The Narrow Gate

Open.

The rain was a blessing this morning. Lately, I've been taking advantage of the fact that I'm only six miles from downtown and have been riding my bike into work. The crisp morning air and dewey smells in the quiet dawn rush me into God's world. It's a different kind of prayer time...just a simple and unfettered enjoyment of creation.

But the rain drove me into my change dish scrounging for bus fare instead of packing up my work clothes. It was cool though, because the time on the bus gave me a chance to dig into the word a little bit - and it seemed like the entire book of 1 Thessalonians just leapt off the page at me as I read through it. Someone once said that the Bible is the only book that reads you as you read it. Totally.

I hammered out a couple pages of notes, thoughts and revelations when I got to work...but I'll share one of the big ones in this post.

Paul's just rocking the letter around chapter four and in the middle of a hurricane of truth, he drops this little number:

You're sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand.

And I thought about that for a second. If we really are living in the light, if we're really walking in wide open spaces, if we really are sons of light and daughters of day...shouldn't church be the one place where we never pretend? Never put on a mask? Never pretend that we're something that we're not?

I've been thinking a lot about authenticity lately. And it really bothers me that somewhere along the way of doing church, we allowed our brothers and sisters to think that they wouldn't be loved and accepted unconditionally. For so many, Sundays mean stuffing their lives into a dark closet under the stairs - definitely not bringing them into the light or under open skies. And I'm not really talking about newer believers here...I'm talking about the "seasoned" Christians. The men and women who are spiritual pillars in the church. The people who are for some reason hesitant to bring their whole lives into the light.

Granted, a lot of churches are doing a great job of encouraging authenticity and transparency, but I think this is something that we really need to emphasize. There's no shame in our past (or present) if it led (or leads) us to the cross. And it's in the sharing of our stories that others are encouraged and blessed and ministered to. I'd rather sit across the table from someone who's fought the same battles that I have and shares the details of how God met them inside of that war than listen to someone yell out a bastardized version of scripture telling me to repent. I'd rather have someone share something real from their heart in a moment of pain than to hear a glib recitation of some memorized bible verse that just makes me wonder if the person was even listening to me anyway. To this day, I'll listen to one and ignore the other...even as a Christian.

We've got to open up our lives to each other and to the world. There is no more powerful testimony than talking about how God showed up in our lives. We've got to suck it up and start living open lives and being open books to the world. We're supposed to be prepared to give an answer for why we live the way we do - why we believe the things we do - why we follow Jesus. To everyone. And those stories always start in a broken moment of some kind. We should never run from that piece of our history.

And this is a cycle that plays out over and over again...it's not just the story of how we first came to follow Jesus. It's the countless stories of how we decided to come back to the cross again and again. The moments when we decided to keep following Jesus over something or somebody else...regardless of how long ago we "got saved." We need to get rid of these expectations that because we've been a Christ follower for x number of years, that we can never share a struggle or a moment of brokenness or a mistake.

So maybe we need to start putting some serious intention into living in the daylight and under those wide open skies. No masks. No pretending. No hesitation. Be real. Be authentic. Be open. We are Sons of light and Daughters of day...what an awesome thing to realize. Take pride, not shame, in that identity and trust that God can and will work though that openness!

Buried.

Matthew 25 has always had a powerful hold on me. I think the most emotional I've ever been reading my Bible has happened when I go through the last 15 verses of this chapter. You see the heart of Christ - and the heart of those who truly follow him - in these short sentences. It's humbling and emotional and terrifying and heart wrenching all at once. But that's an entry for another time.

Reading backwards from these verses is another aspect of my walk that God's been working on lately. The parable that Jesus tells about the talents has freed me to become the man that God wants me to be. Here's the gist of the passage:

A guy went off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master's investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master's money.

After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I'll put you in charge of many things.'

The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master's investment. His master commended him: 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I'll put you in charge of many things.'

"The servant given one thousand said, 'Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.'

The master was furious. 'That's a terrible way to live! It's criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest.

'Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this "play-it-safe" who won't go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.'

I used to be really confused by this parable. It was a tough teaching. Caution and discretion were values that were supposed to be used when dealing with money. But the more I studied this passage, the more I realized it had nothing to do with money, and everything to do with what we've been entrusted with.

See, I never really had a proper perspective on this world. I, like a lot of people, saw things in terms of things that were mine and things that were someone else's. But a short time into my Christian walk, I learned that everything - whether it's in my personal possession or not - is God's. He owns it all...and we're just stewards of his stuff.

Everything that I "have" - every tangible good, every dollar in my bank account, every gift and talent - is God's. These are things that he's entrusted me with to watch over and leverage for his work. My family, my friendships, my time...all his. And that realization broke the chains that had enslaved me to money and possessions and stuff for so many years.

