthly bickering.

[PURE?] ENJOYMENT

"I enjoy your company." Because life is too short to mess around, I admit, I've asked a guy frankly on more than one occasion, "What's your intention?" The conversations are never fun, never comfortable, and never feel very fruitful. But it scratches the itch, gives them the opportunity to 'fess up, and lets me let my heart move on. In about 98% of these conversations I hear this one line: I enjoy your company, but...

This past weekend JR Vassar spoke at a conference for the home-group leaders at my church. He spoke on the Trinity and it was, let me tell you, enjoyable. It was heady and theological, it was convicting and reassuring, and it was life-giving and healing, but more than anything else, it was enjoyable.

He spoke about enjoying the gospel and never have I wanted to simply enjoy someone enjoying the gospel before as I did him. He's a brilliant guy with a deep love for Jesus and the Word, he obviously loves my church family and my pastors deeply, he's the pastor of a church plant in my native north—what is not to enjoy about this guy? But see, he wasn't talking about enjoying him, he was talking about enjoying the gospel—a different thing altogether.

This week, this month, I'll tell you, it's been hard to enjoy the gospel. There are some things weighing on me, family, time management, book details, the heaviness of my job, homesickness, tight finances, roommates, sleep, these things push in and crowd out my joy quickly.

I've started to enjoy things and people who enjoy the gospel, but it's not the same is it? It's not the same as enjoying the gospel. Enjoying the depth and richness that exists in being rescued from the clutches of death, covered with the righteousness of Christ, and called a son or daughter of a King. There's joy there, right there, sitting in that.

Yet I'm too busy enjoying the substitute instead of The Substitute, the creation instead of the Creator, the friend instead of the Groom.

But He's truly is the better choice. He is.

So here's my question to you today: what or who are you enjoying today?

Are you enjoying the company of a girl or guy because you haven't found "the one?" Are you enjoying religious things instead of God Himself? Are you enjoying the attention of your children, your readers, or even your spouse instead of dwelling deepest on the enjoyment that God has in you and you can have in Him?

KILL your DARLINGS

It's humility that's got me down these days and I suppose that's not a bad place to be after all. I have no wish, desire, or need to draw any more attention to the recent happenings in the faith-blogosphere in internetdom. If you caught whiff of it, it was enough, and if you were in the unfortunate position of being a blogger yourself who is used to having people look at you for what to tweet and retweet next, well, even worse. I learned my lesson with KONY 2012—acts of division among the body are not my cup of tea, no matter what's in the water.

I sent a draft of a post of political nature to a blogger friend last week along with the question: should I post this? It wasn't the post itself, though, that made him warn me against posting it, but the subject: "People don't come to Sayable for this, they come for grace, for encouragement, and for the gospel." Or something along those lines. I deleted the draft and went on my merry way. In college a creative writing prof quoted William Faulkner in our class saying everyone needed to "learn to murder their darlings in their writing, and for pete's sake, Lore, would you quit murdering your darlings?" I've never been too married to my words.

But if there is one thing that these sort of hurricanes in the blogosphere teach me, it is that we maybe ought to perhaps at least divorce our darlings, sit down quietly, and let the Holy Spirit do what he does best—namely, to teach and guide his habitats into all truth (John 14).

So I've been thinking about humility this week, how low can we go, and all that.

John said, "He must increase, I must decrease." And Paul determined to "boast nothing but the cross." And I think we could learn a bit more from these apostolic fathers.

At the root of pride is the feeling that we have the corner on the market (or theology, or politic, or semantic), and the price of meat is just going to keep on rising. We feel, in error, that if we do not guard this piece of the pie with everything our mamas gave us, the whole world will go without pie. And what a pity that would be.

But the cross? The cross levels it. It somehow levels the misapplied doctrine, the faulty readings of scripture, and the sinner who can't stop sinning. We don't like to say this because we don't like to murder our darlings. We don't like to cross out the possibility that upon this doctrine He will build His church. But the truth is He's building His church and He's invited you and me to come along—pick up the bricks and slather the mortar. He's building it with or without us.

He's building it of people who know the only way to be first is to be last. He's building it of people who know the difference between close-handed and open-handed theologies. He's building it of people who will reach out to the least of these (even when the least of these thinks they're the greatest of these). He's building it of the little people, and dare I say, the little bloggers and tweeters and facebookers who think more than twice about stamping their feet, calling foul, and jumping on bandwagons, or defending their ilk with wit, sarcasm, and theology.

So maybe you didn't weigh in this week or maybe you never weigh in or maybe you were hanging laundry, shuffling littles, and clocking in at work this week and never caught a whiff of anything amiss. Whoever you are and wherever, He's building His church and He's looking for the lowly and humble to come along with Him.

He's looking for people willing to die on no mountain but the one on which cross stood tall and offered all: righteousness in Christ alone.

WHO is GOD?

The roads are pockmarked and uneven, my step is steady and forward. The sun is rising over the horizon in front of me and this past weekend's sermon sounds in my ears. The Holiness of God.

