Peace Be With You

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit,

 singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:15-17 NIV

As followers of the way we are called to peace. Radical and obedient peace. I find this extremely difficult because along with peace one can easily extrapolate that rest is part of this as a byproduct of peace. I will go as far as to say that peace and rest go hand in hand and you really cannot have one without the other.

We often hear people talking about the hard-fought peace. Men went to war and died for peace. We put our resources and lives on the line for peace, we fight for it. This is the peace of the world. Jesus states in John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, do not be afraid.” A heart that is at peace is a heart that rests. A heart that is at rest is a heart that can be thankful.

Gratitude comes up two different times in this short passage in Colossians and I believe it is the lynchpin for this section of scripture. A heart that aims at gratitude is a heart that can be at peace because it knows that God is the author and the giver of all that is. Rest is then a logical outcome of realizing that all that you have is from God and that we need not fight for it – we must only receive it.

I have been struggling with resting lately. Everything in the world tells us to fight. Politics, religion, education, our daily commute ad  infinitum. This is birthed in the old man mindset of duality. Right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, Christian against heathen etcetera. Duality of mind is a divided mind, and we are reminded in Colossians to put on the mind of Christ. Christ prayed in John 17 that we may be unified as He is unified with the father. How does one walk in unity? Peace. Walk in the bonds of peace.

History is replete with war. One nation bombs another, the other retaliates with a bigger bomb, the other gets allies with bigger bombs and the cycle is endless. This is true of any cycle, war is just a big example. But, what if one of the parties says ENOUGH ALREADY, we are not going to retaliate. What then? Will the other nation continue? Possibly. Over time though what happens when one does not fight back? The eventual outcome is peace.

God is so big on peace and rest because it puts us in a place to receive our security not from living in the biggest house, or the biggest nation, but from Him. As I write this God is showing me so many places that I still do not rest in him. I know not what to do except to “count my blessings, name them one-by-one. Stop and let me see what the Lord has done.”

Gratitude truly is an attitude. It is one that must be cultivated like any attitude. Amid the suck, find something to be thankful for. At the top of the mountain, find something to be thankful for. Do it again and again and the peace that passes all understanding and the rest that comes in that will be in your heart.

~Selah

On Toasters and Trampolines

On Toasters and Trampolines

 Let us take a moment and let our imaginations take the forefront. I want you to close your eyes and try and do what I am about to ask you.

Imagine you have been asked to host a family that is new to America in your home. You jump at the chance to build a cross cultural relationship with the ones coming to stay with you. You do all your homework, you clean the house and make it as nice as possible and the day finally arrives for you to meet this new family. You bring them home and help them settle into their new room, you work on language and all the other things you need to do, but you never stop to ask yourself one question; “Who are these individuals?”

Imagine this family is from a small tribe in Africa and they are now refugees. Do you know anything about their culture? Do you expect them to know your culture? Imagine coming home one day and seeing the children with the toaster in the back yard and putting it on a trampoline just to see it bounce. The children have no reference point for understanding what a toaster does, or why a trampoline can be so much fun. I encourage you to imagine explaining what a toaster is for to the mother of the family. 1) Take a slice of bread. But what is bread? They made only small cakes of corn for their meals. 2) Plug the toaster in. What does plugging a toaster in mean? Why is that essential? 3) Let the toaster burn the bread until it is golden brown. Why do you allow a potential fire in your home every day? Stay along these lines of thinking and take it as far as you can go with it. The cultural understandings and underpinnings of our culture are so assumed and so engrained in us that it is just about impossible to understand them all and how they impact you.

The rules and social norms of a culture are learned not in a day, but over a lifetime. From the time we are born until the time we die, humans mimic other humans. We spend countless hours watching other humans doing human things and deciding for ourselves if that is good or not. Children mimic those around them and learn the rules of the playground so to speak from those who are around them. Every person ever born is a product of culture. (For an excellent book on this I recommend Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making) Learning the rules of a culture gives you power and autonomy over yourself. As you grow you learn to abide by, or buck the social norms you learned in order to get what you want.

When we approach The Bible, or any book really, the first understanding we must have of what we read is that it is a product of a culture. There is so much benefit to reading books from different cultures. There are so many good books out there that are like a mission trip to a different culture all in the palm of your hand. If you read the book without at least an understanding that the cultural assumptions of the author are going to be different you will find yourself reading a confusing jumble of words. But if you take your time to read and research as you become bewildered you will find the payoff to be immense. The Bible is a product of many many cultures over many thousands of years. Most of the cultures are now completely extinct, and those that are still here are mere echoes of what they were.

