What if God actually helped us?  What if, in our moment of pain, we could pray and our pain would go away?  What if, when we suffered, we could ask God for help and our suffering would actually cease?  That’d be nice.  It would be nice if knowing Christ meant saying goodbye to pain.   But since it doesn’t, I’m glad that Christ suffered.

As Jesus was nailed to a cross, God didn’t help him either.  He abandoned him.  And for some reason, that’s “Good News.”  Jurgen Moltmann attempts to explain why:

“suffering is overcome by suffering, and wounds are healed by wounds.  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.  And therefore the suffering of abandonment is overcome by the suffering of love, which is not afraid of what is sick and ugly, but accepts it and takes it to itself in order to heal it.  Through his own abandonment by God, the crucified Christ brings God to those who are abandoned by God.  Through his suffering he brings salvation to those who suffer.  Through his death he brings eternal life to those who are dying.  And therefore the tempted, rejected, suffering and dying Christ came to be the centre of the religion of the oppressed and the piety of the lost.”

Because Jesus’ bore the full weight of suffering that is the human condition, we can reinterpret our encounters with pain.  Rejection is a reality for the most godly among us.  Temptation is to be expected.  Pain cannot be avoided.  Christianity does not promise us freedom from the life we loathe.

But in all of these painful experiences, we find hope of God with us.  If God was revealing himself to us in the life of Jesus as he experienced suffering, then we have hope that God is right in the midst of these very same experiences with us.  For you and I, we too can become god-like not in our triumphalistic avoidance of suffering, but in our sympathy with the pitiful life of Christ.

If Christ’s life had been one devoid of suffering, then he would be of little help to me.  If he had gone from victory to victory, then I would only be left feeling like I was doing something wrong.  When I feel rejected by others, when I suffer under the weight of temptation, or I feel the pain of physical limitations, I would have felt distant from God and rejected by him in my suffering.  If Christ had not suffered, pain would put me outside the presence of God.

Thank goodness that’s not the story of Jesus.  Thank goodness the story of Christ is one of rejection and suffering.  Thank goodness that God is near to the broken-hearted of the world.

God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.  Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering .. Only the suffering God can help … That is a reversal of what the religious man expects from God.  Man is summoned to share in God’s sufferings at the hands of a godless world. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Only a suffering God can help.”  Considering the condition we find ourselves in, only a suffering God can help.  In the crucifixion of God in Christ, I find God in the pain of my own crucifixion experiences.  Thank God, Jesus suffered.  It is only by his suffering that I can find hope in the midst of my own.  I am accepted and loved by God despite feeling God-forsaken.

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A couple of weeks ago over the weekend of April 16-17, 2010, Wheaton hosted a conversation that engaged N.T. Wrights scholarly work.  Wheaton has made the these lectures available for free in mp3 download format.  I’ve just downloaded them, and I look forward to listening to what the presenters have to say.

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Ruth Haley Barton says there is a dark side to leadership.  A church planting coach I recently heard, says that the biggest issue church planters and young leaders have to face is their past emotional baggage.  When leadership seems oppressive, difficult and emotionally taxing, what dark habits will emerge in your life?  What old emotional baggage will resurface in your life without warning?

I believe this happens.  I’ve seen it happen in my own life.  It’s a real problem, and Barton, in her book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, says that the only solution is solitude and silence.  It is only when we stop and practice Sabbath and silence that we can deal with the dark side of our soul.  Quoting Parker Palmer, she reminds us that the soul is shy.  We are vulnerable and insecure human beings, and the chaos and demanding nature of leadership causes our souls to shrink back into hiding.  Only in silence will they emerge.

This is why, I believe rest is so important.  We are all leaders in some part of our lives, and we all need to rest. It’s one of our core values, and this Sunday at New City, we’ll be talking about the importance of Sabbath as a part of our weekly rhythm.  If we want to grow into the people God has made us to be, we must be people who rest.  I hope you’ll join us!

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Race car drivers control their cars.  Pilots are in control of their airplanes.  Athletes control their bodies.  Control is synonymous with excellence.  The better you become at flying a plane, driving a car, or contorting your body as you fly through the air for a lay-up the more “in control” you are.  You are a master over something once you can control it.  We long to be in control of whatever we are doing because we believe it guarantees success.

