Rocky Mountain High (kus)

I had some not so good news today regarding the death of a friend. As I processed, mumbled and rumbled before the Lord, an odd thing occurred. The Lord seemed to say: "Write some haikus...you seem to find yourself pretty amusing." (In case you have forgotten 7th grade English - the haiku is a pithy form of Japanese poetry that consists of three lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively). I did a spiritual double-take. How odd. Was that really the Lord? I couldn't escape the thought. I remembered how my buddies and I in Junior High would write some rather ribald haikus about teachers, coaches, school lunches and other stuff. It was addictive. I decided to act upon this impression. The experience was goofy, sophomoric, mildly challenging and distracting. But most of all, it was child-like. I was thinking about how I used to do that sort of thing with my own kids when they were small and in some kind of funk or hysterics. I would simply re-direct their attention and their energies to something different. It was often a successful ploy. As I learn more about the Father heart of God, I find myself surprised time and again at the familiarity of some of His ways with me. He fathers me not unlike how I fathered my own children. In the book of Proverbs there are two verses pretty close together that say this: "A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit." (15:13); and, "All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast." (15:15) For God to distract my mind and my heart with a harmless return to a good memory was a gift. Joy and peace are the default settings of the believer’s heart no matter the circumstance.

Enjoy – and kindly forgive - the hideous poetry that follows. If you visited this post for depth of theological insight, please consider reading previous efforts. This one is just for fun. Feel free to count the syllables. Actually, you probably will not be able to help yourself in that regard. It is a bit maddening, that. For best effect, read slowly and out-loud - pausing briefly after each line. Here we go...

Moles
Moles beneath the ground
A tortured ride on mower
Bumpy on rumpy

A Suspicious Accusation
My wife says I snore
More and more and more I snore
But offers no proof

Physics & The Answer To A Mysteriously Messy Garage
Second law affirmed
Thermodynamics is true
Witness my garage

An Ode To Joe (a balding and graying friend)
The hair not turned gray
Is quietly turning loose
Follicle traitors

Election Year (2008)
Elephant trumpets
He and she donkeys braying
Oratory gas

My Money-Making Scheme
Credit card offers
Submitted at one sitting
Charge each to the max

Moe
An ugly dog he
A smelly & toothless mutt
Our much beloved Pug

A Cat Massage
Declawed cat purring
Massaging contentedly
My willing tummy

A False Accusation
Poisonous air
The man blames the dog again
The wife rolls her eyes

My Back Itches
Back that needs scratching
A begging look at wife’s nails
When will need meet nail?

Bad Breath Conversation Between Dudes
Give me some space dude
Something has died on your tongue
See my nose flaring?

An Apparition In The Mirror During My Morning Shave
New lines line my face
A long gaze in the mirror
I shave my grandpa

The Width Of Gray, Part Two

In the last post I talked about the problem with lists. There seems to be an innate tendency within believers to reach for a definition of spiritual health that distills a relationship with God to a list of things we can and cannot do. The problem with lists is that they limit God, cheapen grace, and miss completely the trajectory of freedom which the New Testament offers. The prevailing message of the New Testament is that the law, the ultimate list, failed to make men and women right before God. That was not the function of the law. All the law could do was demonstrate the righteous and just claims a holy God could expect of willing followers. The law could not erase sin, it could only define sin.

I am an amateur carpenter. One of the tools I carry around is called a plumb bob. A plumb bob, or a plummet, is a weight with a pointed tip on the bottom that is suspended by a string and is used as a vertical reference line. One use of a plumb bob is to help a person determine whether or not a wall is straight. A plumb bob does not lie.

Imagine then for a moment you are holding the plumb bob next to a brick wall you have just built. As the plumb bob comes to a standstill, you notice that from the top of your wall to the bottom there is a 7 inch gap. You say to yourself, "By golly, I have built a crooked wall. I have erected a mini leaning tower of Pisa." But, not to worry – you have in your hand your trusty plumb bob. It has done a splendid job of pointing out that your wall is crooked. The question is this: Can a plumb bob now make your wall straight? The answer is: No. A plumb bob's use is one-dimensional. It tells an accurate story of crookedness. It offers nothing by way of correction.

So it is with the law. The law, held up against our lives, tells an accurate story of our crookedness. It demonstrates the violence our lives have accomplished against God's law and rightful expectations. God has told us to: place no other gods before Him; to keep the Sabbath holy, to honor our fathers and mothers, to not steal, to not bear false witness, to not want other people’s stuff or position in life, and so on. Jesus seems to put the law – this list of commands – on steroids by saying that if we fail these commands even in our hearts we have sinned against God. An honest person, even a good honest person, will have to admit that they have failed God in regard to this expanded definition.

And that is the point. God has made it impossible for us to climb our way into heaven. He has so raised the standard of righteousness that we have all, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “…sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The list was good. It stood silently like a plumb line against our lives – sure and accurate – as we erected a crooked life of lies, gossip, backbiting, lust, greed, arrogance, coveting, hatefulness, unforgiveness and such. All of us have done these things. We are all little “Leaning Towers of Pisas” and the law offers no relief – only diagnosis.

The entire epistle to the Galatians is dedicated to this issue. I quote at length from chapter 3:1-5:

Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of His death on the cross. Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the Law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it? I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.