A wonderful teacher in the church on cross cultural communication is a man by the name of Vigo Sogaard. He summarizes five relationships that need to be defined to begin understanding a culture. This is by no means all inclusive, but it shows some of the challenges we have when it comes to cultural communication of values. We must define the relationship of the individuals of a culture to God, to self, and to others, with creation and with the church.

I am not trying to write an academic paper, but I want to encourage you to think of some of these things as you read scripture. When you read those Old Testament stories that make you scratch your head and think that God must be crazy and that the words must be translated incorrectly. How might our approach to scripture change if we willingly do a little bit of work to understand the cultural assumptions of the people writing the scripture?

Most Bibles have a page of two at the beginning of each book that orients you to the people who wrote the book and about when it took place. I encourage you to start there. If it picks your brain and you want to know more a good Google search of the information presented will give you a bigger overview of the times and places of the words being spoken.

All this to say, please do not read a bible verse and assume that it explicitly backs you up and that you are right. It is an act of humility to dig in into the scripture and let it form you instead of forming the scripture to suit you.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. (Source) Confirmation Bias is a heck of a drug as well. It rewards the pleasure centers of our brain when we feel we have been shown to be right. Like any drug, we work harder and harder to get more and more of it. It is a cycle that can be spiritually deadly. It is also incredibly divisive and destructive as the more and more you think you are right, the more and more you manufacture divisions and people and things to hate in order to be proven correct. Reading scripture slowly and in a culturally aware manner is an act of resistance.

As we mature as followers of The Way, if we are going to be impacted in our reading of scripture, as well as our engagement with people of other cultures, we must walk in deep and abiding awareness of the mystery of each culture and how they come to see and know God. We must walk with humility and do our best to drop cultural blinders in order to understand and to enter into their world. To commune with our brothers and sisters from the past in the Bible and then to commune with our neighbors across the street. Humility and patience are hallmarks of the multicultural life of a Christian. We all have work to do in this area. God is good though, and His throne of grace extends over the entire universe.

~Selah

When That Which Calls You Wounds You

When That Which Calls You Wounds You

  James 1:2-4 (NRSV)

God is a God of promises. How many times have we heard that? How many of us can rest in it truly? I am the guy who when you tell me that will look for the proviso’s and the asterisks in the contract. Thank God, he is covenantal, not contractual.

What is less popular to say is that God will answer those promises in His time. If you are like me, I want it to be in my time. I am Chronos time – linear and if this then this will happen. God is Kairos time, He promised, and He will deliver. However, it will likely be in a manner we do not expect.

In 2005 God gave me a promise that I have held onto. I have worked towards it, laid a firm foundation, examined and re-examined my character and my heart and my life in preparation. But if I had my way, in 2005 that promise would have been fulfilled right then and there and I would be that which God has called me to be. The suck part of that is, I would not have the character needed to do that which he has said I would do. I would be a burned-up pile of rubble on the Roman road to their vision of progress. I would not even be a cog in a wheel on the stage coach using the road to progress. I would be a pile of ash the local farmers were using to fertilize the fields to empress the emperor as he rode by. Burned up, useless, a no-one.

The above scripture was given by James to the remnant of Israel that somehow survived the sacking of Jerusalem. In 70 A.D., the Romans had enough of the subversives and decided to be done with them. They did a remarkably precise job in breaking them down and demoralizing them to the point that some of those who survived just walked off a cliff to not need to deal with the consequences of Rome’s actions. And yet, here is James telling them to consider it to be joy. I would be reading this thinking James got himself some good reefer and was being ridiculous. Except, he was not. He was reminding them to endure, and the best way to endure is with joy in your heart.

Joy is an elusive concept because only you can decide for you if you are joyful. Only you can look at your life and say, “this is joy” – no one can or will define it for you. Joy is a slippery thing, and often the moment we say we have it, it gets slippery and tries to leave. We must continually and actively cultivate the heart of joy and gratitude. How do you cultivate joy while embracing the suck? I am not sure. I think contemplating eternity helps though.

I love reading about all the new discoveries we are finding in our galaxy. It is incredible to see what we are beginning to see and just begin to comprehend about the universe and our place in it. What I am learning more and more is just how old and how beautiful our universe is. God’s handiwork on display as the psalmist puts it. For me, this calms my soul. Knowing that God of the universe who has been creating for an eternity that we cannot even truly comprehend, made a covenant with me. Not a contract, no proviso’s, a covenant. God is for me always, and he will allow the pain to develop a covenantal Carl. One who will hold onto Him and His words, even when it does not make sense.