That’s why we want to be in control of our lives.  When we work hard and gain control over our lives, we believe we can control the results.  We can control how things will turn out.  We want to control our kids, because we want them to be successful.  We control our friends because we want them to enhance our lives.  And we want control in our careers because we want to be successful.   But when our kids rebel, our friends let us down, or we get passed over for the promotion that we deserved, we come face to face with the reality that we are not in control.

Interruptions and disappointments jar us awake to the fact that we are not in control.  This produces anxiety.  If we aren’t in control, how can we be sure things will work out!  We usually respond by trying to work hard to regain control.  We slow down, recalibrate, and do whatever we can to re-establish control over our lives.  If things are really crazy, we may stop spending time with people.  We may withdraw a little.  We may drop commitments we previously made.  ”Just until things get back under control,” we say.

Unfortunately, control is an illusion.  We will never get in control of life.  If we think we have, we are wrong.  If we pursue control, we do so in vain.  Control is elusive and the best response to the chaos of our life is to embrace it.  Accept that control is an illusion and welcome the humbling that comes from not being in control.

If we want to follow Jesus, this is a must.  You can’t be in control of your life and enjoy intimacy with God.  They are mutually exclusive.  Intimacy with God comes from reckless obedience to the ways of Jesus.  It means we live by faith.  It means we make decisions that put us in harms way.  It means we take risks, and risks by definition include the possibility of failure.  If we demand control, we cannot follow Jesus in faith.  Jesus said to Peter:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.””  (John 21:18 ESV)

Following Jesus means, like Peter, we go where Jesus wants us to go.  We no longer “dress ourself and walk wherever we want.”  We live out of control and by faith.  Following Jesus means we may have to go “where we do not want to go.”  This is not all bad though.  The good news is that God is with us.  If we are living out of control, then that means that we aren’t in charge.  God is.  And while our life may be a lot more scary — because it’s a bit reckless — it’s also way more fun.

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The following article is posted in full on the Patheos Website.  It is part of a web series called The Cross Examinations, in which different Christian leaders respond to questions on current cultural issues.  This week’s question was:

“Evangelicals are often portrayed as homophobic or hateful toward gays.  If you could envision the ideal relationship between evangelical churches and gays, what would that relationship look like?”

As a church planter, it is in my job description to meet with lots of people — people new to the faith, people seeking faith, and those who have been a part of the church since the day they were born. Each group brings with it their own set of questions for God and the church. One group wants to know about social justice, another about our music style, and another about our interest in doing overseas mission work. But one question that seems to be present in the minds of each person regardless of groups is, “What is your stance on homosexuality and Christianity?” This is the most common question I get no matter which type of person with whom I am talking.

What I find even more fascinating is that I have never been asked it by anyone inside the gay community. It is usually asked by married couples with kids. Rarely do they have a homosexual friend in mind. The question is not asked because there is even much interest in my position or my rationale for my position.  It’s a litmus test. This individual is trying to decide whether they want to be a part of our community, and this question seems to be the fastest way for them to group us into a sociological category. They assume they will know what type of church we are by how I respond to this question.

That’s why I never answer it.  Continue reading here…

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I’m not sure if this is just human nature or if it’s been indoctrinated into me by my culture: When things don’t go well, I’m tempted to think God hates me.  When a series of unfortunate events unfold, I feel like God is out to get me.  When I get lost, then get a speeding ticket, and then get chastised for being late, I’m having what my son would say is a no good, very bad day.  And, I can’t help feeling like God is out to get me.

One theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, sums up this experience of feeling cursed by God as a feeling of God-forsakenness.  When life seems to repeatedly turn out bad, we inevitably wonder where God is in all of our pain.  Whether it’s the torment of toddlers who refuse to listen to our requests, the rejection of a long-time girlfriend, or the extreme suffering that comes from poverty, it can be hard to fight the feeling of forsakenness.