I have struggled for many years to understand the character of God. A misunderstanding of it ultimately led to a crossroads where I had to ask the question: am I saved at all? And I don't think that's too extreme. Some would say that He is a mystery, and I would agree, but for me to know Him at all the veil had to be torn in two, and He did that for me. He did that for me.

This morning I am reading Psalm 145 which is like flash fiction or the cliff notes for the story of God. His character there, splayed out on a quarter of a spread in my bible, mercy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, enduring, gracious, greatness, righteousness, glorious. If ever I find myself waning on the character of God again (And I do. And often.), I can turn here and get inoculated for yet another slew of tiring, confusing, humble, failure-ridden days.

I don't have to be, because He is.

He already is, so I don't have to be.

And some, myself included, might argue that until they are flush in the face and full of can-do-itiveness. And some, myself included, will undeniably fall again, fall short of holiness, miss the mark, falter in faith, and try their best to make a mockery of God.

I ate dinner with a friend last night and as we stood by my car we talked about how God cannot be mocked. Paul said it to the Galatians and as much as I want to defend my faith against the cajolers and mockers of it, the truth is that left to my own devices, I make the greatest mockery of His name of anyone I know.

"It's why the cross." I think this morning, over Psalm 145 and my coffee. It's why the cross, I have to remind myself when I feel tired, confused, and ridden with failure. It's why holiness, perfect character, hung on a cross—so the veil could tear in two, so I could enter into His holiness with my wretchedness.

Are you struggling to believe His goodness today? I am. I'll tell you, I am. But here's something, friend, He knew that. At the end of Psalm 145, after David exholes the grandeur of God, he comforts the little people with this: The Lord is near to all those who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

All I know some days is that He is all that I know to be truth and that's good enough for me. He is good. He is my good.

Have you subscribed to Sayable yet? It only takes a second and from then on I'll come to you, you won't have to come to me!

TEMPLES

Gayle Curry

We are four, sitting on the floor of a multi-purpose room at my church. There are others, pockets, groups, couples—heads bowed, shoulders bent, the posture of repentance and so we do this too. The air-conditioning vent is above us so we are close, shoulder touching shoulder, hand on leg, needing one another for warmth and because repentance is personal but corporate too.

Weed out the restlessness, I pray, because adventure is my drug and discontent my great sin. Bring the cross near, I pray, because I forget that life with Christ is an adventure. Tether me to the Holy Spirit, because that is my help, my hold. 

Before His death, He entered a temple and overturned the tables and this is the picture I have of God in flesh when I sin. This temple, this tent in which I abide is a haven for sin. It is sneaky and overt, setting up tables, selling sacrifices that keep me returning to the law again and again. Oh, wretched man of death that I am. Dying inside. On purpose. With intent. 

But it is the Jesus that follows that I still struggle so much to know. He, God in flesh, sitting in the disastrous temple, but now he is gentle, teaching, righting what was wrong, setting straight that which was dismantled. 

Making new. 

My sin robs me raw and I know my sin. Oh, how I know it. I know it more than I know anything else in this life. 

But God. 

But. God. 

This week is the most potent of our weeks, we who are walking, living, breathing temples. The cross is so deep and so near to us this week. God incarnate, brought low. Our sin, disposed to the evil one. Christ, raised after three days. Disciples, those who believe and who still struggle so much to believe. 

But God.

RESIDUAL

The great tragedy of my generation, and perhaps yours too, is we cannot appreciate the residue.

Almost two years ago, when I was ready to leave the church, finished with unanswered questions, unexplained theology, and mostly my unchanged heart, a wise man cautioned me. He didn't say I couldn't leave, he didn't even answer my burning questions about tithing and church membership. He simply talked about residue.

He told me how every place into which we walk, we take with us the residue of the former place. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it isn't. But it doesn't change the fact that there is residue.

I know this residue because I know my family, and the awful and beautiful desperation in each of us to find some resolution in our faith. The thing is, I'm not sure any one of us realizes every new place is unsoiled in our minds until we walk in there with our past and hand it with trembling hands to yet another person to review.

I have found an abiding rest among people who laud the character of God more than the handiwork of God. For my oldest brother, he found solace in liturgy and the Orthodox church; another brother finds his sanctuary among people and an adventurous life; yet another one took his to the grave and another one has sworn off religion entirely. The one who was four when he declared he would be a pastor, is 17 now and I have no doubt that wherever he goes the gospel is carried. I have yet to see where the youngest two land.

This I do know: were you to gather the doors of every church we have collectively darkened the hallway would go on for a seeming eternity.

The residue my parents left with us (and I'd venture to guess they carried over from their own parents) is a unsatiated curiosity that will not be silenced by the mere telling, but only by the experiencing.

We were the experientially educated.

This meant while other families were stuck in their routines and normality, rote reasons for what they did every single day of life, my family was on some sort of adventure to figure it out. And sometimes it looked different every year. Because this was our family we didn't know any differently, and I cannot thank my parents enough for the flexibility of spirit they gave each of us. There is not one of our brood who will not choose risk over reward every day. This is what they gave us, this is the sweet residue of growing up in my family.