Israel has seen God’s faithfulness amid so much pain. Israel is still so much of God’s pleasure and He is creating a lover for Himself in them – but also in us. How cool is that? We are being shaped, molded, prodded, begged o change in character to be that which we are designed to be, all by the God of eternity.

I could go on and on, but I have an appointment under the stars with my creator. Want to come join me? Let us search His innumerable and incalculable universe together and talk about God’s promises to us.

~Selah

The Goodness of God

“Original blessing is simply what happens when God steadfastly decides to be in relationship with us. That relationship bestows goodness upon us, and also within us. We are steadfastly

And benevolently tethered to God”

Danielle Schroyer in Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place

I have been adrift in the theological world as of late, allowing my mind to wander where God would have it to go and letting The Spirit speak to me in ways that it wishes. It is hard for me to do sometimes, it is a very contemplative exercise. I love and hate it. But God has met me every-single-time in some very unexpected ways. One thing that keeps coming to the forefront of my thoughts and prayers is the idea of Gods goodness and mercy. We talk about them all the time, but do we meditate on them much? Do we let that sink in?

The goodness of God is evident everywhere and all the time. Romans 2:4 states that it is God’s goodness (or kindness in some translations) that leads men unto repentance. God is good, and His goodness is what fulfills me every day, but can be a total terror for others. Goodness, like grace, abounds everywhere and for everyone. I did not make a grammatical error there, it is for everyone. Let that sink in….

When God hovered over the firmament in Genesis and was surveying all that He created He said, “it was very good…” Genesis 1:31 (NIV) God did not look at his creation and say aww nuts, fleas? I made fleas? He looked at them and declared they were good, just as He looks and you and I and declares we are good.

God’s relationship to His people and His creation did not change the moment we ate of the apple at the tree. The way man knew and related to God changed. God’s goodness did not stop in the garden, it continued, and continues to this day. What has changed is the way that we see God. Instead of seeing His benevolence and taking part in it freely, we see ourselves as flawed and unable to partake of His mercy and grace and love. Nothing could be further from the truth, He is still wooing us into a divine dance with Him. All we need to do is stop and listen to the rhythm and join in as he comes around the dance floor, and He is always dancing.

When I was in the 6^th grade, I went to my first school dance. As a young and hormone ridden kid (I would tell you I was a man back then because I had a deep voice) I had someone in mind to ask to dance. I was so nervous that I went into the bathroom and almost threw up. I begged a breath mint off a teacher to not offend the one I had set mine eyes upon. Once my head was clear, my resolve steady, and my breath as fresh as it would be – I dove in. I asked Darcy, the young woman I had been on the hunt for, to dance. I never was so nervous up to that point in my short life. I had imagined her answer from the moment I decided to ask her. She was going to say yes, tell me she had been waiting all night for me to ask, and we were going to be steady from that night into eternity. Instead I got the firm NO, a giggle, and a look from her friend that told me I was shopping in the upscale neighborhood, and I was a trailer park boy. I was crushed. How could she not want to be seen with me, a newly formed man well ahead of the pack in puberty?

I tell this story because the dance we are invited to with God is like the awkward first school dance. God is that kid who gets on the dance floor and just has a good time. He does not look to another to validate that he is cool and that he is the best dancer, he-just-dances. He sets the tone for the rest of the night. As he dances a young woman may come along and step into his rhythm, and then another, and then another. Those who are too shy to immediately ask a girl to dance get in there and the dance continues. Maybe you line dance, maybe you do The Electric Slide, maybe you just shake your butt and have a good time. The point is, the prime mover, that first person starts the whole thing. That first person is the goodness of God.  He makes it okay to step onto the dance floor, and he woo's you to join in the goodness. But He is a gentleman and He will not make you join the dance. However He will overwhelm you with the sense of joy and love and grace. You can sit on the outskirts of the dance floor, nurse your punch until you are so hopped up with sugar that you brain is about to bounce out of your ears, and you can even leave. But the joy of the dance, started by that one kid who had the guts to dance, will still beckon you.

So often we all sit on the side of the dance floor and recount all the reasons that we cannot or should not be a part of the dance. We list our sins, our faults, our responsibilities that keep us from partaking in the divine dance. We give every reason, all-the-while seething with jealousy for that one kid that started the rave. What we should remember is that the kid who started the dance does not care what is going on in your life, he just wants to dance. Dancing is more fun with others, and he wants you to join. This is why God created us, to be co-creators of love, goodness, kindness, mercy and grace. When we decide to dance, those problems, worries and barriers tend to melt away. 

Now get out there and dance in the goodness of God. GO, STOP READING THIS – DANCE you freak, DANCE!

-Selah