Have you heard this song by The Fray called Over My Head?  It’s a catchy tune.  I’m not really sure what the song is about, but the chorus speaks to me.  Every time I hear it on the radio it reminds me of my own inner turmoil.  Over and over throughout the song, the lead singer belts out:

“Everyone knows I’m in over my head, in over my head”

And as I hear those words I think, that’s me.  I’m in over my head.  I can’t do this church planting thing.  I am too inadequate a leader.  I’m not compelling enough as a preacher/teacher.  I can’t balance the stress I feel and how it causes me to relate to my family.  In these areas of my life and in so many more, I’m in over my head.

I am coming face-to-face with my absolute powerlessness to make this church plant work.  I can’t do it.  The only rational response is to quit.  When there is an impossible task that stands before us, there is no use struggling through it only to fail.  It’s impossible.  It can’t be done, so why try?  It’s not even worth attempting. Church planting feels like that to me — impossible.  I run through all the scenarios of how things might play out, and I struggle to see how I can make it work.  I just can’t do this!

But I can’t quit.  I can’t stop believing that despite me this is something God wants to do.  I believe that despite my personal inability to make this plant ‘work,’ God can.  Despite the fact that at times my very actions, personality, and presence may hinder the growth of the church, God can still move things forward.  He can hold our group together.  He can nourish souls.  He can show up and meet with people despite me.  I am so in over my head.  I cannot plant this church.  But I have hope that God can.

I have hope that my faithfulness as a church planting pastor is not a prerequisite for God’s work.  I don’t have to execute everything perfectly for this plant to work.  God can do this despite me.  My hope is in God alone and not my gifting or moral purity that merits God’s help.  I have nothing else to hope in because I now doubt the sufficiency of my gifting and I’m too broken to delude myself about my moral purity.   My only hope is that God helps those who need help.  He is close to the broken-hearted, and he loves to show his strength in the midst of our weakness.  This is my hope.  I hope in a God who wants to reveal his strength through my weakness, because I have am very, very weak.  I am in over my head, and now everyone knows — most importantly God knows.

Rom. 8:26 ¶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For bwe do not know what to pray for as we ought, but cthe Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

1Cor. 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1Cor. 2:3 And aI was with you bin weakness and in fear and much trembling,

1Cor. 15:43 It is sown in dishonor; git is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.

2Cor. 11:30 ¶ rIf I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

2Cor. 12:9 But he said to me, j“My grace is sufficient for you, for kmy power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that lthe power of Christ may rest upon me.

2Cor. 13:4 For rhe was crucified in weakness, but slives by the power of God. For twe also are weak in him, but in dealing with you uwe will live with him by the power of God.

Heb. 5:2 mHe can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself nis beset with weakness.

Heb. 11:34 mquenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, nbecame mighty in war, nput foreign armies to flight.

It’s pretty en vogue these days to say you love Jesus but you don’t think too much of the church.  It’s understandable.  When Jesus walked the earth, he did some pretty amazing things.  He also taught with a wisdom that was unique to what anyone had ever heard.  Both in word and in deed, Jesus displayed the character of God.  And despite the fact that the crowds of Jesus’ day ultimately crucified him, we, from a historically distant perspective, can recognize what an amazing leader he was and say we follow him but not the church.

The problem is, I think the distinction might be fallacious.  I think there might not be such a distinction between Jesus and His church.

“But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priestand asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.””

(Acts 9:1-6 ESV)

When Paul has a vision, Jesus doesn’t say, Saul, why are you persecuting the church?  Or why are you persecuting God’s people?  Or, why are you persecuting the people who follow me?  He says, “Why are you persecuting me?”  There must be some connection between the Body of Christ, which is the church, and the risen Christ that is so intimate that any persecution against the church is experienced by Jesus as persecution against himself.

This is crazy, and it gives me pause next time I am about to start criticizing the shortcomings of the church.  Why am I criticizing the church?  In all its brokenness, the church is Jesus’ chosen instrument to proclaim the presence of his kingdom in the world.  Perhaps the best way to understand the relationship is what Paul talks about in Eph.  He says that Jesus is married to her.  He has become one flesh with his bride, the church, in a way that causes him to experience persecution directed at the church as directed at him.

