Yesterday I dragged myself out of bed to join a few other friends for an early morning swim practice at the Eden Prairie Community Center.  I made it through the practice okay, and on my way back home I noticed a sign hanging on a light pole in the parking lot.  It proudly touted Eden Prairie as the #1 place to live in America in 2010 according to Money Magazine.

As I drove home, this sign got me thinking.  I live in the wealthiest country in the world, and Eden Prairie is supposedly the best place to live in this country.  That implies that Eden Prairie is the best place to live in the world.  Which means I live in the suburb next to the best place to live on the entire planet!  Now, obviously not everyone would think that Eden Prairie is the nicest place to live in the world, or even the nicest place in this country (different people would surely rank different places according to different standards), but those details are irrelevant to me.  What really matters is that Eden Prairie and other western Minneapolis suburbs are really, really nice places to live.

And yet while living in these really, really nice places, at some level I’m still unhappy, and I’m also aware of the unhappiness that plagues many of my peers.  How can we live in one of the nicest areas in the world, and still be so unhappy?

Louis C.K., one of the funnier but raunchier comedians out there, has a bit he’s done on Conan called Everything is Amazing, Nobody is Happy.  His point is that life has gotten much, much better, but as it has so also has our sense of entitlement increased.  Even though amazing things are happening and the most difficult things (like traveling across the country) have become easy, we are still deeply unhappy and find reasons to complain about everything.

As I pondered my own feelings of unhappiness and that of my peers (in spite of everything being amazing), I wondered, “what is it about humans that makes us nearly incapable of being happy?”  No matter the improvements in health, technology, ease of travel and generally just the quality of life, we remain unhappy.  This reality is particularly poignant for Americans, who’s lives have improved dramatically over the last 50 years, but who have also seen a correlative increase in the incidence of depression and anxiety.  ”People born after 1945 were ten times more likely to suffer from depression than people born 50 years earlier.” (Seligman, M. E. P. In J. Buie (1988) ‘Me’ decades generate depression: individualism erodes commitment to others. APA Monitor, 19, 18)

The post-WWII boom that created the suburbs and all the things that make Eden Prairie the “best place to live” are also the the things that make people profoundly unhappy.  Clearly, nice houses, new cars, safe societies, fancy airplanes, new appliances, and even good health can’t make a person happy. The things that are supposed to make our lives so much better cannot bring the results we want from them.

“It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most human beings live only for the gratification of it.” ~Aristotle

It’s not the satisfaction of our desires that makes us happy.   It’s not getting what we want that makes us happy.   I would suggest — without a whole lot of reflection, mind you — that the things that make us happy are simple: love and purpose. Happiness comes as we receive love and then put our energies towards loving others.  If we are loved and if we are striving to love others, we are generally happy, or at least content.  Whenever we think we don’t need love from others, we become isolated from others and eventually unhappy.  Or when we stop focusing on loving others, and turn our resources and efforts inward and self-serving, we likewise become unhappy.  Without love and without purpose, we are unhappy.

Which is why the western suburbs of Minneapolis are ironically really good places for people to become unhappy.  For the exact same reasons that Money Magazine named Eden Prairie the nicest places in the country to live, I suggest make it one of the best places to become unhappy.  It offers unparalleled opportunity to pursue the satisfaction of our desires outside of love or purpose.  It boasts affordable homes, cheap big box stores, good schools, and lots of other outdoor and entertainment amenities.  People live in beautiful homes and enjoy stimulating entertainment, which is to say they become isolated and self-centered. Eden Prairie, and other suburbs around it, offer a host of ways a person could satisfy his or her desires.  And it is precisely in the pursuit of these things that we become the most unhappy.

When I was in Thailand, I saw idols.  They were outside bakeries and 7-11s.  They would be sitting on shelves behind the cash register at restaurants.  Cab drivers glued them to their dashboards and placed pieces of their lunch in front of them.  I even saw them outside of brothels when a group of us did a prayer walk through the Red Light district in Bangkok.  I watched as women offered food to these small statues surrounded by incense before entering for her their night’s work.  They asked for forgiveness and sought protection in these idols, and they may have even hoped for salvation.