But Moltmann says that it is in our God-forsakenness that we can meet with God.   If we can recognize that in Christ’s death on the cross, God incarnate was himself God-forsaken, then we can re-orient our vision of who God is and how he relates to us in our moments of God-forsakenness.  He says this is the very essence and identity of Christianity.  He writes:

Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God, to whom one belongs oneself.  
The Crucified God, pg. 19

Christ was the ultimate God-forsaken person.  He was abandoned by God despite the perfect obedience of his life.  This means that God has intimately identified with you and me in our God-forsakeness, and we can choose to identify with Christ in his God-forsakenness in a sort of “double process of identification.”  Despite the occasional deep feeling of divine betrayal, God doesn’t hate us.  He loves us, and his presence is with us.  In our moments of feeling forsaken, we know that we have not been abandoned.  Rather, it is in these times that we share our most intimate connection to Christ.  When we embrace God-with-us in these dark times, we embrace Christ as the God-forsaken-one just as God embraces us.

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The Rolling Stones sang the song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Image from flickr.

Life’s hard isn’t it?  At some point we’ve all had to come to terms with the fact that we aren’t going to get what we want.  The thing that we won’t get can be as mundane as a new camera or as meaningful as a new job, a spouse, or a child.  Sometimes, even with the most important things, we have to face the reality that we can’t always get what we want.

What I’ve found is that in these moments of dealing with our inability to get that which we want, something profound can happen.  We are forced to let go of the hopes and dreams we had surrounding this thing and figure out if we can keep living without it.  Usually that process draws us much closer to God.

This happened to me about five years ago.  I was working at a church in Boston, but I knew that it would soon be time to move on.  As I prepared to leave the job I had, I was eagerly awaiting news about another job that seemed a near certainty.  Then after I left the job in Boston, the job I expected to get fell through and I was left in the lurch.  I had miss timed my jump into this new ministry, and I was left without a job.

As this unfolded, my anxiety level escalated.  When I heard they didn’t want to hire me, I felt like a nobody, a loser.  I felt like I was without an identity.  The pain I felt at not having a job exposed just how much of my sense of self-worth and value was based on having a job in ministry.  I had to come face-to-face with the reality that I didn’t get what I wanted.

But in not getting what I wanted, I got something much better.  Because I didn’t have a ministry job for more than a year, I had to deal with my false sense of worth that was rooted in having a ministry job.  I had to deal with my false sense of identity that was tightly inter-woven with my vocation.  I had to deal with what equaled idol-worship of my vocation in ministry.

Not getting what I wanted was the best gift I could have gotten.  It forced me to deal with my issues.  I felt like I would cease to exist without this job.  Then, when I didn’t get it, and low and behold I continued to exist.  I was still a husband, a father, a son, and a child of God.  I remained a valuable human being created in the image of God and passionately loved by him.

Sometimes God’s gift to us is received in the void of the thing we most wanted.  The loss of these things can be tremendously painful — as it was for me — but through its absence we can learn to find our identity in God’s love for us not our possession of titles or things.  Now that I am in ministry I’m thankful for this lesson.  I can engage in ministry without needing it to validate my ego.  I can give to my church and those in it without that unhealthy co-dependency that happens when a pastor has his identity rooted in the success of his mission.  In the midst of my pain and the feeling of deep loss, the reality was God was with me.  He was giving me something much better than a job.  He was giving me freedom from my worship of vocation.  He was giving me an identity that is defined by his unwavering love for me, regardless of where I work.

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Angry people are so unbecoming.  Wrathful people are even worse.  They come across as vindictive.  When these people unleash their latent anger, watch out.  You may or may not have been the one to upset them, but you better get out of their way once they’re mad.  They seem set on destruction — the destruction of other people through abusive words, attitudes, and maybe even physical violence.

Being full of wrath seems like a personality defect, and that’s why we imagine God, the perfect person, must be devoid of wrath.  I confess it’s sometimes hard for me, as a preacher, to acknowledge God’s wrath.  It’s not something people like to hear about.  But I think there is a personality trait that is much worse than wrath: apathy.

Apathy is the antithesis of wrath — it is summarized as the state of doing nothing, of not caring.  I think it’s particularly offensive because there is so much in this world that is so wrong.  Apathy is an external reflection of our internal indifference.  We don’t care that people suffer.  We don’t care that children starve.  We don’t care that drugs destroy dreams.  We don’t care that powerful people force pretty girls into prostitution.  Apathy in the face of such horrific injustice fills me with wrath.