In closing, let’s return to our working metaphor – the color gray. I said in the last post that many want to cast the Christian life and spirituality in black and white terms. I used to believe that. I no longer do. I believe that there is an enormous amount of freedom – what would be called gray by some – in which a Christian not only has the freedom to move, but also carries a responsibility to move. I will say much more about this in a future post.

My concern at the moment is this lure to add copious "black and white lists" on top of the grace discovered through the work of Jesus on the cross. Jesus did not come to abolish the law; He came to fulfill the law. Our participation in His death, received by faith and enacted through baptism and communion means – joy of joys – that we have fulfilled the law as well. We share, according to the Word of God, His righteousness and His victory over sin, death, and the law. For those keeping score – that is a really good deal.

In my next post, I will show how the list mentality is the single greatest contributor to a failed and joyless Christian life and a powerless church.

The Width Of Gray, Part One

For John didn’t spend his time eating and drinking, and you say, “He’s possessed by a demon.” The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks and you say, “He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!” But wisdom is shown to be right by its results.
-Matthew 11:18, 19

To the pure, all things are pure… - Titus 1:15a

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery (i.e., the law). - Galatians 5:1


One of the great temptations of being a leader within the church is to create lists for people, consisting of do's and don'ts, who seek structure and direction for their lives. Lists are helpful when making a trip to the grocery store. Lists are not always helpful when trying to craft a soul into the image of Christ. Living out a list-free life places us within the trajectory to which Jesus and the epistles clearly point. He and other New Testament writers would equate list-free living with spiritual maturity. Conversely, spiritual immaturity would be evidenced by a life that is defined by a series of lists.

I would like to begin a conversation that lobbies hard for lives that are free of lists. What I will say in the next few posts will either be welcomed as good news or reviled as heresy. Either way, I suspect that whatever side you fall on you will enjoy the ride. To each camp, and those in-between, I say, “Welcome aboard.”

A list is simply another word for laws or rules. The New Testament goes to great lengths to describe for us a redemption that has set us free from the ultimate of lists – the law. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2) Paul would say this to the church at Colossae: “You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world. So why do you keep on following the rules [lists] of this world, such as: ‘Don’t handle! Don’t taste! Don’t touch!’? Such rules [lists] are human teachings about things that deteriorate as we use them. These rules [lists] seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person’s evil desires.” Colossians 2:20-23.

This last verse begins to shine the light on why living by lists is problematic. Paul says that lists “seem wise.” It must be true. Go to any Christian bookstore and you find hundreds of titles that have some combination of lists that promise to: set you free from a variety of addictions; make you rich; make you healthy; make you a good leader; make you a good lover; make you Spirit-filled; etc. Each author has set forth a carefully prescribed list of must-do sequential steps that one must master to achieve the golden ring of success that is promised. I am not saying that the outcomes are not both godly and good, or that the author’s intent is malevolent. I just believe that there might be a better way to go about achieving good outcomes without mastering a plethora of lists. (We’ll talk about the “how-to” in a future post – sans list – I promise).

But back to it: Paul says these lists “seem wise.” Why does list-living seem wise? I suspect it has something to do with having in my hands an empirical tool by which to keep score. If I can report to you that at the end of the day I have checked a series of boxes and have kept to the list - then I experience the pride of accomplishment. Lists measure progress. That seems wise.

But the nagging question that surfaces in the Scriptures is this: “Do your lists go far enough?” Let me speed things up for you: The answer is always no. Instead of expanding the horizon of wild possibilities of what God in His creative ability might accomplish through a Spirit-led and empowered believer – a list becomes a limiting, lowest common denominator ceiling. The reason that the New Testament takes such a dim view of lists is that: 1) They will eventually limit what God is up to; and 2) They will make us dependent on the list rather than God.

There is one other thing that lists do that is even more troubling. Lists have a nasty habit of creating a judgmental spirit. Oftentimes, those who live by lists judge “list-free” lives as worldly. Those who know and adhere to a certain list become “clubby.” Those who do not know or practice the list are offered no admittance, i.e. no relationship, with those in the club. One’s worthiness of relationship is predicated upon one’s allegiance to the list. To be ignorant of or to outright reject the list alienates a person from the list-keepers.

This subject is broad and tricky. I fear saying things in print that I will later regret. I fear offering ideas that will be misunderstood and then exploited. But before we close this post, let me offer the challenge before us with a working metaphor. I will pick the color gray.

The color gray is an absolute heresy for those who live by lists. Gray has been associated with ambivalence, mediocrity, and uncertainty. I have heard many a sermon preached along the lines that: “Everything is either black or white – there are no shades of gray.” Usually these sermons are delivered in the color of red – that being the face of the preacher. I have also heard mushy sermons which seem to suggest that almost every moral issue is gray. These sermons are skin-tone in delivery because they are usually very fleshly.

What I am interested in discovering is not so much the question of black or white, but rather this: “What is the width of gray?” To tip my hand early and say that I believe the width of gray is an oscillating thing – sometimes narrow, sometimes wide - is to run the risk of allowing your mind to run ahead of where I intend to land. Be that as it may, I urge you to wait it out and not prejudge or try to pre-guess where our journey is going to take us. When we discover together the width of gray, we may find ourselves living in a freedom and an assignment that we never before thought possible.

Be blessed...
CJ