I’ve also read about idols.  In the Old Testament, idolatry is such a common practice that at times Israel is said to have an altar to some god on every high hill.  And in the New Testament, idols are similarly present in every day life.  They show up in restaurants, and just by going out to eat, some Christians apparently were complicit with idolatry.

But it seems to me that in our western society, idols just aren’t a part of every day life.  Apart from seeing them in Thailand and reading about them in the Bible, I don’t really have much experience with idols.  They seem foreign and culturally irrelevant.  I’ve never experienced the temptation to offer a sacrifice to an idol, and I’ve never had the urge to put my trust in an idol’s ability to help me.  But lately, I’ve been reading a book by Gerald May that has cast the issue of idolatry in a whole new light.  He argues that addiction is a form of idolatry.  Addiction is a form of devotion to an object that parallels religious ritual. It is western society’s version of idolatry.  He writes:

Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love. Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. It is, as one modern spiritual writer has called it, a “counterfeit of religious presence.

Addiction is a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire. Addiction sidetracks and eclipses the energy of our deepest, truest desire for love and goodness. We succumb because the energy of our desire becomes attached, nailed, to specific behaviors, objects, or people.

He then goes on to talk about addiction as being far more commonplace than we might initially think.  Addiction isn’t limited to just those with chemical dependencies.  It’s not just the alcoholic or the homeless drug addict who struggles with addiction.  Addiction is pervasive and pernicious.  It infects our daily routines and sabotages our ability to love God and love others.

He tells a story from his personal life of a bout with depression he experienced.  As a professional psychiatrist, he become depressed when none of his patients were getting healed.  Another psychiatrist comforted him with the good news that his depression was a sign that he cared deeply for his clients.  He said, “you are depressed because you care deeply about their well-being.”  Upon further self-reflection, however, he discovered that it wasn’t his love for his clients that was causing him to feel depressed.  It was his addiction to professional success, and the utter absence of any signs of it that caused his depression.  He was suffering from withdrawal not compassion for his clients.

He says many of us are addicted to professional success and other seemingly innocuous intentions as well.  We can be addicted to feeling loved, getting praise from others, the comforts of TV, being thin, sex, or power to name just a few.  Some of these addictions are obviously more serious than others, but if we are forced to go without them, we will become depressed, irritable, angry, manipulative and much more.  Our addictions become intertwined with our deepest desires and even our identity, and in this sense they do function like idols in our lives.  They replace God as our source of hope, desire and love with life-draining patterns of behavior.

And just like sin and idolatry can only be overcome by the grace of God, so also the addict can only experience real healing through an encounter with grace.  As I recognize my addictions and try to stop engaging in them, I also know there is no way we can rid ourselves of idols and addictions by effort alone.  We are set free from our idolatrous inclinations and our addictive appetites only as we experience the unconditional love of God.

I experience the love and grace of God in the pages of a good book, the warmth of a loving friend, the prayers of a fellow church member, the sacrificial service of my spouse, and in the practice of spiritual disciplines like sabbath and meditation.  They are the pathways of God’s grace in my life.  They are the means by which Gods grace brings healing to my addictions and sets me on the road to recovery.

There’s a scale in our bathroom.  Every time I go in there to take a shower or do my business, I look at it and think, “I wonder what number would come back up at me if I were to stand on that thing.”  Over the last year, it has brought nothing but depressing results.  Beginning with the time that we went to weekly services last April, I’ve gained 20 lbs.  I don’t like getting heavier for a variety of reasons: have to buy new clothes, embarrassed to be in pictures, etc.  But more than anything else, my weight gain symbolizes something else, something deeper.  It reflects that I haven’t been healthy.  I haven’t keep up with exercising and I’ve chosen to deal with stress by overeating.

I have a number of rhythms I try and follow as defined in my Rule of Life to keep myself from getting to this point.  I set out goals for exercise, prayer, reading, spiritual direction, small group participation, giving, and much more.  I know that I have to follow this Rule of Life to stay healthy, because if I don’t my capacity to bear stress diminishes.  I become less adept at adroitly assuaging my anger.  I become more inclined to indulge.  And I end up lacking in the leadership skills that being a pastor and a dad requires.