That means criticism should be done from within the church out of love for Jesus.  I want the church to more accurately reflect the character of God by closing the gap between the words and deeds of the church and the words and deeds of the church.  Criticism that moves the church in this direction out of love for Jesus feels better to me.  It’s like a husband and a wife sitting down at the table to work on their marriage.  It’s like going to a marriage counselor to work on the relationship.  This is good and constructive work for us, within the church, to engage in.

It’s amazing how broken our world is.   Since I’ve started planting New City Covenant, I’ve become more aware of both my own brokenness and that of others.  I sit down with anywhere from 2 to 10 people each week and share my story and the vision of our church with them.  I also listen as people share their stories with me.  I get to hear their frustrations with the church.  I get to hear their frustrations with God.  I also get to hear about their dreams and hopes–for their lives, for their families and for their church communities.

In both our frustrations and dreams, brokenness emerges.  We are steeped in it.   In our motivations for work, in our relationships with our spouses, and in our dreams for our children the stain of sin is present, but rarely seen.   As a pastor, I sometimes get to see how hurt people are because they will share a bit more openly with me — but in generally we all keep our dark secrets hidden away.  As a culture we value strength and wholeness, not brokenness.  No one wants to let others into our broken lives.  No one wants to shine light on our own darkness by talking about it with others.

Sadly, this often happens to an even greater degree in the church.  Because the church’s primary business is salvation and healing from sin, it looks bad if people in the church can’t get healed.  Broken people in the church are a living reminder of the church’s inability to deliver on its promises of healing and salvation.

So what do we do?  What should I as a pastor do about this?  Should I stop promising salvation and healing in the church?  Should I kick people out of the church who have too many problems?  Or, should I just encourage a culture of dishonesty where people who continue to struggle with sin are silenced?  How do I deal with Jesus’ promise of salvation to us and our inability to experience it?

The reality is that God’s salvation is breaking into our world now, but only in bits and pieces — mostly we’re still stuck with our brokenness.   We experience healing now as signs of the future healing that is to come at the resurrection.  I’m not sure we are actually growing and progressing in our Christian walks, so much as we are experiencing continual reminders of God’s promise to fully heal us in the future.

In this life we cannot escape our brokenness, so let’s stop pretending we can.  Let’s actually embrace the doctrine of sin which we all say we believe.   If we did, we could be much more open about talking about brokenness in our lives.  We would be able to confess our sins instead of concealing them, and we could hopefully experience the healing that James says follows a confession met with grace (James 5:16).

Confession and honest sharing are rare in the church.  But every once and a while you interact with a person who tells it like it is.  They speak honestly.  The are truth-tellers, or to use church buzz-words, they are honest and authentic.  This type of person is like a breath of fresh air on a hot and humid day.  They are the glaring exception of truthiness in a world full of liars.  Thank God for these people.  They remind us of our need for grace.  They help us to connect with God.  They help us to connect with others.  Thank God for those who speak the truth about themselves, and by implication about you and me as well.  Jesus was full of grace and truth according to the gospel of John.  The truthfully broken people among us help us to live in truth and experience grace.   Join me in being this sort of  truthfully broken person who confesses sin honestly and extends grace eagerly.  Join me in attempting to live a life like Jesus, full of truth and grace.

At breakfast one morning, a wife looks at her husband as he reads the financial page of the newspaper, just as he has done every morning for the past twenty years.  She longs to yank away the paper and tell him she is just as in love with him today as she was the day they were married.  But she isn’t sure it’s true.  She isn’t sure he loves her.  She isn’t even sure who he is anymore.  She stares at the back of the paper that covers his face and under her breath asks, “Where are you?”

A young executive drives home after a long day’s work.  Once again he’s running late.  He picks up the car phone to tell his wife that he’ll be a bit late for dinner but will get there as soon as he can.  His little girl answers the phone and asks plaintively, “Where are you, Daddy?”  Immediately he realizes that he’d forgotten all about her first piano recital that afternoon.  After he hangs up, he looks into the rearview mirror, disgusted with himself.  He can’t get the question out of his mind.  Where are you? He remembers how much it hurt when his own father missed his first Little League game.  This isn’t who he wants to be.  It isn’t who he used to be.  ”What happened?”  he wonders.  ”Where am I?”