But it also meant my parents were sometimes figuring it out in front of us, as we went along. And that residue was left on us as well. It felt like whiplash sometimes, the speed at which things would change, new convictions, new ways of living. It was always an adventure, but not always a pleasant one. And it left us, me at least, with more questions than answers. This is what I mean when I talk about an unsatiated curiosity--I likely won't stop until I understand something as fully as is possible on this dirt-ridden kingdom (regardless of how many things get torn apart in the process).

It also left me with a deep, deep understanding that people everywhere are figuring it out. Democrats and Republicans, Reformed and Arminian, complementarian and egalitarian, churched and unchurched, organic and prepackaged. Deeply in us, we're still figuring it out, still walking by faith, atheists and Jesus-lovers both.

And deeply in us we bear the residue of someone else who was trying to figure it out, and on and on it goes.

The great tragedy of my generation is that we fail to appreciate truth regardless of the package or label, and more so, we fail to appreciate the residue it holds and leaves on people around us.

You and I, we're shaped by ideals, ethics, theology, and practices and I guarantee not one of us arrived there on our own. 

We all carry the residue of what came before us.

The next time I find myself wanting to preach something, retweet a clever 140 characters, facebook a quote, or sink into deep thought over an ideal not my own--I want to think about this: who arrived at this thought and what reside were they carrying? And how does my residue read this differently than it was perhaps meant? Or how might my residue lend wisdom to this thought?

I think I would be quieter, less egotistical, and certainly more circumspect if I asked these questions more often.

I think the residue I would leave might be more of a pleasing fragrance than a sticky mess:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.       II Corinthians 2:14-17

SAID

Whatever your heart clings

 to and confides in, 

that is really your God.
MARTIN LUTHER

The punishment of 

every disordered mind 

is its own disorder.
ST AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

Man's nature, so to speak, 

is a perpetual factory of idols.
JOHN CALVIN

It was less like seeing 

than like being 

for the first time seen, 

knocked breathless 

by a powerful glance.
ANNIE DILLARD

A STUDY of GOD

Someone wrote me an email this week full of concern. It seems a thread of theology has changed my life and can’t keep itself from weaving into the words on this page. They named it as they saw it. They quoted my lines and captioned them with a man’s name and then they slapped an –ist on the end of his name and called me that too.

It doesn’t matter that I haven’t read a stitch of his doctrine, couldn’t name his tenets of faith if I tried—the damage was done and they might as well have put a scarlet letter on me in their own mind.

Don’t worry, I responded nicely and graciously and I think we’re still friends, though I told him if my blog offends him so much, he probably shouldn’t associate with it, otherwise other people may begin to call him one of these theological-disciples as well. You are what you eat and all that, you know? At least I am, it seems.

If transformation is the changing of one thing to another, then theology, for me, has been nothing but transformative. I told a friend once that if our theologies couldn’t be subject to change then what in life could be? And I stand by that.

I know more than anything that I want the Word and Spirit alone to be that which changes my theology, but I am no fool because it is Life that has the final word.

I cannot tease my concept or study of God apart from what He has done in and through and because and in spite of me. I am a living, breathing theology. I am like paintings by art students “A Study of Light” or “A Study in Contrasts.” I am a study of God. That is not to say that I am God, not at all, but that I perceive God and I present Him, though He doesn’t need me to any more than light itself needs permission to flood a room through a sliver of space. It exists and so it lights. God exists and so has chosen us as His vessels.

What I am saying is that what we think about when we think about God is and should be transformative, it should change us today and it should change us tomorrow. But it also should be transformative itself.

Paul called it going from glory to glory and I think sometimes we want to believe that all those changes happen in one swoop, like Paul himself, on the road to Damascus. But more and more I am convinced that there is something to be said for the progressive nature of that sentence: We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

That, friends, is a comfort to me.

It is a warm, warm, warm blanket to me.

I am beholding.
I am being transformed.
I am going from one degree of glory.
I am going to another degree of glory.

I am a study of God, being transformed into the same image.

The Same Image.

It wasn’t lost on those Corinthians—that word Image. They knew Image. The knew Imago. They were an idol-worshiping, image-making people. But they knew Whose Image they were transforming into and it wasn’t Paul or another Apostle; and for us it’s not a dead theologian or a living one.

The truth is that the gospel reaches deep, deep, deep inside of us, pulls out the residue of us, the filthy rags of righteousness, and the dregs of our past, and redeems it for a degree of glory. And then tomorrow, the gospel reaches back into us, pulls out some more, and redeems it for another degree of glory. And this happens until breath is gone and Life begins for real.

This is a study of God.

This is how God works, not man, not my blog, not my study of the Bible, not the sermons I listen to each week or the sermons you’re listening to right now. This is how God alone works in our lives.

So, my email-friend, I hope you’re not reading this. I really hope you’re not.

I hope you’re not because I don’t want my theology to trip you up. If it illuminates God to you, then read on. But if it steals one iota of joy from you in the reading, step away, close your browser, and live! Live life forward in the fullness of what God is revealing to you today!

But prepare for your theology to change and to change you in the process.

From one degree of glory to another.

 Half-face

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 

II Corinthians 3 ESV