So as I’ve looked down at the growing number on the scale, I’ve come to accept that I need to re-double my commitment to my Rule of Life.  For me that begins with swimming.  I’ve re-connected with the Masters Swimming team that I used to swim on.  We swim from 6-7am every morning Monday-Friday.  I hate getting up at 5:30am knowing that I’m going to get punished at practice, but I believe that it is essential for me being healthy.  Over the last two weeks I’ve swum 7 times.  I’m feeling pretty good about my start, and I hope to keep it going.  Right now, exercise is the part of my Rule of Life I need to be the most vigilant about keeping.

Do you have a Rule of Life or rhythms that you keep to stay healthy?  If not, here are some great resources for developing your own: http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/resources/ruleoflife.asp

Gary Anderson says sin has a history.  He’s not talking about the history of our personal sin — why we did it or what it’s enduring effects were.  He’s talking about the history of the way we talk about sin.  He says this is evident by the change of metaphors that are used to describe/define sin in the Old Testament.

He explains why this is significant by employing the philosophical thought of Riccouer, who argues that the meaning of words are derived from the metaphors we use when talking about them.  By way of example he takes the metaphors we use to describe the word argue.  The sorts of language we use when talking about arguing include:

• I destroyed his argument.
• I shared my perspective now you go.  Shoot!
• I dismantled her logic.
• I blew up her worldview.

All of the metaphors we use to describe the idea of arguing include war-like, violent imagery.  If instead we used dance metaphors to describe arguing, we would think of an argument much differently than we do.  If we said things like, “our argument last night was a waltz.”  Or, if we said, “we gracefully argued back and forth as a couple glides across the dance floor.”  Using this metaphor would change the way we understood arguing.  It would change the very definition of what it means to argue.  His point is that the metaphors we use in conjunction with a word imply the word’s inherent meaning.

Anderson applies this philosophical concept to sin in order to uncover what sin meant in the thought life of the Old Testament.  He says there is a history of the word sin because different metaphors were used at different during two different time periods.  The first is the pre-exilic time, and the second is the second-temple period, which included the time of Jesus.

Sin during the first period was associated with the metaphor of burden (e.g. on the day of Atonement the donkey was laden with a heavy burden, symbolically representing Israel’s sins, and sent away into the wilderness).  In the second period, the metaphors that are used include the imagery of debt.  When we sin, we go into debt to God.  By way of example he points to the language in Lev. 26ff about the debt the Israelites go into by not adhering to the law of every 7th year is a Sabbath for the land.  This was interpreted by Rabbis in the second temple period as talking about sin.  When they go into exile they have to pay back the debt to God by staying out of the land for 70 years.  The reason is that the land belongs to God, and by working the land on the seventh year they are stealing from God, which puts them into His debt.  He also points to Jesus use of debt language in the Lord’s prayer as the strongest evidence that Jesus thought of sin this way.

What I find really fascinating is the correlating definition of virtue associated with these two metaphors for sin.  For the burden metaphor, there isn’t really an associated opposite other than to unburden someone or something.  But if sin is thought of as a debt, then there is an opposite action that can be taken as a way to undo our debt.  You can pay back your debt.  If you are in God’s debt, virtue is a way to pay it down.

Anderson argues that this is primarily accomplished through almsgiving, giving money to the poor.  Throughout much of early church history, giving money to the poor was understood as a way of giving money to God himself, and therefore as a way to pay down our debt.  Interestingly, Jesus talks this way too.  In Matt. 25 he says that giving to the poor, the sick, and those who are hurting is equivalent with giving directly to Jesus.  He also says to multiple rich individuals that their path toward salvation and overcoming their sins was rooted in giving their money away to the poor.  This was so established in early Christianity that poor individuals would great their benefactors by saying: “Acquire merit in heaven through me!”

Our post-reformation inclinations violently revolt against the idea of paying down our debt of sin to God with anything that remotely represents “good works.”  We have been taught that Christ alone atones for our sins.  But Anderson points out that giving our money away is less about overcoming our debt and more an expression of faith.  When we give our money away we make a loan to God (Prov. 19:17), which means we become God’s creditors.  The root of the word creditor comes from the Latin word credere, which means to believe.  So, when you or I give our money to someone in need we loan our money to God.  Everyone who loans their money to someone believes in that person’s ability to pay it back.  Loaning our money to God is an act of faith in his ability to pay it back with the spiritual blessings of the kingdom of heaven, now and in the age to come.  That means giving our money away is less of a way to earn our salvation and more a way to express our faith in God.  It’s an investment in our heavenly treasuries that pay astronomically high rates of return.