But this idea that we shouldn't be cautious with our natural gifts and abilities only recently became groundbreaking. I think the world that I've known for so long had taught me that to cultivate and work on enhancing our strengths is prideful and arrogant. I thought that the right thing to do was to downplay everything I was good at and work hard at improving my weaknesses. Work on that false modesty. Bury the talents so to speak.

But Jesus is telling us that that is sinful behavior. We're supposed to turn these talents and gifts into more - to double and muliply them. He's saying that that is what being faithful looks like.

So if I were to show up at the end of my life and bring every strength that I've been blessed with to Jesus and said basically, "Here you go...thanks for letting me have these for a few years. I didn't do much with this...but at least I didn't use them to hurt anyone." He'd be furious. We're called to do more for his Kingdom with what we have. We have to leverage every ounce of our strengths for him...anything less is, in Jesus' words, criminal.

Why are we not cultivating and strengthening our strengths?

And so that begs the question...are we simply lazy or are we afraid?

Lazy we can decide to change. Fear needs to be overcome.

I love this quote by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Now I'm not sure where Williamson stands with Christ, but I think that there's a lot of scriptural truth in this small paragraph. I could chew on "your playing small does not serve the world" for days. But more importantly, it's this kind of stuff that really motivates me to be salt and light in this world...and the best way to do that is to live fully with Christ in me...at my best...guilt-free and without apologies.

So I guess I just dug up a lot of stuff inside me recently...wiped the dust off of it...took a good look and thought about what happened the day that I buried it. And I'm finally ready to risk it all to turn this into something more...and I hope you are too.

Crazy.

Signed up for the NYC Marathon lottery this morning. I guess a part of me thought, "Hey, I'm here in New England and I've always wanted to run one of these...might as well be the big dog."

They draw in mid-June and the race is November 2, so I'd have 20 weeks to train up during the summer. If I get in, it'll be an awesome experience...if not, I get back $155. Win-win in my book. I'll keep y'all posted.

For.

I knew as I was writing my post a few days ago that I was inspired by something I had recently read (and since I've begun a new bad habit of reading numerous books at once, all pages now blur together), and I wanted to give credit where credit was due. I think Mike Erre says it much better than I was trying to:

People need to see what we are for, not just for what we are against. So much of our message is tied to what what the Christian community opposes: Harry Potter, homosexual marriage, abortion, feminism, stem-cell research, et cetera. But what are we for? The world needs to know we stand for faith, hope, love, truth, beauty, grace, compassion, kindness and courage. The only way they will know is if we show them. Words, these days, are meaningless.

These are the things the church needs to set our minds on...especially when discipling new believers. When I first became a Christian, and I hate to admit this, I felt a lot of pressure to just hop over to the other side of the fence on a lot of social and political issues - because that's what I was supposed to do, think, feel and support. There was a political party that I was automatically assumed to belong to, causes I was presumed to be a part of. And sadly, most, if not all of it, was rooted in the negative. In being against something, somebody or some group of people. Only recently, have I been fortunate enough to be really impacted by some friends, books and circumstances that have shown me what kind of marks a follower of Jesus really should exhibit...everything that Erre says above.

Maybe we need to take a harder look at ourselves instead of the "world" when it comes to missing the point. We should know better. We claim to follow Jesus; we claim to listen to his words and hang our lives on them. And yet, we rarely take the time to disciple new believers and indoctrinate the ways of love and all of the stuff we're for...

Is is because deep down we really don't believe that love is enough? We take matters into our own hands as if we feel a fallen world will only respond to the language of conflict and discord to the point of hatred. We're not strong or holy enough to last very long on the front lines of those emotions without slipping into everything anti-love. There's only one way to speak to the world...only one way that the church will EVER make a difference:

Love.

In fact, if we don't love first and last and everywhere in between, we have no idea - no clue about God - no matter what our t-shirts or bumper stickers say...

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:7-8

Why even waste time, energy and effort checking off the boilerplate list of everything we need to be against? Love is overpowering. Love really is all we need. It's our strongest weapon in this world and the next. Love is, to borrow from Derek Webb, the island that overgrows the ocean.

So then the only real question left is: Do you really believe that can happen? Do you really believe in love that has the power to do that much? And if not, I guess what's left is that we're all just a bunch of practical athiests with silver fishes on the backs of our cars.

Hungry.

My heart broke today reading about the global food crisis that is literally killing people by the minute. Rising food prices are flat-out preventing people from getting enough to eat. And no matter what anyone says, someone somewhere is making money while a lot of other people have empty plates tonight. Food riots are breaking out. Riots. Because people are hungry. Makes our little demonstrations and protests about all manner of things seem a little silly when compared to people doing anything they can think of to get fed, doesn't it?