A recently widowed woman goes to bed alone.  It is the worst part of the day.  She has drunk a bit too much wine, in the hope that it will help her pass out quickly.  But the grief is stronger than the alcohol, and the tears start to flow as soon as she lies down.  Her hand slides over to her husband’s pillow as she asks, “Where are you?”

Some of us are lost in lonely marriages, others in the blind pursuit of success and still others in their grief.  We struggle to find a way out, but the harder we try the more lost we become.  Sometimes we get so lost, we don’t even know where or who we are.  It would be good to have someone find us, to tell us it’s going to be okay.  It would be good to have hope.

Barnes, Yearning pg. 111-112

In the book, Yearning, Barnes is “making a motion that we face reality.”  He argues that we aren’t meant to be satisfied or whole.  As exemplified in the passage above, he writes about life with a refreshing honesty often missing in Christian authors.  He offers no platitudes and no easy spiritual solutions to our broken lives.  He even discourages us from focusing on becoming arguing instead for just being.  And yet he believes there is profound hope for us Christians.

The Bible provides one vignette after another of the grief-stricken God in search of the creatures he loves.  This great story of God’s search for humanity culminates in the arrival of Jesus as God in the flesh.  Jesus walks through ordinary streets and villages, looking for those who have lost their way.  It is the end of a journey that began with God’s first walk through the garden.  Jesus’ birth, teachings, miracles and death are all paraphrases of the Creator’s great question, “Where are you?” pg. 112

If God continues his search for us that he began in Eden, then salvation is being found by him.  But when we are found we shouldn’t expect to be rescued.  God’s salvation isn’t a rescue from this world or our problems but a promise of his presence with us.

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. pg. 116

Salvation doesn’t mean we will no longer struggle with our broken self in a fallen world.  Therefore, he argues let’s be honest about it.  As a pastor he’s walked with people through some hard life circumstances.  He’s seen people battle illness, lose children to rebellion, and spouses abandon one another.  The church is supposed to be the place where people can go to be honest about their pain and then be received with grace, but too often it’s the last place people want to go when they have a problem.

Too often the church just promulgates a spiritualize version of the world’s favorite lie that if you just buy this product all your problems with go away.  The church begins to peddle the promises that if you’ll only come to our church, join a small group, go on this mission trip, pray this prayer, read your Bible, or pray so often,  then you will experience healing and be on your way to becoming whole.  For those of us who try these things and still feel deep dissatisfaction with life, we fear we’ve done something wrong.  We fear we are missing out on what everyone else has.  We worry, maybe I didn’t pray quite right or I didn’t ask for forgiveness for all my sins, or I didn’t…  This is a lie.  It’s a lie that prevents people from being honest with one another and experiencing grace.

I love this book.  In it I find the freedom to be honest about life.  Barnes beautifully articulates the tension between “being saved” and feeling forsaken.  I found myself wanting to read half the paragraphs to my wife.  You know a book is good when your wife starts to role her eyes when you tell her you want to read yet another passage to her!  I highly recommend this book.  It’s very easy to read, theologically accessible, and I imagine it will be encouraging to anyone who’s ever felt like they’ve failed at life.

Has anyone ever said that to you?  Has anyone ever seen the way you behaved and said, “Shame on you?”  This phrase implies there is something wrong with you just because you made a mistake or did something wrong.  By saying shame on you, the message you hear is you are a worse person because of your actions and you should be ashamed of yourself.  Sometimes people use the phrase without consciously thinking about the degrading nature of their comments.  They just want to affect change in your behavior, and shaming a person seems to work.