An article asserting the superiority of Chinese mothers in comparison to their western counterparts has been making the rounds recently.  I’ve had it emailed to me and I’ve seen friends posting it to their facebook walls.  You can read the article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” online.

The article is written by a Chinese mother (who happens to also be a Yale Law School professor and author) named Amy Chua.  In the article she anecdotally argues for the superiority of Chinese mothers (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not really) and then provides three summary reasons why.  They are:

1. Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
2. Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything….the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.
3. Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences

She tells stories about how these three principles worked out in her parenting style.  She tells a story of calling her child garbage, which she says was done out of love and respect and a sort of belief in her daughter’s potential to do better.  She also tells a story of depriving her daughter of dinner until she mastered a difficult piece on the piano.  And she recounts her strict rules refusing some basic childhood amenities afforded to most white American children (like: TV, video games, and sleep overs).  Lastly she says activities like drama and gym (and any other instrument besides piano or violin) are a waste of time.

She boasts that her children turned out well.  They excelled in life because she knew what they needed and she was willing to sacrifice her own time in order to make sure they achieved it.  I read this article just a few minutes after reading a book by Parker Palmer called Let Your Life Speak and I was struck by the contrasting philosophies.

Palmer is writing about vocation and how we can find a way to do the work God made us to do.  He writes:

“Vocation does not come from willfulness.  It comes from listening.  I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about — quite apart from what I would like it to be about — or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.” pg. 4

“Today I understand vocation quite differently — not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received.  Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess.  Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not.  It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.” pg. 10

You can see the difference.  Palmer believes that our true self is given to us at birth and that the pressures and expectations placed on us — by mothers and all the rest of society — force us to wear masks that cover up who we really are.  He says that by the time we hit our 20s, our true self can be so covered by masks that it may be nearly impossible to discern any part of our true self in our external self anymore.

The tension that a parent faces (in the extreme) is between telling your child who they should become or letting them become who they want.  With the former, a parent can impose masks and false identities on their child as they try and force them into a preconceived mold of success.  In the latter the parent chooses not to exert any pressures on their child so that they are free to become “who they were born to be,” in which case they grow up to be bums.  No child choose to practice piano and do math homework when given the option to watch TV or play video games.  These are extremes, but there is truth in each perspective that can be applied to our parenting.

I think Palmer is right, we are different.  Part of our journey towards self-hood is discovering what we are good at and what we aren’t good at.  But I think the parenting style that best helps a child get to this place ought to look much closer to that of the Chinese mother in this article than the stereotypical white American mother who is letting her child’s inner self emerge.  Because the truth is, kids don’t know who they are until much later in life, and without the pre-requisite skills afforded them by hard work in school and extra-curriculurs they won’t be set up to be the person they were made to be.

God made me in such a way that my true self finds expression in pastoral ministry, but I am only able to be a pastor because I can read and write, understand theology, exercise creative thought process, be analytical, and a whole host of other things that I learned through hard work.  I’m glad my parents were self-sacrificial enough to work with me and push me to learn these foundational skills. Now, I can choose to become the person God made me to be.  But I’m also glad that my parent didn’t disown me when I quit my engineering job and became a missionary in Africa.  They were willing to embrace my journey of self-discovery without imposing an identity crisis on me.

And for me all this means, I make Josiah do math and Mercy learn her letters before they go to school.  It’s also why Mary and I will consider going into debt to give Josiah piano lessons.  My wife, Korean though she is, had a chinese mother, and she secretly aspires to be one herself.

I’ve known that this is unhealthy for a while.  There’s a compulsiveness in my doing that betrays my lack of security with who I am.  It drives me to constant productivity as a way to uphold my identity.  Over the last few months, I’ve finally gotten serious about working on changing that.  I’m learning how to be still, and it’s freeing me from the compulsion to accomplish.