This picture rushed a million feelings and thoughts into my soul when I hopped on the NY Times website this morning. I didn't want to, but I felt compelled to just look these women in the eyes...I wanted to just get out of my office and go for a walk. I wanted to puke. There I was...stuffing a bagel in my face and thoughtlessly taking a pull from a Red Bull when I was confronted with the fact that a whole lot of people are literally starving to death with every sip. And I realized how many of these moments I really take for granted. I am literally living out the dreams and prayers of these people without even realizing it. I have all the food I could ever want to eat at my fingertips. And I never gave it a second thought - until right now. On a good day, I'll thank God for the food on my plate, but am I really grateful? Honestly, I don't think I even know what that word means anymore. We have so much...and yet these hands in the picture reach out with hope, joy, and pain - for rice. Plain rice. Something that we use as a side dish...something our kids complain about. Stuff we throw out and don't always finish. Rice. I wonder that if I've never suffered like this, do I even have a right to claim gratitude? I think in a lot of ways, I'm just a poser. I can say "thank you for this food" with my lips, but I know I'll always be well-fed. I don't doubt the reality of my next meal. My soul will never know the gratitude that these people have when they get their rice.

Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, “They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.”

I complain about so much petty crap and I have the audacity to think that it really matters - that it's really a big deal. And then I read something like that...

According to the story, Senegal's President, Abdoulaye Wade allegedly has the means and the money to feed his hungry people, but he does not. I struggle with this because I cannot possibly begin to imagine what goes on in this man's head on a daily basis. I guess a part of me believes that no matter how cruel a person you are, the sight of someone starving in front of you has to impact you in some way. But I also know how easy it is to compartmentalize life and become ignorant to the simple fact that life is sacred and people have tremendous worth. I do it all the time. We all do. Some psychologists say that's the only way we could get through a life with so much pain and suffering...we subconsciously pretend it's not really happening. Maybe there's some truth to that. And then there's probably an element truth to the argument that no matter who you are, you simply cannot help everyone. So then, what do you do? Do you help as many as you can? Help no one at all? Help one?

These are big questions asked in moments of big pain. Life is definitely more than just our little cocoons of convenience - there are real people who are sifting through a landfill in Haiti looking for something to feed to their children right now. It's easy for me to praise God in my corner of the world because I know no pain like this...and when I really sit with this, I end up realizing that I simply have a whole lot more questions than answers. About God. About life. About the guy trying to get another spoonful of rice for his kids. About President Wade. About me.

Easy.

Stumbled onto this quote today by Soren Kierkegaard:

"The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly."

I'm watching the Democratic debate tonight and as I'm listening to our political process play out in front of me in HD, my mind starts to wander and, as usual, those wandering thoughts eventually collide with my faith. And I think about how many times we pretend to know what it means to be men and women "of faith." I heard that phrase a few times tonight and it just rang hollow. I hate when people say I'm "religious"...religion is man's attempt to get to God...I stopped trying to do that a while ago. Similarly, my skin crawls when I'm painted with the broad brush of a "person of faith" or a "born-again Christian" or an evangelical. I really hate labels because all they do is soak you with a stereotype that's shaded by the loud, the obnoxious and in most cases, the wrong. Those labels stop any meaningful conversation dead in its tracks because people just assume you fall on that side of the line on all of those hot button issues. No discussion needed, thank you very much...

So when politicians talk about people "of faith," they usually mean the social conservatives...anti-abortion, anti-gay, etc. And it's just funny to me the things we Christians can get caught up in while missing the simple, easy and crystal clear message of Jesus. Kierkegaard is dead right...the Bible is easy to understand. In fact, you look at the most pointed question asked of Jesus...the request to break it all down for us in small words so no one misses it, and this is what you get:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself." All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Yep...simple. Love God and love people. And yet we love certain other commandments over these. Ever seen an anti-abortion rally? Ever read some signs at a protest for civil unions? Love is nowhere near it.

Maybe that's what we're avoiding. Maybe it's because that's the toughest thing to do...love. So we latch on to a cause. And we assign a nice clean adjective in front of it...noble, worthy, biblical...to make ourselves feel good about it. But at the end of the day, we've got to continue asking ourselves the question, did we do what Jesus told us to do? Today...did I love God with everything I have? And did I love people as much as I love myself? Because anyone can throw themselves into being against anything...but as disciples of Jesus, maybe we need to start working harder at being known not for what we're against, but rather what we're for. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control. Let's work on that stuff first, and then we'll see about all those other causes we think we're supposed to be fighting against. Who knows...if we let the Spirit of God into our hearts and start living out a life of unselfish love to the world, maybe those big causes will just start getting a little smaller.