In his book, Tired of Trying to Measure Up, Jeff VanVonderen attempts to diagnose the external manifestations of shame in our lives and provide a remedy for living a freer life.  He argues that shame shows up in two ways:

1. Give Up — When something happens that causes us to feel shame we can give in to that shame, believe it is true, and give up trying to be or feel like a better person.  By giving up, we fail at the next thing we try and the message of shame is reaffirmed.  We aren’t good at that, or we are ugly, or we are worthless.  The message of shame reinforces our feelings of inadequacy and we are more inclined to give up the next time around.  He illustrates how this cycle works in the following example:
   • Outside Source:  A husband batters his wife.
   • Shaming Message:  The abuse and blaming says to the victim, “You’re so defective I can do this to you.  Your needs, feelings, and personal boundaries don’t matter.”
   • Belief: “I’m a defective, bad person.  Someone as bad as me deserves to be hurt.  I am not loved, accepted, or capable.  Nothing I do is good enough.”
   • Decision: “What’s the use?  I don’t deserve a healthy relationship, anyway.  If I leave, I might end up in a worse situation.  I give up.”
   • Behavior:  The victimized wife stays in the relationship and continues to be abused.
2. Try harder — When something happens to this person that makes them feel shamed, instead of giving up they try harder.  In their effort they try and prove the person who shamed them wrong.  If someone says a person is stupid, she will work hard to get good grades and prove them wrong.  If someone says a person is fat, he may stop eating and start working out in excess.  The person who responds to shame with the “try harder” behavior is always trying to prove that he is better than the shame he feels.  The cycle is the same as the illustration above up to the Decision point.  At that point the person tries hard to prove the shame-er wrong, and then usually receives some sort of affirmation for his efforts.  The problem is deep down, the person still feels inadequate.  He still feels dirty and full of shame.  There never seems to be enough accomplishments to wash away the shame.  VanVonderen says we end up saying to ourselves, “It’s not true; I’m still not good enough.  I could do better.  Besides, if people knew what I’m really like, they wouldn’t be giving me all these strokes.”

He goes on to argue that the only way to free ourselves from a life ruled by shame is to rest.  Giving up and trying harder both perpetuate a message of shame that keeps us in bondage.  So long as we give in to the shame or try and overcome it through sheer self-effort we will be controlled by the message of shame and our feelings of low self-worth.  The solution is to rest in the worth and value that God says we have in Christ.

VanVonderen goes through some theological arguments to make the point of our worth.  I found them not as compelling as I had hoped.  I wanted to be overwhelmed with God’s love for me, and I found his arguments about sin and guilt and forgiveness less powerful than they could have been.  For me, I like to think of our value not coming from a forensic forgiveness of guilt, but from an unconditional acceptance into the family of God.  Jesus became man so that we could become gods.  One theologian says that the essence of the Kingdom that Jesus came to bring is in the invitation to us to call God, “Abba Father.”    He came down to commune with us in order to bring us up into communion with the living God.  In Jesus we can become sons and daughters of God.

This helps me.  What I long for more than anything else is this sort of familial intimacy with God.   And my ability to be in a close relationship with God is not based on any conditional behavior.  God accepts me.  Whether I “succeed” in ministry or “fail,” my nearness to God remains unchanged.  I’m God’s son for good, and I like that.

A new movie documentary, The Anatomy of Hate, is coming out that explores the origins and reasons for hate.  The film documents hate in the lives of people from white supremacists in the south, Christians who define themselves as anti-gay, to the Arab-Israeli conflict.  It looks fascinating.  As a pastor who believes deeply in community, hatred and conflict are the primary hindrances to accomplishing this vision.  People will walk out on the church because of a judgmental comment made by another member or a disagreeable position held by the pastor.  Interpersonal strife and residual pain will keep a person far from God for potentially a lifetime.

Here are some clips from the movie:
American Nazi Gathering:

God Hates America:

Attack on US Troops:

Mideast Conflict:

These are extreme examples of hatred.  They show individuals who define themselves by who they hate as well as the lamentable consequences of years of conflict that inevitably escalate into war.  Bigotry and war are profoundly sad, but it’s just as sad to see hatred manifested in the petty grudges we carry, the gossip we promulgate, and the slander we say.  If we reflect God primarily in the way we relate to others, then hatred is the antithesis of being human, and acting on that hatred is demonic.