I’ve read a few books recently that are helping me explore methods of this sort of personal growth.  The most powerful so far has been New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.  I’ve read other things by Merton before and appreciated his insight, but this book has been revolutionary for me.  I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that has had such a profound impact on my spiritual life as this one.  It’s the only book I’ve ever finished reading and immediately flipped to the front of the book so I could start reading it again.  I’ll be sharing more about Merton’s thoughts and writing in the future.

I’ve also found Nouwen’s book, The Way of the Heart helpful.  He discusses some of the same concepts in Merton’s book I found most helpful — like the false self and the True Self.  But this book is simpler, more like a primer on the attitude and need for spiritual disciplines.    And most recently I’ve enjoyed Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart.  This book is sort of like a how-to guide to centering prayer.  I’ve found practicing meditation and centering prayer as he describes it very difficult and unnatural but also very enriching.  At first, it’s like re-joining swim practice after being away for months and feeling the pain of using muscles that have been dormant for too long.

In all of this, my hope is to become better acquainted with what it means to live in the spirit, or in Christ, as opposed to living in the flesh, which is my false self.  My compulsive doing is an activity rooted in a fleshly identity — one that is finds its worth, purpose, and hope in a false illusion of myself.  I hope that as I learn to be still in God’s presence, I can rest in my identity in Christ.  My doing will increasingly be born out of my being in an authentic way that is life-giving for others.

Every year we celebrate Advent.  We celebrate the coming of Christ to save the world.  The only problem is he didn’t save the world and he doesn’t save me in the way I’d hoped.  He doesn’t fix my problems.  He doesn’t remove my pain.  He doesn’t make life easier so I can live it the way I want.

The real saving that happens is the saving that God intended to do from the very beginning.  It’s a salvation of presence.  God comes into our lives, and suffers alongside of us.  He doesn’t save us from suffering.  He saves us from suffering alone.  It was his plan from the beginning and it is reflected in the names Mary and Joseph were told to call Jesus from before the day he was even born.  Craig Barnes explains it this way:

It must have been striking to Joseph and Mary that the angel gave them two different names for their son.  The first name, Jesus, means savior.  The second, Immanuel, means God with us.

The pairing of these names signals a reversal in our typical understanding of salvation.  We don’t usually think of salvation as having God with us.  We would rather think of it as our being with God, and as being saved from how it is.  We would rather think of “the victorious Christian life.”  But in Jesus Christ God is revealed as the Savior-Immanuel, which means that salvation is not our ascent out of the hard, pain-filled, compromised conditions of this world.  Salvation is God’s descent down to the lost world that he loves. Yearning, pg. 116

Over time, I’ve come to experience this as a profound salvation.  The anxiety of needing God to make everything work, and the crises of faith that used to happen when things didn’t go well has gone away.  Now, I’m aware that in all situations, God’s love is with me.  When things go badly, I’m not loved less.

Merton talks about this sort of life this way:

If I have this divine life in me, what do the accidents of pain and pleasure, hope and fear, joy and sorrow matter to me?  They are not my life and they have little to do with it.  Why should I fear anything that cannot rob me of God, and why should I desire anything that cannot give me possession of Him?

Exterior things come and go, but why should they disturb me?  Why should joy excite me or sorrow cast me down, achievement delight me or failure depress me, life attract or death repel me if I live only in the Life that is within me by God’s gift?

…It is the easiest thing in the world to possess this life and this joy; all you have to do is believe and love; and yet people waste their whole lives in appalling labor and difficulty and sacrifice to get things that make real life impossible.  New Seeds of Contemplation, pg. 159-160

In Advent, we celebrate that God came.  He didn’t remove all the pain and suffering in our lives, but he promises to be with us through it all.  And as Merton describes, that robs pain and suffering of it’s power.  ”For the suffering in suffering is the lack of love, and the wounds in wounds are the abandonment, and the powerlessness in pain is unbelief.” (Moltmann)

Join me in celebrating our suffering God who saves us from suffering — not by sparing us suffering — but by removing the pain in suffering from our lives through the presence of His love.

Join New City for Advent worship services.

Image from flickr.

We’ve just started our series on identity and last week I preached on how what we believe shapes our identity.  In preparation, I did some research on what Americans believe.  It turns out someone has tried to categorize and synthesize a framework of belief commonly held by youth and young adults in America.