The problem is, I’m also apathetic.  I don’t do nearly enough to fight against the injustices of the world.  Only God is perfectly just, and therefore only he can be justifiably filled with wrath.  But man am I glad he is.  I’m glad that child pornography pisses God off.  I’m glad that God gets angry when someone commits adultery and causes chaos to come to a marriage.  I’m glad that God is livid about the lifestyle of drug lords and pimps.  I’m glad God has wrath.  It’s a sign that he cares.  He cares about our world, and he wants the best for his beloved children.

I’m also glad for grace.  Grace is God’s saving act that transforms us from apathetic people into lovers of justice.  Grace, not wrath, is ultimately what transforms us into people who care.  Thank God for God’s wrath, but thank God even more for his grace.

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I just saw an incredible story on CNN about a man who married a made up, virtual girlfriend!  In the video, we learn about a young Japanese man, Sal, who actually went through with a marriage ceremony with his virtual girlfriend on his Nintendo DS.  He admits that the wedding was done tongue-in-cheek, but from what I can tell only sort of.  He still takes baths with her, takes her on vacation (to Guam), and plays with her while he walks down the sidewalk.  When asked why he loves her, he responds that she is the perfect spouse.  He isn’t interested in getting a real girlfriend.  She does everything he wants from her.

It’s no wonder he feels this way, real marriage is hard.  In fact all relationships are hard.  People don’t conform to our needs mechanistically the way a computer program does.  We can’t shut our spouse off when we need a break from her/him.  We can’t guarantee that our spouse will always respond positively towards us so long as we push the right buttons.  We can’t have our spouse change clothes to meet our sexual desires whenever we want.  Real relationships happen with real people.  Real people are anything but mechanistic.

It’s in the context of real relationships that we must relinquish control.  We can’t control our spouse.  We can’t dictate their behavior by following a formula.  Real relationships demand something from us.  Virtual relationships are inherently self-seeking and that’s why they are appealing.  Sal is married to a virtual spouse because she exists only for his pleasure.  Few of us are actually tempted to marry a video game, but the temptation to view our spouses and all our relationships in a similar way is real.  It’s a common desire to engage in relationships based on what we can get out of them as opposed to what we can give is present for all of us — that’s why marriage can be so hard.  Our spouse has needs and desire too that may or may not fit into our plans for our individualized life.

I find this story amazing in its extremity, but relevant in that it reflects a pattern at work in all of us.  Have a look:

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As a church planter in a community that is attempting to be more relational and organic, Parker Palmer’s words on leadership really strike a chord.  He argues that it’s in the less rigidly defined community that leadership is most important not in the structured and hierarchical system:

Unfortunately, our idea of leadership has been deformed by a myth that links leadership to hierarchy, as if leaders were needed only in systems that operate from the top down.  But when we are in “community” — which, at a turn of the kaleidoscope, evokes the romance of an instinctive life together — we can dispense with a designated leader, allowing the role to pass spontaneously from one person to the next.  Or so goes the myth.

Yet in my experience, a community requires more leadership than a hierarchy does.  A hierarchy has clear goals, a well-established division of labor, and a set of policies about how things are supposed to run; if the machine is well designed and well lubricated, it can almost run itself.  A community is a chaotic, emergent, and creative force field that needs constant tending. And when a community’s aims are countercultural, as they are in a circle of trust, its need for tending is even greater.  Lacking a leader grounded in the principles, skilled at the practices, and granted the authority to lead, a circle of trust will fail because the relational culture it requires is so rare and so fragile.  (Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness, pg. 76)

Palmer writes about circles of trust, which are similar to a particular type of sharing-oriented small group.  His comments about leadership in these circles of trust resonate deeply with my experience in church communities.  When relationships replace rules for dictating the way we relate to one another in community, the role of the leader becomes even more important.  Her job isn’t to simply hold up the rules and make sure everyone sticks to them.  Her job is to be in relationship with the people and shape the culture of the community so that love prevails in everything.  A good reminder of the importance of leaders to shape culture.

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