But it is in all of us.  We all hate, and that’s what makes community so complicated.  The trick is to forgive, and not base our love for the other person in community on how much they deserve it, because they usually don’t.  This is what makes Christian community unique — I love Jim, not because of who Jim is, but because of who Jesus is.  Jesus loves Jim, and he is in Jim working for the salvation and healing of Jim.  In all our relationships, we treat one another the way would treat Jesus.  Jesus loves our neighbor with the same unconditional love with which he loves you and me.  Christian community is founded on this unconditional love that refuses to hate no matter how justifiable that hatred seems.  We come together in the name of Christ, forgiving one another just as Jesus forgave us.

I continue to slowly re-read Nouwen’s Wounded Healer.  This is one of the best books on Christian leadership I have ever read.  It feels like Nouwen is peering into the window of my soul as he writes and perfectly describing the human condition as I experience it.

In the second chapter, he attempts to characterize the nature of the rootless generation that was emerging in a post 70s world.  He says that we share the following characteristics:

1. We are an inward generation — “it is the generation which gives absolute priority to the personal and which tends in a remarkable way to withdraw into the self.”  ”It is the behavior of people who are convinced that there is nothing ‘out there’ or ‘up there’ on which they can get a solid grasp, which can pull them out of their uncertainty and confusion…so, perhaps there is something meaningful, something solid ‘in there.’”
2. We are a fahterless generation — “We are facing a generation which has parents but no fathers, a generation in which everyone who claims authority — because he is older, more mature, more intelligent or more powerful — is suspect from the very beginning.”  ”Today, seeing that the whole adult, fatherly world stands helpless before the threat of atomic war, eroding poverty, and starvation of millions, the men and women of tomorrow see that no father has anything to tell them simply because he has lived longer.”  ”Instead of the father, the peer becomes the standard.  Many young people who are completely unimpressed by the demands, expectations and complaints of the big bosses of the adult world, show a scrupulous sensitivity to what their peers feel, think and say about them.”  ”if youth no longer aspires to become adult and take the place of the fathers, and if the main motivation is conformity to the peer group, we might witness the death of a future-oriented culture or — to use a theological term — the end of an eschatology.“
3. We are characterized by convulsiveness — “Many young people are convinced that there is something terribly wrong with the world in which they live and that cooperation with existing models of living would constitute betrayal of themselves.  Everywhere we see restless and nervous people, unable to concentrate and often suffering from a growing sense of depression.  They know that what is shouldn’t be the way it is, but they see no workable alternative.”  ”They share a fundamental unhappiness with their world and a strong desire to work for change, but they doubt deeply that they will do better than their parents did, and almost completely lack any kind of vision or perspective.”

Nouwen goes on to say that in response to this the leader of tomorrow needs to be 1) an articulator or inner events, because the God within asks attention as never before, 2) a compassionate person, because the fatherless generation is looking for a new kind of authority, not someone up there but someone who suffers with us (com = with, passion = suffering), and 3) a contemplative man, because as a contemplative critic he can call out what is broken in the world and lead people in a different way.

My Thoughts

The characteristic that resonated most deeply with me was the fatherless/compassionate leader combo.  I have a wonderful father so this is no reflection on him.  Rather, it is a reflection on the lack of hope that is pervasive in our culture.  We are an apathetic and despondent group that has in a sense lost our future-orientation.  We don’t trust those who have gone before us, our elders, while at the same time we don’t have hope that we can do it any better.  We suffer for a sense of historical dislocation that also sabotages our hope in a better tomorrow.

I think Christians can be hope-filled people.  The wrongs of this world will one day be put to right.  Sin will be eradicated.  All will be healed.  In the interim, we still live in a broken world, but the reality of a future hope is available to us in bits and pieces here and there.  God’s future world is breaking into our lives now.  Both because of the ultimate future restoration and the healing we experience in part now, we can be hopeful.

But the problem with Christians who try to be hope-filled is that they come across as having all the answers and being judgmental.  I can recall numerous conversations with people in my past that have left me feeling awful about myself.  One stands out.  I shared about a hard patch I was going through with my spouse in our first year of marriage.  We were at each others’ throats, and I was longing for healing in the relationship.  I shared this with a friend, and he told me I needed to work on that.  He suggested that I abstain from ministry until I smooth things over with my spouse.