After doing hundreds of phone interviews with teenagers for his book Soul Searching and then more research with young adults for his book Souls in Transition, he recognized some trends.  The type of faith that consistently shows up is something he calls, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  He describes it this way:

“Soul Searching argued that the real, tacit, de facto religion of the majority of American teenagers is not any of the many historic religious faiths one usually think of when one thinks of religion but is a new, de facto religion: moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD). Soul Searching presented five key beliefs held by followers of MTD. First, a God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. Second, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Third, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Fourth, God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. Fifth, good people go to heaven when they die.” Souls in Transition, pg. 154

He goes on to say that MTD continues to show up with prominence in young adults ages 18-23, and my experience has been that MTD is woven into the fabric of American culture as a defining belief structure that exists for more than just young people.  Many people I’ve met who are much older than 23 could rightly be categorized in part or wholly as believing in MTD.

Is that bad?  Does it matter?  It seems like MTD sort of gets it right.  Be nice.  Be good.  Be happy.  These are simple and helpful axioms for leading a good life.  Right?

Actually, I think no.  I have a tendency towards MTD, and my experience with it has been that it brings bondage.  Moralism just makes me feel guilty.  I do the thing I think I ought to do, but only because I am enslaved to a moral code.  Then when I break it, I provide myself with so many exceptions that my moral code constantly changes and morphs to fit my lifestyle choices.  Secondly, feeling like the goal of my life is happiness puts me in bondage to my feelings.  If I’m not happy something is wrong, and I have to fix it.  Lastly, deism (which states that God is not active in this world) leaves me feeling like everything has to be accomplished on my own and that God is not with me in the midst of life.

Christ offers me another way.  He says even when you aren’t moral, I love you still.  Don’t expect to be happy.  Life is full of suffering, and being happy isn’t your purpose.  And he says, he will be with me always, even when it’s hard.  This sets me free to just live my life under grace.  I know that God loves me and he is with me when I’m happy, sad, good, or bad.  It’s all grace.

photo from flickr.

We are beginning a new series at New City this Sunday.  I’m excited for it.  It’s about identity, value and worth.  We will look at three central areas of our identity with the goal of answering the question, “Who Are You?”

In preparing for this week’s sermon, I came across this powerful Merton quote on being and doing.  Enjoy.

All men seek peace first of all with themselves.  That is necessary, because we do not naturally find rest even in our own being.  We have to learn to commune with ourselves before we can communicate with other men and with God.  A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him….

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done.  In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity.  We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and work that are the quiet expression of our inner life.  We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition….

Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.  For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves.  And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.

No Man is an Island, pg. 120-122

These words were like a cool drink of water to me.  I hope you enjoyed them.

Photo from flickr.

Last week, late night (fake) news hosts, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announced their upcoming rallies to be held on 10.30.10.  Stewart announced his rally first.  The Rally to Restore Sanity is for people who think all this passionate dialogue about politics has gotten a bit too crazy.  Colbert countered with his March to Keep Fear Alive, because he thinks we should stay afraid.  After all, reason is just one letter away from treason.

I agree with Colbert.  Reason is just one letter away from treason, especially when it comes to matters of faith.  Being reasonable is perhaps the greatest killer of faith in all of America, and when we consider that Jesus is our king, being reasonable leads many of us to be treasonous.

• Tithing is unreasonable, so we treasonously withhold our possessions from God.
• Sacrificing for others, especially when they are unappreciative, is unreasonable, so we treasonously live only for ourselves.
• Forgiving someone who wrongs us and doesn’t say sorry, is unreasonable, so we treasonously reject the path laid out for us by our King, Jesus.
• Turning the other cheek is certainly the unreasonable thing to do in a conflict, so we treasonously fight back and violently assert our value through power over others.

In the Kingdom of God, being reasonable can very well lead us to be treasonous towards our King.  Love and grace are not reasonable ways to live, so we choose the treason of reason.  That’s why I’m with Colbert.  Not in the sense of keeping fear alive, but in his assertion that reason is often just another way of saying treason.  Being reasonable is just code for being apathetic and self-interested.  It’s the sort of life that is antithetical to the call of Christ’s citizens to live under the authority of our sacrificial King.