Nouwen says this shouldn’t be!  Hope about the future should lead us to be compassionate, not judgmental.  Because we know how things are meant to be, we can mourn the way their are. We are hopeful about the future, but honest about our present pain.  We recognize the brokenness in the world, because we know the way things will look when all is made right.  Being hopeful doesn’t mean we do the Christian thing and sugar-coat the pain, it means we can speak honestly about it.  And for those of us in leadership positions, it means we can come alongside those who suffer, because we suffer too.

An Indian Tale quoted in Nouwen’s Wounded Healer:

Four royal sons were questioning what specialty they should master.  They said to one another, “Let us search the earth and learn a special science.”  So they decided, and after they had agreed on a place where they would meet again, the four brothers started off, each in a different direction.  Time went by, and the brothers met again at the appointed meeting place, and they asked one another what they had learned.  ”I have mastered a science,” said the first, “which makes it possible for me, if I have nothing but a piece of bone of some creature, to create straightaway the flesh that goes with it.”  ”I,” said the second, “know how to grow that creature’s skin and hair if there is flesh on its bones.”  The third said, “I am able to create its limbs if I have the flesh, the skin, and the hair.”  ”And I,” concluded the fourth, “know how to give life to that creature if its form is complete with limbs.”

Thereupon the four brothers went into the jungle to find a piece of bone so that they could demonstrate their specialities.  As fate would have it, the bone they found was a lion’s, but they did not know that and picked up the bone.  One added flesh to the bone, the second grew hide and hair,the third completed it with matching limbs, and the fourth gave the lion life.  Shaking its heavy mane, the ferocious beast arose with its menacing mouth, sharp teeth, and merciless claws and jumped on his creators.  He killed them all and vanished contentedly into the jungle.

From: Tales of Ancient India, translated from the Sanskrit by J.A.B van Buitenen

Nouwen uses this parable as a way of pointing to the simultaneous creative power and destructive potential inherent in our technological advances.  In characterizing our predicament he refers to us as “nuclear man,” as in people living in a post-nuclear bomb society, which he describes as:

Nuclear man is a man who has lost naive faith in the possibilities of technology and is painfully aware that the same powers that enable man to create new life styles carry the potential for self-destruction pg. 5

Ultimately, this produces a sort of despondency.  There is skepticism about our own creative endeavors because we no longer can believe in the promise of technology to bring about a brighter future and inevitable progress as a result of innovation.  Why create?  Why innovate?  Why labor for advance when there is such a potential for our efforts to be used for our own destruction?

Nouwen is not making an argument against technology or innovation, he’s just describing a psychological state of contemporary society.  Hopelessness and a lack of faith in the future pervades our culture.  Progress and change are words that are viewed with deep skepticism.  We feel disconnected from our ancestors because of our radical dissimilarity of life experience and hopeless about our future because of the destruction technological advances have wrought.  What we need, according to Nouwen, is “experiential transcendence.”  We need to connect with something outside of ourselves, something bigger than us, something transcendent.

Nouwen says we find this in Jesus.  He is both a mystic and a revolutionary and we become both as well when we follow him.  As a mystic we experience the transcendent as we share in the common realities of the human experience.  ”The most personal is the most universal.”  We become more in touch with our own existential reality thereby growing in our awareness of others.  As a revolutionary, the transcendent comes in the form of a vision for a different world that Jesus promises is coming to pass.  But its not just an improved world, a world post human progress.  It is a new world founded on the new man.  It is a world where “the life of this man is not ruled by manipulation and supported by weapons, but is ruled by love and supported by new ways of interpersonal communication.”

My thoughts

I think the loss of hope for the future is a pervasive.  Americans have excessive wealth, the ability to travel the world, and rarely if ever have to deal with issues of scarcity as people throughout time have had to.  And yet we are depressed, anxious and bored.  Experiential transcendence seems like a good solution.  In the mystical and the revolutionary way of Jesus, we can connect with something bigger than ourselves.  My only comment would be that this is not an individual endeavor.  This is something that is meant to happen in the context of community.

We all want to be happy.  The other night I pursued happiness in my third helping of french toast (yeah, I said night; we were having brinner ).  The sticky, sweet goodness of french toast covered with syrup was delightful…in that moment.  But not long after dinner, I felt awful.  I had way over done it, and my blood sugar must have been through the roof.  I even had a hard time sleeping that night because of all the sugar my body was still trying to process.

I indulged in something that made me happy — sugar — but it didn’t last.  It tasted good, but it left me feeling lethargic and lazy.  There are similar temptations in house buying.  There is the fancy master bedroom suite that screams at us, “you need this!”  There is that extra feature in the kitchen that promises to make life so much easier.  There is that extra bathroom that means I’ll never have to walk more than 15 steps to a toilet once I’m inconvenienced by pressure in my lower bowels.  There are so many things in a house that can make my life just a little bit more comfortable.  And after you look at houses for a while, these nice little features that promise to add a little more to your quality of life become must haves.  They become things that you need in order to be happy.  They are no longer add-ons, they are essentials.

But the sort of happiness they bring, like my sugar high, seems fleeting.  The initial excitement of having this nice feature eventually becomes pedestrian.  The nice feature becomes commonplace — it simply becomes the place I sleep, the room in which I eat, or my crapping confinement.  The happiness passes, and I’m just left with a mortgage payment.

Instead of sugar-high happiness, Paul says the gospel offers us the opportunity to find contentment in any and every circumstance:

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Phil. 4:11-13

If contentment is available to me in any and all circumstances, then it’s available to me in any and every house.  There is nothing that I “must have” in a house to be happy, and there is nothing that I “need” to be in a house in order for it to be livable.  Contentment is not conditional on house amenities, so the house buying principle that emerges is:  comfort does not equal contentment.  As I look at houses, I’m going to remind myself of this so that we’re not swayed off purpose or out of our price range because we feel like we need to have the extra feet in the floor plan or the fancy features in our everyday living spaces.

I sat inside his meager thatch hut, listening to his story, told through the tears of an orphan whose parents had died of AIDS.  At thirteen, Richard was trying to raise his two younger brothers by himself in this small shack with no running water, electricity, or even beds to sleep in.  There were no adults in their lives — no one to care for them, feed them, love the, or teach them how to become men.  There was no one to hug them either, or to tuck them in at night.  Other than his siblings, Richard was alone, as no child should be.  I try to picture my own children abandoned in this kind of deprivation, fending for themselves without parents to protect them, and I cannot. The Hole in Our Gospel, pg. 7

Richard, just like all of us home-buyers, is God’s child.  The resources that God has provided to each of us that allow us to read blogs and buy homes are not our own.  They are God’s goods on loan for God’s good in the world.  Whatever money we spend on a house is money not spent somewhere else.  Money that goes into a beautiful kitchen is money that could have provided running water for someone like Richard.

The trick of living in a society like the US is that we are so disproportionately rich when compared to the global standards.  Every item could be translated into a donation that could’ve been.  Yet in order to live and function in this society, most of us need to buy expensive things like cars and homes.  Navigating an appropriate lifestyle in affluent America is a tricky task, and we can become paralyzed by inaction or overwhelmed by guilt.  It’s especially difficult for items like a house that literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I believe the important thing is not to overspend on a house.  If we buy a house that costs everything we’ve got and provides no cushion for anything in our monthly paycheck, then we are being an poor steward of our resources.  We are using everything that God has given us on one thing.  And, usually the motivation for buying a house that is at the absolute top of our price range is self-interest.  When we do this, we take all the resources that God has given to us for the care of the world and use it to increase our own personal comfort.

Reading stories like the one above help remind me of the plight of others around the world.  On an emotional level, it helps me not want to spend all my money on myself.  I want to be able to respond with financial charity when I hear stories like Richard’s.  So the house-buying principle that emerges is: don’t spend so much on a house that you no longer have the freedom to be generous. Being a good steward means spending a responsible portion of my income on a home so that I can still do the other things I believe God has called me to do.  As soon as paying for a mortgage becomes so burdensome that it crowds out other callings and responsibilities, something is wrong.